country people poured into London by the tens of thousands recently to protest against the legislation to ban fox hunting and other issues they believe are threatening their rural way of life.
From the grouse moors of Scotland and the green valleys of Wales and England, landowners and labourers, fox hunters and their opponents brought diverse grievances to the capital.
Hunters in red coats, fisherfolk carrying their rods and reels, men, women and children carrying banners and accompanied by a brass band, they marched for over three kilometres from the Thames-side Victoria embankment to Hyde Park, passing Trafalgar Square on the way.
Organisers expected as many as 20,000 people, but police had no immediate estimates of the crowd.
Fox hunting was at the heart of the matter. A Labour legislator has initiated a bill to ban fox hunting with hounds, provoking outrage among thousands of horsemen and women who gallops across frozen farmland on winter days in pursuit of the fox. Opponents of hunting say that it is barbaric to allow dogs to tear a fox apart and that no civilised society can or should tolerate it.
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