From left — Rose Gentle, Francis Curran MSP and Aamer Anwar.

Protest Group G8 Alternatives have vowed to fight moves to stop them staging a march past Gleneagles Hotel as the summit opens on July 6, writes Mark Mackay.

Campaigners today claimed that road closures and police opposition to their proposed demonstration infringed their democratic right to march peacefully.

Rose Gentle, whose soldier son Gordon was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq last year, was outside the world-famous hotel today.

Mrs Gentle, from Glasgow, said, «We want our voices to be heard here.

«Tony Blair isn't listening to us at Downing Street, so it's important to be heard here at Gleneagles. We are not animals or terrorists — we just want our voices to be heard.»

A number of A-classified roads and several rights of way will be closed, effectively sealing off the hotel and its surrounds from campaigners.

They may be given permission to stage a static demonstration on Auchterarder Park, adjacent to the five-star venue.

Protestors, however, described the decision as «a disaster for democracy.»

It has been claimed that more than 30,000 people would gather at the hotel to make themselves heard by world leaders.

March organisers G8 Alternatives and their partners met yesterday with representatives from Tayside Police and Perth and Kinross Council — to whom they submitted an application for a license to march — in the hope of good news.

Today they gathered again at the gates of Gleneagles — where they could be denied the opportunity to stand when the summit begins — to express their anger at what they heard.

G8 Alternatives Gill Hubbard was joined by Socialist MSP Frances Curran and lawyer Aamer Anwar.

A defiant Ms Hubbard expressed her conviction that the march would take place despite opposition.

«We wanted the minimum of disruption for the people of Auchterarder and the maximum for the G8 as we marched past Gleneagles Hotel, before finishing with a rally in Auchterarder Park,» she said.

«However, we have been told there will be roadblocks in place that will effectively stop us from marching past the hotel.

«We want to be visible and we want to be heard. This will not happen in Downing Street.

«We have marched past the Scottish Parliament. We have marched past Westminster. We are sure as hell going to march past Gleneagles.»

Campaigners claimed council officials had been supportive of their plans but said their «hands had been tied» by police decisions.

Lawyer Aamer Anwar said the route advocated by the police was not acceptable to the people of Scotland and the world community.

«What they are talking about is a five-mile ring of steel,» he said. «They are basically creating an exclusion zone.

«We have a democratic right to march peacefully set out in the European Convention of Human Rights, but we are being denied that by the police and George Bush.»

Measures to be put in place to ensure security at the G8 Summit include road closures and reduced speed limits, while police officers will man major junctions on the A9, which links Perth to Stirling and Glasgow.

Routes that will be closed for six days from July 3 include; The A823 from the A9 to the A822; A824 Orchil Road from the A823 to Western Road; C464 Muirton Road; C467 from A823 to A822; U23 Gleneagles Hotel.