We need your help: Save our Racing Pigeon Sport by reinstating pigeon racing from Europe! Please click on the link below and please sign it. It takes less than a minute. We encourage all members, all their family, whole households to sign it because it affects us all.
Please share with family, friends and colleagues to help us reach the numbers required for this to go before the House of Parliament.
If we reach 10,000 signatures, the Government will respond to this petition and if we reach 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.
Background information
Pigeon Racing as a hobby has been enjoyed at all levels of our society for generations. The vast majority of competitors are partnered in family ties with Father & Son, Mr & Mrs, or groups of friends working in unison each and every day towards a common goal. This has an equally positive effect on communities, with clubs often being formed in the local area to organise a weekly race during the summer months. The social side to this also boosts the local economy with their venues often being used as headquarters, to facilitate the friendly gatherings as each race comes to a conclusion. In short, pigeon racing brings families and communities together.
During all the many trials and tribulations our nation has endured, racing pigeons and their owners have always made a positive contribution, with the most recent being the Covid Pandemic. Time spent with our birds has helped to keep healthy minds during long and dreary lockdown periods, but now we find that our hobby needs a little help in return.
Each year, for over 120 years, the National Flying Club and other racing organisations under organisations such as the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA), the North of England Homing Union (NEHU), the North West Homing Union (NWHU), the Scottish Homing Union (SHU), the Welsh Homing Union (WPHU) have organised races in which the whole nation can come together, all around the country at all levels of society. Friends and families have been preparing their birds to compete in the most prestigious races from France, in the knowledge that it is the most unbiased route into Great Britain, when taking into consideration the geography of our Islands. Throughout most of those years we have enjoyed a warm welcome with unfettered access by our friends and neighbours in France, for our convoys of Racing Pigeons to be liberated with the sole intention of our birds flying directly towards their home lofts.
Unfortunately, during the many negotiations that have taken place during the past few months, it would seem that this important approval has been overlooked and our plea is for you to raise this crucial issue with the Secretary of State for the Environment on our behalf, as our representative in the Houses of Parliament, with the request that our friends in France and the European Union enable continental racing to continue with a special dispensation which recognises the very essence of Pigeon Racing as a tangible and beneficial community sport, enjoyed by all generations, throughout all of our society which has been the situation for generations.