John Vidal and Rachel Shabi
Wednesday June 29, 2005
The Guardian

Demonstrators gathering for the G8 summit in Scotland next week have accused Edinburgh council and the Scottish police of trying to discourage protests.

Yesterday the Scottish first minister, Jack McConnell, tried to persuade the police to allow a march near the Gleneagles hotel where world leaders will meet next Wednesday. But organisers of the umbrella protest group G8 Alternatives claimed Edinburgh city council was not prepared to handle large numbers of demonstrators and was trying to keep people away.

"Their approach is at best small-minded and at worst malicious," said Joshua Brown of G8 Alternatives. "We have been telling the council for months that massive numbers of people will be coming to Scotland for the demonstrations, but they have been ignoring us, and seem unwilling to put forward the infrastructure at the scale we predict it will be needed."

The city authorities admitted yesterday they had no idea how many people might arrive for the march on Saturday or the Live 8 concert on Wednesday but said they had been told by Make Poverty History organisers to expect between 100,000 and 150,000.

"We do not know how many people will come or want to stay. But we have been working with MPH. They say they have a lot of accommodation available in church halls and student halls of residence," a city spokeswoman said.

"We are advising no one to come to Edinburgh this weekend unless they have arranged somewhere to stay. We do not want people just turning up. If thousands of extra people do arrive, then we do have emergency plans B and C." She declined to divulge the plans.

Green MEPs said yesterday that they feared a free-for-all near Gleneagles if no march were allowed. At the moment, protesters are to be confined to a football stadium holding only 5,000 people, although organisers say twice that number may come.

"If no march is allowed, you will have thousands of frustrated people wandering around. All sorts of things may happen," a spokesman for the Scottish Green party said.

Workmen have been building a campsite for a potential overspill of 15,000 people at Hunter's Hall Park in the east of Edinburgh, but it was not clear how to book space.

The phone number provided on Edinburgh council's G8 accommodation page was for the Scottish Tourist Board, which, when phoned, said: "We have nothing to do with the campsite." Unlike most other world cities that have hosted the G8 or other global meetings, Edinburgh city council has refused to open any of its halls or buildings for demonstrators as it does not believe they should be used for political purposes.

Meanwhile, Dissent, a UK network of campaign groups, has been given council land just outside Stirling, on the banks of the river Forth, for a space accommodating around 5,000 protesters. The Hori-Zone aims to run as a self-sufficient, self-managing ecovillage, using renewable sources of energy.

The network is running a "house an activist" scheme in Edinburgh, to link residents with demonstrators looking for somewhere to stay.