A 69-year-old hunt supporter has been found guilty of GBH after he broke a protester's arm with his walking stick.

John Hawkins, of Singers Farm, Henfield Road, Cowfold, denied causing grievous bodily harm to Lynn Phillips but today a jury at Brighton Crown Court returned a majority guilty verdict.

During the trail the court heard violence had flared at the end of a meeting of the Crawley and Horsham Hunt on January 29 2005.

Hawkins hit Ms Phillips once on the head and again on the arm with his walking stick as groups of pro and anti-hunt supporters gathered on Spear Hill, at Shipley, near Horsham.

Ms Phillips told the court she was left screaming in pain by the attack.

She said: "I thought I was going to die. I was hysterical."

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Ms Phillips, a veteran anti-hunt protester, said at the time of the incident feelings were running high as on the previous day the Government had announced fox hunting was to be banned.

She said: "Obviously they were not happy the vote had gone against them. There was a lot of verbal abuse. There seemed to be so much anger on their part."

Ms Phillips said she had become concerned about a hound which she believed was injured and she was standing in the road looking for the dog when she became aware of a man brandishing his walking stick at her.

She said: "I was confronted by this man with a stick above his head swinging it backwards and forwards at me. He was just staring at me. It was just horrendous. He was just so frightening to me because he looked like he hated me."

Ms Phillips said she felt a painful blow and that anti-hunt protesters had moved forward en masse to help her.

Two days later she went to hospital where an x-ray showed her arm was broken.

Hawkins was bailed to appear before the court again on November 8 when he will be sentenced.