G8 news

Attempts to demonise the G8 protests have begun.

The government and the police are already whipping up fears against the G8 protests 2-6 July. Tayside police have banned the 6 July march, that was to be held outside the Gleneagles Hotel on the first day of the G8 summit.

Gill Hubbard from G8 Alternatives, one of the groups organising the protest, has said that “a five mile ring of steel, costing just under £1 million, is being put up around the Gleneagles Hotel”. Instead the police want to move the protest to a park in the village of Auchterarder, which has a capacity of about 5,000.

Despite previous pledges to allow peaceful protests this is a deliberate attempt to demonise the protestors. This policy was first carried out in Seattle where peaceful demonstrators were attacked by riot police and water cannon (one media report said that the protestors were well-prepared because they had cagoules!).

The police then escalated the violence in Genoa where one demonstrator was shot and killed and others were savagely attacked by carabinieri as they slept and severely injured and hospitalised. Members of the Italian police are currently on trial over allegations of violence.

The Metropolitan police then used the example of Genoa to justify their corralling of May Day protestors for ten hours in London in 2001. Chief Constable John Vine has stated that the G8 policing will be “in the best traditions of British policing” and in that spirit has refused to rule out the use of water cannon, riot police and even the SAS!