Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army

All over Scotland, (dis)organisations as varied as the grassroots network dissent! and the largely conservative coalition "make poverty history" protested against the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles. The reasons were as varied as the forms to express disagreement, from marching to blockading, from clowning to filming, from talking to direct action. Although police from all over the UK were busy containing protesters in pens, arresting, searching and holding them under section 60, discontent with the G8 agenda was voiced in many significant places and eventually supported by international solidarity.

[Read the full article for summaries on issues, actions, timelines, repression and resistance in Scotland from Saturday 2 July to Friday 8 July.]

The protests began the previous weekend with the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh with about 200,000 people in white t-shirts. [Full list of reports]. The following day, there were demonstrations in Glasgow on the theme of Make Borders History highlighting the racist asylum and immigration politics of the G8 and other states in closing their borders to people escaping poverty and political persecution, and the start of three counter-conferences in Edinburgh.
Monday, thousands of protesters drew attention to the nuclear arms possessed by the UK government by blockading the entrances into Faslane nuclear submarine facility. A Carnival of Full Enjoyment, in Edinburgh, was called on the same day to resist the daily grind of the institutions that plunge us into overwork, poverty and debt. Instead, it became quickly dubbed the Carnival for Full Policing as events in the city showed how fast a place can be turned into a temporary police state. Protesters, media and bystanders were cordonned-in for hours as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) roamed the city, stopping and searching people under section 60 for no obvious reason. The city of Edinburgh came to a stand-still as shoppers and tourists mixed with protestors facing lines of (riot) police and the ever present Clowns.
On the Tuesday, activists protested at the Dungavel Detention Centre event though all detainees had been evacuted from it.

On the first day of the G8, Wednesday, 6 July, hundreds broke their way through the police blockade of the Eco-village in Stirling and made their way onto the A9, the main road towards Gleneagles to block it and streets leading onto it for hours. Later in the day, the March to Gleneagles, was unilaterally cancelled by the police who even send coaches back to Edinburgh. In the end however some 5000 protestors marched up to the Gleneagles hotel, were they managed to breach the security fence.The police were forced to use Chinook military helicopters to fly in more riot cops to secure the hotel grounds. [Detailed report]

On Thursday and Friday, smaller actions, including actions on climate change and prison solidarity actions took place in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. The legal support team estimates that at least 700 people were arrested and 350 charged during the whole week. There were solidarity actions around the world, as well as a continual posting of solidarity messages on the UK newswire.

As the protests and repression were taking place on the streets of Scotland, a summit to deliver Africa into the arms of the G8's corporations and abandon the (already heavily compromised) Kyoto treaty climate change was also happening behind the fences and armed police of Gleneagles. Geldof and Bono caused outrage from normally mild-mannered NGOs when they described the outcome as "the greatest G8 summit there has ever been for Africa". War on Want and World Development Movement released a joint statement criticising the G8 summit as a betrayal and launched a scathing attack on Bono and Geldof, arguing that they "may be content with crumbs from the table of [their] rich political friends. But we did not come to Gleneagles as beggars. We came to demand justice for the world's poor." Geldof in return branded the NGO's criticism as a "disgrace".

[ Full report (Deutsch, Francais) | Collected G8 video coverage | IMC Scotland | IMC UK G8 topic pages | Red Pepper Blog | Cladestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army ]

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