STEPHEN STEWART

THEY were an incongruous crew of builders, gardeners, artists, DJs, soil engineers, musicians, skaters and landscapers hurriedly assembled in the south side of Scotland's largest city.

The colourful and idiosyncratic group attracted bemused looks from locals as they held their impromptu gathering on an insignificant looking plot of Glasgow scrubland.

But these environmental campaigners were on a mission: to transform the entire area by creating a peace camp and community haven in protest at the G8 summit in Perthshire and the M74 motorway extension through the city.

Despite the torrential rain, scores of protesters yesterday turned up to transform the derelict gap site in the shadow of the St Andrews Works building, into a bustling community garden and temporary local nerve centre of G8 opposition.

Starhawk, a veteran campaigner who cut her protesting teeth during the Vietnam war, had travelled from San Francisco to set up camp on the site, which lies in the path of the proposed motorway expansion between Eglinton Street and Pollokshaws Road.

The 54-year-old, who also protested at economic summits in Genoa and Seattle in recent years, said: "The M74 is a local example of the kind of policy pursued and promoted by the G8 leaders.

"The M74 presents the same issues locally that the G8 raises internationally in terms of small people being pushed aside for big business.

"We came here to get involved with the community and protest at what is happening. It is wonderful to see so many people getting excited about this project."

The self-styled Cre8 summit, effectively a community relations exercise in the run up to G8 meeting of world leaders, has started work on a community garden replete with "flowers, food, colour, youth engaging, old folk relaxing but most importantly our neighbourhoods building and owning".

Earlier this month, it was announced that construction of the M74 extension had been delayed for at least a year because of a legal challenge by environmental and community groups. The £500m project had been due to get under way next June. Glasgow City Council described the delay as "bitterly disappointing". The Scottish Executive approved the new six-lane road from Cambuslang to the M8 west of the Kingston Bridge in March.

This was despite a public inquiry concluding the road not should not go ahead because of its "potentially devastating" impact on people and the environment.

Friends of the Earth Scotland and a coalition of local action groups, JAM74, said they would challenge the executive's decision at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, the south side's newest collection of tents and dilapidated vans is eerily reminiscent of the early Faslane Peace Camp, but will not last as long. Faslane is Britain's longest-standing peace camp and the world's only legally established one. Back in 1982 the Labour-dominated Strathclyde Regional Council issued the camp with a lease and a £1-a-month peppercorn rent.

With the addition of a brace of caravans, the camp was set for a mammoth sit-in at the Clyde naval base, now home of Britain's Trident nuclear submarines. At the Pollokshaws Road site, a series of events have been organised, including ceramics workshops and art classes, before organisers move off for the G8 summit.

Rachel Walker, an organiser at Cre8, said: "Climate change may be high on the agenda of the G8 summit yet G8 countries continue to invest massively in road building and fossil fuel exploration.

"New motorways like the M74 will increase traffic, cause further pollution, health problems, community breakdown and won't free up traffic or bring the jobs that are promised. We want to present an entirely different vision of the way in which we can organise our lives: based on community, co-operation and ecological sustainability."

Cre8's organisers have also urged bewildered locals to come forward with ideas and expertise for use on the nascent community space.