Protesters trained at secret camp to target Gleneagles summit
JEREMY WATSON
jwatsonscotlandonsunday.com
A TRAINING camp for anarchists will be set up in Scotland within months to maximise damage and disruption during next summer's G8 summit of world leaders at Gleneagles.
Scotland on Sunday can reveal that the first anti-capitalist training session will be held at a secret location in Glasgow in February to create an elite corps of 'experienced activists' with the skills to pass on to other demonstrators.
Activists will be taught 'skills' including how to form blockades, carry out occupations, destroy CCTV surveillance systems, breach security fences, disable machinery and work as a team to cause maximum disruption.
They will also receive a crash course in 'legal skills' and how to act when arrested.
The camps are being organised by the Dissent Network, a loose group of activists which has organised mass protests at previous summits in Europe.
The group's website makes clear that the July summit, to be attended by US President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, will not be the only target.
It is also calling for "decentralised actions" on oil company installations and political buildings where the security curtain will not be as tight.
Security experts said the military-style courses revealed a greater degree of organisation than had previously been recognised, and fuelled fears that violent anti-capitalist protests would erupt, as they did at previous meetings of world leaders in Genoa and Seattle.
Direct action training camps are being organised by Dissent and a second group, the Blatant Incitement Project, in Sheffield next month and London in March, as well as in Glasgow.
The Dissent Group's website says that the summit should be a "focus for protest for people opposing war, the destruction of our environment, the abuse of human rights and capitalism".
It adds: "Preparation is key to effective action against the G8. One of the things that made people work together so well at Seattle was the fact that a lot of them had taken part in direct action training months in advance."
The courses are aimed at "people with experience in direct action or civil disobedience" who could then pass on the skills to "stimulate" effective mass action.
The groups says: "Existing ideas include a critical mass [of activists in] Scotland and decentralised actions on energy profiteers. We see the G8 2005 mobilisation as an opportunity to move beyond symbolic protest. This is a call for people to converge on Scotland to disrupt the conference and for action simultaneously in villages, towns and cities worldwide."
Fears over the summit, which will attract global media attention, have already prompted the biggest security operation ever seen in Britain. More than half of Scotland's 15,000 police officers are expected to be on duty at the three-day gathering of leaders from the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia.
Police leave throughout Scotland has been cancelled for the duration of the meeting and extra officers will be drafted in from England to help secure the 850-acre Gleneagles site and other potential business and political targets in the central belt.
Protesters have vowed to blockade the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the Forth Bridge and landmarks such as Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument.
At the training camps, activists will receive detailed manuals on how to break through security fences and sabotage CCTV cameras. Blatant Incitement's Guide to CCTV Destruction says that all methods described "have been thoroughly tested in practise".
The manuals also give detailed descriptions of how to disable a range of vehicles and cut off power supplies to buildings.
Security consultant Stewart Crawford said it was worrying that the training courses showed a greater degree of "sophistication" than had hitherto been expected.
"The security forces will have learned the lessons of the previous violent protests and so will the demonstrators," he said. "If they failed to get past a certain type of barrier last time then they will have studied it and found a way around it, and will be keen to pass on that information. The fact that they are having training courses in Glasgow shows how sophisticated they have become."
The police operation in Scotland is being co-ordinated by Tayside Police, which said it was aware that the direct action training courses were being advertised.
The officer in charge, Superintendant Brian Powrie, said: "There is a lot of speculation on the internet about what protest groups may do at the G8 summit, around the venue and elsewhere in Scotland.
"Tayside Police is planning a major security operation and one element of that is to ensure that those who wish to protest lawfully will be facilitated, but those who break the law will be dealt with robustly."
The cost of policing the Gleneagles summit is expected to exceed £150m with a heavy military as well as police presence. An air exclusion zone will be put in force over the hotel with fighters on standby at nearby RAF Leuchars in Fife.
Recent G8 summits have been marred by the scale of the protests they attracted. In June 2003, 50,000 protesters fought running battles with riot police in the summit town of Evian, France, and in Geneva, Switzerland. More than 25,000 police and military personnel had to be deployed.
In 2001, protesters rampaged through Genoa in Italy. Hundreds of people were injured and one protester was killed by police.
Last year the summit was hosted by President Bush at Sea Island, off the coast of Georgia. G8 planners prepared to greet any mass protest with overwhelming force, with the deployment of around 20,000 officers from various federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, including the National Guard. As a result the summit passed without incident.
Scotland on Sunday made extensive efforts this week to contact members of the Dissent Network but no one was available for comment.
HEADS TOGETHER
THE heads of state or government of the major industrial democracies have been meeting annually since 1975 to deal with major economic and political issues such as macroeconomic management, international trade and relations with developing countries.
Questions of East-West economic relations, energy and terrorism have been of recurrent concern.
The responsibility of host rotates between members in the following order: France, the United States, the UK, Russia (as of 2006), Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada. Throughout the year, the leaders' personal representatives, known as sherpas, meet regularly to discuss the agenda and monitor progress.
Ministers and officials also meet from time to time to discuss pressing issues, such terrorism, energy and development, and from time to time the leaders create task forces or working groups to focus on issues of concern, such as drug-related money laundering, nuclear safety and international organised crime.
The annual meeting has also been a lightning rod for anti-globalisation demonstrations since Birmingham in 1998. Things turned violent in Genoa in 2001 and a protester died.
High on the agenda for next year will be climate change, trade and Third World poverty.
President Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin are expected to attend the Gleneagles summit, as are German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, French president Jacques Chirac and EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barosso.