About Forest
Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) was founded in 1979 by a former Battle of Britain fighter pilot, Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, who died in 2004. Chairman, from 1987 until his death in October 2006, was Lord Harris of High Cross.
Over the years Forest has fought and lobbied government on a range of issues, including smoking bans, tobacco advertising and sponsorship, tobacco taxation, cross-channel shopping etc etc. The group is recognised by government and other authorities to be the principal voice of the smoker in the UK.
In 1999 we were invited by the Health & Safety Executive to share the platform at the launch of the Voluntary Charter on Smoking in Public Places. In 2001 we were invited to given written and oral evidence to a House of Commons Health Select Committee. In recent years we have been asked to provide written and oral evidence to a number of government and local council committees throughout the United Kingdom.
In May 2004, with legislators increasingly minded to ban smoking in most enclosed public places, Forest launched a national 'Fight the ban: fight for choice' campaign. The campaign, which featured extensive lobbying of politicians, journalists and broadcasters, included a series of opinion polls and advertisements in the national and local press. Similar advertisements appeared in the hospitality trade press, political weeklies such as The Spectator, New Statesman and The Week, plus specialist titles such as The House Magazine and Parliamentary Yearbook.
During this period Forest also published and distributed some hard-hitting essays, articles and other publications including Joe Jackson's The Smoking Issue and a specially commissioned, 50-page report entitled Prejudice & Propaganda: The Truth About Passive Smoking.
We organised events in London and elsewhere that were attended by MPs, peers and journalists; and we attracted banner headlines when we persuaded David Hockney to attend a fringe event at the 2005 Labour party conference. (Hockney, as most people now know, famously accused pro-ban politicians of being"boring" and "dreary".)
We submitted evidence to the government's "public consultation" exercise and to national and local government committees. We gave written and oral evidence to Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly committees; we hosted press conferences in both the House of Commons and and the House of Lords. At every opportunity we attacked the "pseudo-science" of passive smoking and vigorously opposed the prospect of a blanket ban.
As well as commenting on smoking-related issues, we have written articles for numerous national and local newspapers.
"The fight for choice is not lost," says director Simon Clark, "but it has suffered a serious setback. That is why we are launching the new Free Society campaign. We have to reach out to those who don't smoke and demonstrate that further controls on tobacco are an attack on civil liberties that cannot go unchallenged."
For further information go to Forest Online.