September 23, 2002	Monday	Rajab 15, 1423

LONDON, Sept 22: More than 400,000 aggrieved country folk marched to London on Sunday in one of Britain’s biggest marches, defending the right to hunt foxes and protesting at the erosion of rural life.

From remote corners of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, a vast spectrum of hunters, farmers, landowners and others poured into the capital for the “Liberty and Livelihood” march organised by the Countryside Alliance umbrella group.

“This is the people from the countryside coming together to say we’re not happy,” said marcher John Clunas, a gamekeeper in tweed from an estate in Perthshire in Scotland.

“My whole life revolves around people who work dogs and shoot. Someone’s trying to take that away from me and I won’t let it happen,” he said, referring to a government-led debate on a possible ban of hunting with dogs.

The emotive issue of fox hunting — a favourite sport of the rural aristocracy for centuries but condemned as barbaric by campaigners for animal rights — was the main focus of the march.

But a plethora of other issues were raised by protesters.

Those ranged from lack of affordable housing and decent transport services to unemployment and the suffering of farmers since last year’s devastating foot-and-mouth outbreak, which prompted the slaughter of millions of sheep and cattle.

“We have no services, we have no post office, we have no shop, we never see a policeman,” said another marcher, David Gaunt, from the village of Priors Hardwick in central England.

“The great British phlegm of the stiff upper lip is to put up with it all, but we’ve had enough.”

MAKING HISTORY?: The Countryside Alliance, which brought 285,000 people on to the streets in 1998 in Britain’s largest march of the 20th century, said 350,000 had passed the finishing point of Sunday’s march by late afternoon, seven hours after the start, with many more waiting behind. Police ratified that figure.

Organisers exultantly compared Sunday’s demonstration with two of British history’s most famous mass protests: the “Tolpuddle Martyrs” march in support of six farm labourers sent to Australia in 1834, and the 1381 “Peasants’ Revolt” uprising.

“Today we are making history...They must listen,” said the march’s main organiser, James Stanford.

The march brought London to a standstill.

Kilted Scottish Highlanders tramped through streets normally frequented by grey-suited businessmen. Bagpipes, hunting horns and whistles sounded instead of the usual traffic noise.

Campaigners against fox hunting accused the Countryside Alliance of “hijacking” the march to push the specific agenda of preserving the sport against popular will.

“Of the more than 14 million people in the countryside, only a fraction support hunting,” Douglas Batchelor, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, told Reuters.

“There are genuine rural concerns out there, yet the pro-hunting lobby has hijacked these issues and turned it into a pro-hunt march.”

A small counter-demonstration was mounted on the march route, and there were some minor scuffles, witnesses said. Two anti-hunt demonstrators were arrested by police.

An extra 1,600 police officers kept guard as the protesters snaked through London in two main strands that met at Whitehall, Britain’s political heartland.—Reuters