Sir, There is no cause for congratulation in that the last Animal Rights demonstration went off 'peacefully' and that the police were 'pleased' with it (Report, April 28).

Oxford's shopkeepers and non-demonstrators (which includes the hundreds of visitors inconvenienced by it) were not pleased.

Some of Oxford's public places were made for a while unusable for those with the best right to use them.

These demonstrations keep happening, not because strength of feeling against the new laboratories is growing but because, democratic politics getting the animal rights movement nowhere, its adherents a few of them on principle undemocratic and the majority simply failing to reflect on what they are doing turn to making a nuisance of themselves.

Peaceful or not peaceful, the logic of these animal rights demonstrations is to create such a nuisance, again and again, that Oxford and its University will in the end yield to force majeure. 'Nuisance and counter-nuisance' is no way for Oxford to handle this continuing problem.

We might recall Hermann Goering's prophetic aphorism, 'Who commands the streets commands the State'. There is no solution other than legislation or judgment setting a maximum on the size of demonstrators and limitations on where and when they can march. Meanwhile, the police might reflect on the words of a former Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, when confronted with a similar problem: 'I cannot be impartial between the fire and the fire engine'.

Geoffrey Best, Oxford