THE militant pro-hunt Real Countryside Alliance's threat to wreak "spectacular" havoc in Worcester is one which must not be taken lightly.

The group's "cells" might try to soften the fear among citizens by claiming their action could be "something like releasing 250 sheep in Worcester on a Monday morning".

But, in the past, it has threatened to target power lines and food deliveries if a total ban on hunting went ahead.

Though hunting's a pursuit we can't condone for moral reasons, we spar regularly enough with people like Bob Brierley, Tim Pinney and Jon Burgess to know that's where they and the Real CA's members part idealogical company.

They must shudder at the group's decision to model its structure on a terror organisation like the Real IRA - and to try to make that fact a positive piece of their PR campaign.

The danger for law-abiding members of the hunt fraternity, of course, is the public's appetite for taking a morsel of information and turning it, via gossip and prejudice, into fact.

It won't need too many Chinese whispers to have many people tarring everyone with the same brush.

That's why true hunt followers must redouble efforts to make their case for a lawful opposition to the Bill as it steadily nears the Statute Book.

If it's a bad law, one which can't be policed, that will become apparent and it will have to be amended.

But we don't see this as the rural equivalent of the poll tax, where unrest grows like wildfire until there are riots on the streets. We don't think the hunt fraternity will allow that to happen.