Anti-hunting MPs demand police protection after hate campaign

Anti-hunting MPs have been forced to ask for police protection after being subjected to a campaign of abuse and threats by pro-hunting activists.

Michael Foster, the Labour MP who was one of the first MPs to try to push through a ban, has contacted his local police in Worcester after being told he was on a 'hit list' of the militant Real Countryside Alliance - a group publicly disowned by the Countryside Alliance.

Similarly, the Environment Ministers Alun Michael - who is in charge of steering a ban through the Commons - and Elliott Morley are among those understood to have been sent abusive mail.

Mr Foster said: "The Real Countryside Alliance have said that I am on their list. They describe themselves as setting themselves up in cells of five people and what they have said is that they are going to do something spectacular locally. What I don't know is where and how, all I know is they will be harrassing me. I have spoken to local police and they have acted in the manner you would expect them to act in."

Martin Salter, the vocal anti-hunting MP, is also to receive police protection after learning he was on a pro-hunt hit list.

The MP for Reading West has asked police to patrol his advice surgeries in fear of disruption by pro-hunt militants and said: "I have received threatening and abusive letters ... It is quite clear that the frustrations of the foxhunters and their supporters are now resulting in a concerted programme of civil disruption, both legal and illegal." Some of the letters Mr Salter received called him 'scum' and a hypocrite because he is in favour of shooting and angling but against fox hunting.

The Countryside Alliance has set up a unit to trace Ministers' movements and a spokesman said its supporters would turn up wherever ministers were "to make their views known".

The Countryside Alliance has also said it will support in court hunters who break the law by continuing to hunt if a ban, as expected, becomes law.

A spokeswoman for the Alliance added that the organisation "understood" why people were adopting the more extreme tactics of the Real Countryside Alliance but did not sanction them.

"We will monitor where ministers are and are keeping tabs on whose is going where," she said. "We will turn up to make our views known."

Tony Banks, the former Sports minister, who is a leading campaigner for a ban, said his staff cushioned him from abusive mail. "What my office does when we get nasty letters is destroy them so I never see them. Sometimes we will refer then to the police," he said. "People who write these letters never get the satisfaction of my seeing them."