HUNT supporters are being urged to take over the constituency party branches of North Yorkshire's three Labour MPs in a "Trojan Horse" attack.

A new organisation, called the "Rural Army", wants activists to spend £2 a month to join up in York, Selby and Scarborough and Whitby.

The campaign is being run from a website, www.theruralarmy.co.uk, which has a direct link to the Labour Party website's membership section.

The group said that, with traditional Labour membership dwindling, hunt supporters could quickly gain a major influence in local constituency organisations if they joined in numbers.

Constituencies in counties with a history of hunting, but which have anti-hunt MPs, are being targeted. The aim is to put the MPs under pressure to change their stance.

York MP Hugh Bayley, Selby MP John Grogan and Scarborough and Whitby's Lawrie Quinn have repeatedly voted to ban the pursuit in the Commons, most recently earlier this month.

In Harrogate, the Rural Army is advising activists to join the Liberal Democrats for £5 per year to put pressure on the town's MP Phil Willis.

But Mr Grogan said members of the hunting group may not be allowed to join Labour if they did not support its broad principles.

A spokesman for the Rural Army said: "Labour's current membership is probably less than 200,000 - less than half that in 1997 - and will probably fall to 150,000 soon with their current problems.

"Contrast that with the 407,000 people in London for the Countryside March and you can see the scope we have for influence."

In a rallying cry to pro-hunt supporters, he added: "If your local MP is anti-hunting you must join that specific political party and work with your fellow constituency pro-hunting supporters.

"The effect will be very interesting and long lasting.

"This project will go national - our investment will bring the results we seek."

But Mr Grogan said: "Anybody of course is welcome to join the Labour Party if they support our broad aims and values.

"But I suspect that many members of the Rural Army will not fit this particular bill and some of them maybe members or active supporters of other political parties which would render them ineligible for Labour."

Similar attempts by pro-hunting groups to influence the policy of the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have met with only limited success.

But paid-up members have a much larger say in the policies adopted by both Labour and the Lib Dems.

A Labour Party spokesman confirmed that there was little the party could do to prevent hunt supporters joining up, although he warned that the party had rules forbidding "disruptive" behaviour at local party meetings.

Updated: 11:34 Monday, August 04, 2003