Property interests are also represented by Sunley Holdings, Pillar Property Investment, and construction magnate Sir Robert McAlpine. A former treasurer of the Tory Party, McAlpine became the main supporter of the anti-European Referendum Party of the late Sir James Goldsmith. Financial backing has also come from America, including the American Master of Foxhounds Association, Sotheby's auction house in New York, leading venture capitalist Willem F.P. de Vogel and C. Martin Wood III, senior vice president of Flowers bakeries. It did this by feigning concern for the plight of the rural poor and small farmers, whose income has been slashed by 40 per cent because of the high value of the pound and the effect of mad cow disease on the beef market. Many smaller farmers are being driven into bankruptcy, and one in three agricultural jobs has been lost since 1971.
Studies show that a fifth of the rural population are living in poverty.
There has been a drastic decline in public transport provision, with 93 per cent of villages having no railway and 71 per cent no buses. Some 80 per cent of villages have no doctor, and 50 per cent have no school. The Labour government's cuts in the welfare state are making these conditions worse, just as in the urban centres. On Friday night before the march, thousands of beacons were lit on hilltops throughout England in protest against the Labour government. From Elizabethan times, this has been a way of warning of an invasion of the country by hostile forces.