Gill Hubbard of G8 Alternatives is the friendly face to quash any summit protest fears, writes Allan Brown

There have, I suppose, been less likely locations to host a press conference than a traffic island on the A823, but there can't have been many. Sheets of soft Perthshire rain blow in as the four speakers talk into the wind, punctuated occasionally by the tooting horns and shouted speculations of passing lorry drivers. Little buggies do circuits round the island as golfers try to discover what's going on.

We are on this bizarre spot because it affords the cameras a decent view of the Gleneagles hotel sign and because, in 18 days time, nobody present will be allowed anywhere near it, which is pretty much what they are here to complain about.

Tariq Ali, the veteran radical, helpfully suggests that if the G8 leaders don't want protesters near their summits they should hold them on » submarines, aircraft carriers or space stations «, while Aamer Anwar, the human rights solicitor and pro-am, all-purpose moaner, scatters claims that everything in the world is a flagrant breach of everything else.

It's left to Gill Hubbard to represent the voice of sobriety and reason, or its closest approximation. As the spokeswoman of G8 Alternatives, Hubbard is the public face of Perthshire protest, the militant peacemaker whose job is to quell fears of anarchist uprising and insist that next month her confrères will overcome, but in the nicest way possible.

» It's not just that we like putting one foot in front of another, « she says. » It's part of our tradition. We've always had to march. From the suffragettes to Martin Luther King, we've always marched. It's a libertarian issue now. If they tell us we can't march at Gleneagles they're depriving us of a basic human right. «

Originally from Leicestershire, Hubbard, 40, came to Scotland eight years ago to take up a health research post at Edinburgh University. She was politicised in the mid-1980s when the miners' strike tore apart communities like the one in which she'd grown up. She fits campaigning around her day job, booking her holiday to coincide with the Gleneagles summit.

Despite being a member of the Scottish Socialist party, Hubbard is keen to come over as a new type of protester. She wants to be seen as reasonable and articulate. She wants to convince people that the mainstream is on the cusp of reshaping its ideas about social and global responsibility and that groups such as G8 Alternatives will soon be articulating the consensus rather than the margins.

Even so, you wonder from where the G8 obsession derives. It's Hubbard's contention that eight nations are running the world in a shambolic, criminally inequitable way. What gives her organisation the chutzpah to think it knows better? » Because we have empirical evidence that the neoliberal strategy to privatise the developing world doesn't work, « she says with the moral certainty normally reserved for the goddess of anti-capitalism, Naomi Klein. » Poverty has become worse in the last 50 years under the G8 strategy, global instability has increased, world health has declined and the environment has never been in worse shape. The situation is complex but our demands are simple: drop Africa's debt, for one. «

But they have; so why continue with a G8 protest? » It's good that they've done that, « she says, » but it's not enough. It's for only 18 countries. It's a pitiful amount compared with America's defence budget.  «

Hubbard's acolytes arrive and order tea in Gleneagles' horrifyingly pricey bar. When they depart, they leave a bill of 40 for me to deal with. Hubbard may be the acceptable face of anti-globalist protest but it's reasuring to know that G8 Alternatives maintains a consistent attitude to debt relief.