BRITAIN: An estimated 275,000 people will converge on London tomorrow for what the Countryside Alliance says will be the largest protest since Mr Tony Blair became Prime Minister.
But last night there were widespread accusations that the alliance had hijacked the English rural agenda to promote foxhunting and that many of its leaders were contributors to the rural decline about which they were encouraging people to protest. The government has said it will outlaw hunting with hounds.
The alliance, which has been planning the rally for two years, admitted yesterday that it would have to take wider social issues more seriously in the future and would have to reconsider its role in rural politics.
"I hope we can make the hunters realise that they are only a very small cog and that we must become more accountable and support others with legitimate concerns," said Mr Francis Hobbs, deputy director of the march.
Yesterday the alliance said it had spent an estimated $450,000 on organisation and that 218,000 people had registered their intention to march to Parliament Square. A further 65,000 have said that they will be with the marchers in spirit. "We're confident of getting more than 275,000 people," a spokesman said yesterday.
More than 2,500 coaches and 30 trains have been chartered, and up to 3,000 hunters are expected from Europe, the US and other countries. Organisers expect tens of thousands of Londoners to join the march in sympathy, but people opposing fox-hunting are also expected to demonstrate.
Yesterday the police said that they would have 4,000 officers on hand.
Although hunters will lead the demonstration, a medley of different rural causes will be represented, with up to 1,000 organisations having pledged support.
The director of the protest, Mr James Stanford, said yesterday that the march to Parliament Square from Blackfriars and Hyde Park was about the state of rural Britain as much as hunting.
"This march is about the right of a significant proportion of the British population to play a consensual role in any decisions parliament may take regarding its future, and certainly not just about hunting," he said.
"Who is listening to rural Britain while its farming suffers, its landscape is under threat and its rural communities dwindle?"
But the march, which bills itself as fighting for "liberty and livelihood", has failed to unite rural Britain. No major rural poverty, conservation, environment or social group will be represented. The only large unions behind the rally are the National Farmers' Union which represents one in three farmers in England and the National Farmers' Union of Wales.
"This march is fundamentally about hunting," said Mr Neil Sinden, policy director of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, which campaigns on issues such as rural housing, transport, landscape and conservation.
"The countryside agenda has been hijacked by the alliance," said Mr Simon Lister, director of the wildlife trusts. "They say that the march is about wider rural issues, but it is a thin veil for fox-hunting, which is peripheral to the future of the countryside".
"The Countryside Alliance spends way too much time worrying about hunting, and not nearly enough working on the major threats to rural life. Thousands of farmers will be driven out of business unless our politicians recognise the need to invest in rural areas," said Mr Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth.
Yesterday Corporate Watch, an Oxford-based environmental watchdog group, accused the alliance of hypocrisy.
"On the one hand it says it cares about social exclusion, on the other hand its staff consists of bankers and landlords who specialise in the unequal distribution of wealth," said Ms Pippa Gallop.
"It says it is concerned with the fate of the whole countryside, but it devotes scarcely any resources to non-bloodsports issues. It remains an organisation to defend field sports.
"It expresses concern about the environment, but its staff and donors are busily covering the land in overpriced housing, and its shareholdings and PR company are facilitating this. It speaks for the leisure interests of the landed gentry and assorted business people," she added.
Last week the Countryside Agency reported that rural areas were worse off for affordable housing than urban areas. Almost 60 per cent of the rural population spend more than 50 per cent of their household income on their mortgage, compared with just over 30 per cent of the urban population.