PLANS to hold Britain's biggest ever civil rights demonstration are being drawn up in an attempt to stop the Government banning hunting, it emerged today.

The mass demonstration would take place in London in early 2001, with the exact date depending on the Parliamentary timetable of the proposed Bill to ban hunting with dogs.

The Countryside Alliance said the demonstration would be a "serious embarrassment" to the Government.

Frank Houghton-Brown, master of the Middleton Hunt, said that if the Government "did not see sense" on the issue, he expected a demonstration even bigger than 1998's Countryside March through London.

Though he said he expected "thousands" from the region to attend such a march, he did say he saw some hope of there being no need for a rally to go ahead.

"I don't think the Government will want to upset so many people," he said.

Mr Houghton-Brown said: "The Government says that 60 to 70 per cent of the population are against hunting and 30 to 40 per cent are for it.

"That is true, but that 30 or 40 per cent is a lot of people and that is more than voted for most governments who have got in recently."

Richard Burge, Chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, told BBC1's Countryfile programme: "We will have an escalating and determined campaign of protest.

"If the Government does not see sense, we will hold the biggest ever civil rights demonstration. It will be a serious embarrassment for a Government which claims to have civil rights at its core.

"People are complaining about the closure of post offices, and banks, the lack of services and a transport policy that penalises people living in the countryside.

"But anti-hunting organisations say the Alliance is merely a single-issue pressure group whose aim is to protect hunting," he told the programme.

The Alliance claims to represent a broad base of discontent in rural Britain and organised the Countryside March in London in 1998.

According to police figures, a quarter of a million people took part in the march, the biggest demonstration seen in Britain since the anti-nuclear rallies in the early 1980s, said the Alliance.

The latest planned demonstration follows Home Secretary Jack Straw's announcement last month of Government plans for a multiple choice Bill on hunting.

MPs would be able to vote for an outright ban, no ban, referendums on a ban, or local councils licensing hunts.