A HUDDERSFIELD man has formed a new group to increase the pressure on Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

Alan Fish – who has visited the African country twice in the last three years – wants to help oust the ageing president.

The High Flatts man set up Conservatives for Zimbabwe this month to try to build support for change in the impoverished state.

Mr Fish, 58, who is a member of the party, said: “We’ve formed the group to attract individual Conservatives who are interested in democracy and the rule of law in Zimbabwe.”

He set up the group with Coventry-based Emily Madamombe, who fled Zimbabwe because of her membership of then-opposition group the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mr Fish said: “Emily has quite a few contacts with Government ministers and people on the ground in Zimbabwe.

“We can get information from the country to people in the Conservative Party which they might otherwise miss.

“We thought that having an organisation within the party would be more useful than operating from the outside and trying to get individual members interested.”

Conservatives for Zimbabwe will hold its first meeting next month.

“Bob Fernandez, who campaigns for dispossessed white farmers, will speak to about 40 of us from the Conservative Farming Group in Denby Dale,” he said.

Mr Fish first visited Zimbabwe in 2008, weeks before the MDC went into an uneasy powersharing government with Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. He visited the country again this year.

Mr Fish told the Examiner he hopes Britain will be prepared to attack Mr Mugabe’s regime.

“I would like to see a policy more geared to the Arab Spring,” he said. “If people go on to the streets in Zimbabwe will we send in the RAF?

“That’s what we did when Gaddafi threatened his own population.

“However, it’s a different ball park because there’s no oil in Zimbabwe. It would be nice if they treated Zimbabwe the way they treated Libya.

“But we’re trying to put the pressure on for the rule of law and true democracy – not the sham democracy there is at the moment.

“There is a lot of intimidation in Zimbabwe, about 20 incidents of political violence every day.”

For more information on Conservatives for Zimbabwe call 0808 178 9489 or email alan@conservativesforzimbabwe.org.