Farmers victimised like gays, says Charles
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Your support makes all the difference.The Prince of Wales is believed to have told Tony Blair that he believes farmers are more victimised than "blacks or gays".
In a private letter thought to have been sent to the Prime Minister earlier this year, he said he agreed with the view of a farmer in Cumbria that "if we as a group were black or gay, we would not be victimised or picked upon".
The Prince also claimed the Government would make greater efforts for any other minority and criticised its handling of rural poverty and housing issues. He accused ministers of "destroying the countryside".
The Prime Minister, who is believed to have received the letter after a meeting between the two men earlier this year, is not thought to have responded to Prince Charles's letter. St James's Palace and Downing Street refused to comment on the letter.
The news came as Prince Charles's companion Camilla Parker Bowles was today expected to ignore the pleas of his advisers and take part in the countryside march in central London. Although the Prince is known to support hunting, he has tried to avoid direct involvement in the political confrontation surrounding the issue.
Mrs Parker Bowles, a "passionate" member of the Beaufort hunt, is expected to ignore fears that her presence at the largest anti-government protest for years will raise constitutional and political problems for the Royal Family.
A host of celebrity hunt supporters will also swell the ranks of the protest, which is expected to bring the capital to a halt.
They include the quiz show host Anne Robinson, the footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones, the novelist John Mortimer, the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, the Gulf War commander Sir Peter de la Billiere, and the actor Diana Rigg.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers, vets, terrier men, village and market-town residents, huntsmen, MPs, including the Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, and the unaligned pro-hunt supporters will form the mass of the protest.
Senior Alliance officials rounded on Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, and Rural Affairs minister Alun Michael after they suggested Labour MPs had been told to stay away by the organisers, effectively making the event an attack on the Government. John Jackson, the Alliance's chairman, dismissed the claim as "poppycock". But the Alliance's director of communications, Nigel Henson, stoked up the row by claiming that since the majority of Labour MPs had voted to ban hunting, they were automatically barred from attending.
Mr Henson said that anyone, regardless of party affiliation, could attend the march if they endorsed its principles, including supporting the right to hunt. But he added they were not allowed to "pick and mix" which principles to support.
The scale of the Liberty and Livelihood march is expected to be bigger than the first rural march in 1998, which drew about 250,000 people, and historic protests by the Chartists and the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
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