Magnus Linklater

Overblown security plans to combat G8 protesters can only give Scotland a bad name

THE G8 SUMMIT comes to Scotland this July. It is time for all right-thinking citizens to emigrate. By leaving the country in the hands of police and protesters for a few days, we can let them get on with the job of turning it into a battle zone, while the rest of us enjoy a holiday somewhere safer. I thought of the Gaza Strip myself, but Fallujah has its attractions. It is not just the scary plans of the militants that make us fear the worst, it is the way that the security authorities plainly believe them. The net result is a res ponse which assumes something on the level of a medium-size invasion, and threatens to reduce the nation to a state of siege.

Among the latest measures that have been announced are the cancelling of all police leave and the deployment of a force of 10,000 officers, who will throw a «ring of steel» around the G8 headquarters at Gleneagles Hotel; the world's leaders will be diverted from Edinburgh airport to Prestwick in Ayrshire, and will be ferried in by helicopter – their impressions of Bonnie Scotland are likely to be confined to their hotel suites; an 8ft-high iron fence is to be built round the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, denying access and even views of its controversial architecture; Edinburgh itself will be brought to a standstill, not just by the 100,000 poverty protesters who are said to be converging on the capital, but also by the police who have been drafted in to control them; there are plans to close down the Faslane nuclear naval base.

Some of the overreaction has been daft. The Museum of Scotland has cancelled its annual airshow in East Lothian, where Concorde would have been displayed for the first time, on the ground that any airfield will be vulnerable. The police have leaked plans to infiltrate undercover officers disguised as tramps. «They will be our eyes and ears in key locations,» an overexcited source said. Since, as The Times revealed last Saturday, anti-G8 demonstrators plan to disguise themselves as motorway maintenance workers in order to close down main roads, there is every possibility of a glorious, if confused, confrontation between tramps and road-men somewhere along the M8.

It all sounds a million years away from the European summit in 1992, when President Mitterrand sauntered down the city's high street to buy some tartan and shortbread, watched only by a few curious onlookers. More importantly, the lessons of Genoa 2001 are in danger of being forgotten. That infamous affair was a disaster, not because of the number or violence of the demonstrators, but because of overreaction by Italian police who were meant to be protecting the G8 leaders. By sealing off a «sanitised» area of central Genoa, then manning the barricades around it with thousands of heavily armed officers while helicopters monitored the protesters, the authorities succeeded in creating an atmosphere not just of confrontation but also of preordained violence. The demonstrators' retaliation, when it came, was raised to meet the level of security they confronted. The result was almost inevitable: police counter-charges, vicious beatings, and finally the death of a protester, shot as he attacked a police vehicle.

There is a balance to be struck between fearing the worst and planning for it. By over-pitching the security, the police are simply playing into the hands of the protesters – admitting, before a banner has been unfurled or a stone thrown, that democracy has to retreat behind steel barricades if it is to survive. Yesterday, Scotland's First Minister, Jack McConnell, was briefing journalists about the opportunities which the G8 offered for promoting the country, and selling its attractions to the outside world. He talked of the economic benefits that come with this sort of high-profile event, and thought that it might even bolster Britain's bid to secure the Olympics.

I wonder. Security on this top-heavy scale suppresses rather than enhances the image of a country. Instead of emphasising its charms, it draws attention instead to the grim monotony of body armour, anti-riot shields, dark glasses and men talking into their shoulder mics. What kind of an introduction to Scotland is this, when the first the world sees on television of its brand-new parliament building is an 8ft-high fence and a menacing line of visored policemen? Instead of a beautiful and peaceful city, all that will be conjured up are images of Belfast and the Israeli borders.

Yet are the threats so fearsome? The Times exposé last week certainly suggested that the more extreme protesters were laying plans for confrontation – but since the most alarming tactics they discussed involved disrupting traffic at the Forth Bridge, there seemed little there to strike terror to the heart; the militants should know that traffic at the Forth Bridge is routinely disrupted every rush-hour these days, so not much difference there.

Of course, large-scale demonstrations always carry the risk of infiltration by terrorist elements. But if the only way of combating them is to reduce the streets to a state of armed immobility, then the central purpose of staging a world summit is in danger of being lost. It was Gordon Brown who announced last month at the Scottish Labour conference that the anti-poverty demonstrators were not only welcome in Edinburgh, but also should be encouraged to come in numbers to make their point. I doubt if he can have envisaged that they would be met, not by willing listeners, but by the whiff of teargas. If he is thinking of joining them himself, he should perhaps bring a gas mask, a crash helmet and a good lawyer.