Thank you, Jean Calder, for highlighting how there appears to be one law for the Countryside Alliance followers and another for other, especially animal rights, protesters.

I was recently on a very peaceful march and rally at Wickham - a yearly event that culminates in a one-minute silence and wreath laying outside the animal testing facility.

The police blocked the road and refused to let us near the gates, despite us being fewer than 100 people with no history of violence. No protests are allowed outside the gates of Huntingdon Life Sciences either.

If anyone dares to protest outside an animal experimenter's home, the police are usually there within minutes. Yet hunt supporters managed to blockade Peter Hain inside his house for nine hours. Where were the police then?

Despite the threats made by the hunt supporters to cut the power supply to the Labour conference and cause havoc on the roads (and despite the riots in Parliament Square), they were allowed to hold their huge march in Brighton.

Yet animal rights protesters have been stopped, searched and had their demonstrations either stopped or the route changed under Sections 12 & 14 of the Public Order Act.

If I hear yet again from the media how it is only a small minority of hunt supporters who are violent, I think I'll scream.

A serving police officer wrote in a broadsheet paper about the London demonstration: "The missiles, including ball bearings, bottles, firecrackers and smoke bombs were coming from all parts of the crowd and when they hit an officer, a huge cheer went up."

We've seen their true colours now and this government must not give in to threats and violence.

Ban hunting - and the sooner the better.

-Sue Baumgardt, Hove