{{Short description, Coalition of activist groups G8 Alternatives was a coalition of activist groups set up to co-ordinate actions around the

31st G8 summit The 31st G8 summit was held on 6–8 July 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland and hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The locations of previous G8 summits to have been hosted by the UK include: London (1977, 1984, 1991); and ...

held at

Gleneagles Hotel Gleneagles Hotel is a hotel near Auchterarder, Scotland. It was commissioned by the Caledonian Railway and opened in 1924. The bandleader, Henry Hall, performed at the hotel before the Second World War during which it served as a military ho ...

Perthshire Perthshire ( locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the nor ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

. Supporters of the coalition included

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nu ...

, Iraq Occupation Focus,

Muslim Association of Britain The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is a British Sunni Muslim organisation founded in 1997. MAB has been well known for its participation in the protests opposing the Iraq War. More recently, it has been known for promoting Muslim partic ...

Scottish Socialist Party The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP; gd, Pàrtaidh Sòisealach na h-Alba; sco, Scots Socialist Pairtie) is a Left-wing politics, left-wing political party campaigning for the establishment of an Scottish independence, independent Socialism, so ...

Stop the War Coalition The Stop the War Coalition (StWC), informally known simply as Stop the War, is a British group established on 21 September 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, to campaign against what it believes are unjust wars. The Coalition has c ...

and various

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (s ...

branches. Individual supporters included author and academic

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

John Pilger John Richard Pilger (; born 9 October 1939) is an Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. He was also once visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilger ...

and comedian

Mark Thomas Mark Clifford Thomas (born 11 April 1963) is an English comedian, presenter, political satirist, and journalist. He first became known as a guest comic on the BBC Radio 1 comedy show ''The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' in the late 1980s. He is ...

Activities

Counter Summit

G8 Alternatives organised a counter-summit on July 3 which was addressed by a wide range of speakers. Among those in attendance were writer

George Monbiot George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books. Monbiot grew up in Oxford ...

, South African anti-privatisation activist

Trevor Ngwane Trevor Ngwane is a South African __NOTOC__ South African may relate to: * The nation of South Africa * South African Airways * South African English * South African people * Languages of South Africa * Southern Africa Southern Africa is the ...

and Philippine anti-globalisation activist

Walden Bello Walden Flores Bello (born November 11, 1945) is a Filipino academic, environmentalist, and social activist who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He is an international adjunct professor at Binghamton Univers ...

. Nonetheless, the coalition's demonstration in

Auchterarder Auchterarder (; gd, Uachdar Àrdair, meaning Upper Highland) is a small town located north of the Ochil Hills in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, and home to the Gleneagles Hotel. The High Street of Auchterarder gave the town its popular name of " ...

on the day the G8 summit began was perhaps their most significant action.

Protest by SSP MSPs

The coalition had considerable difficulty getting permission for the march and just days before the G8 it looked likely that permission would be denied, despite a prior agreement by the Scottish Executive that the right to protest at Gleneagles would be upheld. In response to this,

MSPs made a silent protest in the chamber at Holyrood. They were debarred from the parliament for a month for refusing to leave the chamber when instructed to do so by the Speaker. Permission was eventually granted only days before the protest was to take place.

March on Gleneagles

On the day itself, police did call the march off for a time, and there was a level of confusion among the public about whether or not the march would be going ahead, however they eventually relented when the organisers said they would go ahead anyway and when a number of protesters started to head toward Edinburgh as an alternative protest site. Despite this a number of coaches were turned back or temporarily detained. The march attracted considerable media attention when a number of participants broke away from the main demonstration across a field where they proceeded to bring down a section of the fence surrounding the hotel where the summit was being held. The police responded by bringing in additional riot police using Chinook helicopters and were soon able to clear the field.

External links

Homepage

References

Red Pepper, 7 July 2005
G8 group demands access to summit

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