TOBY MCDONALD

POLICE must crack down on anti-capitalist training camps plotting violent demonstrations at the G8 summit, an MSP demanded yesterday.

Hundreds of protesters are due to attend a four-day 'Festival of Dissent' next month in Scotland. The largest gathering yet of opposition groups to the Gleneagles conference is being held in South Lanarkshire.

Protesters from across the country and overseas are expected to attend the mass meeting, where workshops in confrontation are planned.

Dissent is the organisation behind an international network of activists who will lay siege to Gleneagles during the three-day summit in July. Soldiers and Royal Marines have been drafted in to reinforce the 10,000 police from across Britain who will guard Tony Blair, George Bush and other heads of state.

Up to 200,000 demonstrators will take part in a series of co-ordinated protests across Scotland, culminating in a mass march along the A9.

But yesterday South of Scotland MSP Phil Gallie, the Tory constitutional affairs spokesman, called for police to take action when protesters are being schooled in how to maximise disruption.

"The police must keep a very close eye on this Festival of Dissent and other training camps.

"If anyone breaks the law or is encouraged to break the law then I would want them to crack down on them really hard. That is the only way you can protect democratic interest.

"These groups of anarchists claim rights to protest, and goodness knows what, and then they are involved in this kind of deceitful, dishonest and dangerous activity."

Security chiefs believe that while the majority of protesters are law-abiding up to 10,000 hard-core demonstrators will use the summit to cause mass disruption.

The Festival of Dissent is due to be held in the Tinto Hills, near Symington, where it is understood that a smallholder has agreed to let protesters camp on his land.

The final location will not be revealed to participants until a week beforehand.

Yesterday a spokesman for Strathclyde Police downplayed the risks of confrontation, saying: "We are aware of this event and at this stage we do not anticipate any policing issues."