BANNERS, flags and cheering protestors were back at Dover Docks at the weekend as part of a 72-hour demonstration against live animal exports. Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser joined hundreds of campaigners outside the Eastern Docks and told the crowd the battle to stop the trade would be won.

"The fight goes on," he told the Compassion In World Farming protest. Saturday's demonstration was organised to protest about the possible restart of the live animal export trade, which ended during the foot and mouth crisis.

Until the epidemic the UK was exporting about 800,000 lambs and sheep a year for slaughter abroad, many being sent as far as Italy, Greece and Spain. Former seaman Mr Prosser told protestors he had joined the campaign against live animal exports 30 years ago when he was regularly sailing out of Fishguard in Wales.

Later when he worked on the cross Channel ferries he had "felt and smelt" the animals on their way to the continent and deplored the trade, even before becoming a politician.

As Labour MP for Dover and Deal Mr Prosser has introduced two Parliamentary bills, which if enacted would have stopped animal exports. Both were "talked out", but he intends to seek further debates in the House of Commons against the trade.

Joyce D'Silva, director of Compassion in World Farming, said: "We chose 72 hours of action across the UK as this is the time it can takes for British lambs to be transported from this country to Italy or Spain, where they are often slaughtered in appalling conditions."

Clare Baumberg, from Kingsdown Cat Sanctuary, estimated 300 protesters joined Saturday's demonstration. "The crowd was well behaved and I met campaigners from across the country," she said. "We were pleased to meet up again, but it would have been better under other circumstances. We all want the trade to stop."