The lorries lumbered over Westminster Bridge, sounding their horns and warning of greater headaches to come.

MPs may have been unable to read banners bearing slogans such as “Truck off” and “Stop crippling Britain”, but they will have heard the message - road hauliers are angry.

The hauliers descended on the capital again yesterday, this time driving their vehicles across Central London in the hope of attracting greater attention to their claim that they cannot afford the rate of fuel duty.

The 220 or so lorries that toured the city did not bring the traffic disruption that some had feared - the numbers were lower than organisers had hoped - but they did carry a threat of wildcat action and refinery blockades if nothing is done.

The lorries were escorted by police in groups of about 20 from the A40 Westway, where they had gathered.

About 200 protesters, including leaders of the Road Haulage Association, Transport Association and the campaign group TransAction 2007, assembled on foot outside Parliament before heading inside to lobby their MPs to support a rebate of 25p a litre to reduce the burden of fuel duty.

“There are hauliers losing their houses, their businesses. They are closing down by the day,” said Jim Dodd, 54, of Dodds Transport, in Sittingbourne, Kent. “This is the worst it has ever been. The Government has got to do something.”

Dick Cousins, 47, director of Rode Haulage in Frome, Somerset, and a veteran of the fuel protests eight years ago, said that he was prepared to return to the blockades unless action was taken.

“It is seven or eight months since I made a profit,” he said. “People aren’t going to waste their time for too much longer and if they can’t get their point across in a peaceful way I can see refinery protests.”

He was not alone. Mike Wright, 61, a driver for the Roy Bowles airfreight transport company, which operates out of Heathrow, said: “I can see wildcat protests taking place and it will not just be London that is affected. They will block every motorway in the country and then the Government might listen.”

Peter Carroll, of TransAction 2007, said that hauliers could soon start “doing things that we wouldn’t condone but probably would understand and would find it hard to condemn”.

Roger King, the chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, agreed, saying that he feared that some hauliers might decide to “take matters into their own hands”.

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