THOUSANDS of rural people from South Lakeland and Furness are heading for London this weekend to take part in the biggest civil rights demonstration ever staged in this country.

More than 5,000 people from Cumbria are expected to be among the hundreds of thousands of protesters walking through the streets of the capital on Sunday in the Countryside Alliance's Liberty and Livelihood March.

With more than 200,000 already registered to attend, organisers are confident the number of marchers will easily top the 300,000 who rallied to the alliance protest in 1998.

CA North West regional director Tom Fell said that in the last few days interest had gone through the roof, and there were just a handful of places left on the 60 coaches from the county due to head down the M6 in the early hours of Sunday morning.

One of the main aims of the march is to defend the right of rural people to live their lives responsibly the way they choose, including the right to hunt if they wish, but Mr Fell said the event was more than a hunting protest.

He said the march had gained strong support from farmers, and people who had lived in the countryside all their lives, and wanted to show the Government their dissatisfaction about its treatment of rural issues.

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