London to be cut in half by 300,000 pro-countryside demonstrators

Central London will be "split in half" on Sunday when up to 300,000 demonstrators take part in a pro-countryside march through the capital, Scotland Yard warned yesterday.

Organisers of the Countryside Alliance claim the rally will be the biggest protest of its type since the outcry over the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the 1830s. The Metropolitan Police said the demonstration would be the biggest in memory.

Some 30 trains and nearly 2,500 coaches will ferry thousands of protesters into London for the rally, which is expected to last from 10am to 4pm.

The police are expecting long delays, with sections of the capital brought to a standstill. About 1,600 police officers and a similar number of stewards will be on duty, and streets along the route of the march will be closed off.

The Countryside Alliance is protesting mainly against government moves to ban fox hunting, but also about the state of the countryside which, it argues, is ignored and beset by job losses, poverty and crime.

James Stanford, the director of the march for the alliance, which has spent £1m on the protest, said: "It just shows the strength of feeling in the countryside about these issues. In 1998 we had 280,000 people for our march. I will be happy if we have even one more person than that figure on Sunday, but I suspect it will be much more."

Sunday's demonstration is being split into two marches, called Liberty and Livelihood, which will join up at Whitehall. Mr Stanford said he regretted giving them code names and denied reports that the Liberty group, starting at Hyde Park, is for "toffs" and the Livelihood rally, starting near Blackfriars Bridge, is for "proles".

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter said a relatively small number of officers would be on duty because the police did not expect trouble. "We think it will be the biggest march in recent history," he added. He said that the two different routes would result in London being "split in half".

Mr Trotter said: "There may well be groups en route who will be expressing their right to disagree with the Countryside Alliance, and obviously we will be prepared. We have no intelligence of threat from violent groups. We expect it to be a peaceful day, but we have contingencies for anything that might happen." Five large screens along the marchers' route will beam live pictures and a running total of the numbers taking part.

Mr Stanford added that he had received a number of complaints from alliance supporters who had tried to find details of the rally on an internet address published in The Daily Telegraph but were shocked to discover that it was a pornography website.