Yeah I totally agree, the relationship between the two groups was terrible throughout the run up to the G8 and during the week itself. I used to go to the G8 Alternatives meetings but as time went on I realised that was a lot of underlying hostility towards Dissent! that was never mentioned and certainly not helpful. In one meeting there was a discussion about whether having the march in Gleneagles on Wednesday was a good idea as it might "split the movement" as it coincided with Live8 and Bob Geldof's 'Long Walk To Justice' (or whatever he called it) - but at the very same meeting two Dissent! people were basically shouted down for mentioning the blockades. They talk about 'splitting the movement' but it seemed like 'Dissent' was a swearword - people would literally flinch when you said it.
I thought the problem of the blockades affecting the busses getting up to Gleneagles was obvious from the start, but the G8A leadership seemed to think if they just ignored it then it would go away - in all serious that seemed to be their approach. There deffinetly needs to be more co-operation in the future.
I can't really comment on what it was like from the Dissent! side as i got envolved with them much later on and in the actual actions rather than planning.

Peace

i went to the demo tanks to a lift offer by somebody. their had the same feeling of many people who were in the bus with you. the same feeling that people will have after today bombs in london.they will think how bad terrorist are.(and they are bad) but is not the point . do you think they will realise who the real terrorist are? we are really not able to see the reality. this thing are happening couse our society is sick. when they meet we cannot just pretend that marching will make any difference. direct action like that can maybe make you spend one hour more in your car, is this something you cannot justify, they are people ready to lose more in their life than you becouse probably they have a better vision of what is going on in this world. rebellion and resistence are things that grow up in you when you are able to feel the suffering of the people exploited every day by the terrorist who were meeting in scotland. respect for what this people have done instead of critics will make a difference

i understand that the blockading of the roads in the gleneagles area was counter-productive, given how many demonstrators wanted to come into the area. as far as i understand it, most of the delegates were brought in by helicopter and the essential staff would heve been lodged in the hotel well in advance of the start of the g8.... i mean, it is a HOTEL. not clever imo

however, its sad to see the authoritarian socialists pulling the same dirty tricks.. "for the movement... not the wider movement but OUR movement"

>>>These weren't simply a bunch of SWPers, they were ordinary people, politicised into wanting to come on a demo.

of course. but they were still labelled with the spurious and out-of-context labels "anti-globalisation protestors" and "anarchists" by the mainstream media.

>>> I spent many an hour explaining about the role of direct action, and that the people blocking roads were not necessarily the same ones who are masking up and attacking police. I asked them if they ever read Indymedia, and they said that they found it too full of rubbish (which I agree with).

have you ever read the SWP's tabloid? or the SSP's election campaign material? like THE SUN of the left.... propaganda that leaves no room for debate. at least indymedia, with its fair share of trolls and disinformationists, reflects the diversity of "one NO, many YES's".

From a meeting in a wood near the A9 at 6am wednesday: we met up with another blockader group and some spaniards, we asked when they were planning to hit the road for a blockade, and they replied that they had heard that the coaches for the demo would be going past at 7am on the way to Gleneagles, and that they had expressed a desire to be 'accidentally' caught up in the road blockade, so we hit the road at 7am (and were arrested by 7.30). Maybe the intelligence was wrong, and it was a 6am meeting in a wet wood after a night under rain with no sleeping bags or tent, but hey, you do what you can...

this just illustrates my point that the comms were crap... the demo was due to start at 12pm, not 7am! coaches came from all over Scotland - 50 alone attempting to leave Edinburgh... the police actually only let 20 go, and the people left behind had a spontaneous demo in Edinburgh. the convoy of coaches into Auchterarder was awesome, when we eventually got through.

I take the point that it was the G8 Alternatives fault for not communicating with Dissent about the blockade. It is obvious that they are directly at odds in terms of objectives. It seems incredible that the G8A when organising a demo didn't want to speak to people whose own protest might inadvertently 'sabotage' their demo...

Anyone have any idea just how effective the blockades were, apart from pissing off the demo-goers? I only heard of the A9 blockade on the day, but have since heard of 2 others, including the M9 one, which resulted in the worst public relations exercise of the whole week (the smashing up of stuff in Stirling). Were there more? Did it have any impact on the functioning of the G8?

Can't accept that 'Dissent'ers were shouted down at G8Alternatives meetings. My memory of the Glasgow meeting mentioned, and the one in Edinburgh before that, was that they did speak, right at the very end of the meetings, and later handed out the blue 'big brother' leaflets. Someone did have a go at them after the Glasgow meeting complaining that the leaflets handed out didn't mention any of the G8A events, but that was it.
There was, admit it, far more chance of Dissent finding out what G8A were doing than the other way round, purely because of the way the two organisations operated. That's not a criticism, but understandable based on the different types of action each had planned. Also, some attending the G8A meetings who claimed to be letting Dissent know what G8A was doing clearly didn't have the communication skills they believed they did, or their message simply didn't get through. As one of the people on the Edinburgh buses caught up at Perth, I was quite certain that, if the Police had let us through, any encounters with blockaders would have been amicable and would have resulted in those buses heading for the G8A demo being allowed through (chains, trees and boulders permitting).
It was bizarre being told on Radio Five Live that the demo had been cancelled, just as the police were reving up their BMWs to 'escort' us through to Auchterarder.
Final point; Dundee Trades Council's banner was hauled over the fence at Orchil Road by the Polis: Red, 5ft x 5ft bearing the words 'Dundee Trades Council, 1885-1985, Unity is Strength'. Any witness statements gratefully received at  dundeetuc@hotmail.com pending reporting of theft by helmetted person or persons unknown.

Hi becca - no disrespect to what you have said, but look, it was pretty simple.

Groups around the Dissent network announced blockades months before G8A announced their demo. G8A knew about the blockade plans ages before they announced their demo.

I won't go into details about how G8A announced their wed 6th demo, or how most of their organising committee were unaware of it before it was 'announced' because in this context it's not important.

There was always going to be confusion, and everyone knew this.

Communication between, on the one hand people planning to blockade (read numerous autonomous affinity groups, ad hoc networks, last minute decisions, no leaders) and people planning the G8A coaches to a rally meet up at one single point and march (read three or four main organising spokespeople with details advertised well in advance) would by the very nature of the two different organising structures be meaningless on specific details.

On a hypothetical note - no concrete specific or meaningful assurances could be given from either side even if people had wanted to. An an observer it struck me that no one from any dissent related group would be able to say in advance 'this road will be clear at X time' and neither would anyone from G8A have been able to say 'the coaches will all go along this route at this time' (also remember the initial G8A meet up point of aucherarder station, the early announcement of road closures and negotiations over the G8A demo changing the demo details almost on a weekly basis) - so the fluid nature of how the day would play out was always obvious, even without adding into the mix the uncertainty of which roads would have police checkpoints ('choke points') or be closed by police, or how the police would react to the coaches in terms of stop and search etc etc etc

Certainly in the months before the G8 quite a few people from Dissent network groups went along to G8A meetings and did explain the blockades, and quite often had a good reception from the audience.

Plenty of conversations went on between supporters of both tactics, to believe otherwise is simply daft. People from Dissent groups had stated on repeated occasions and even in meetings that the blockades were not to prevent the G8A demo, and that while there was a difference in basic tactics, people from different mobilisations agreed not to criticise the actions of any other mobilisations (well not in any official statement anyway - you cannot of course regulate what invividuals say).

For note the landcape of the mobilisation and planning was also very different from the heavily London based SWP Vs Autonomous + Others standard scenario.

However, the original post is partly correct. Some people attending the G8A demo did not understand the idea of the blockades, and others simply did not support the idea of directly challenging or trying to obstruct the summit. The only way more communication in this context could have been achieved was if flyers had been printed and distributed to people on the coaches explaining the blockades - which might have been a nice idea.

It's also worth stating that becca's view from a coach is but one view. I know of loads of people on the coaches as well as some that I was in regular phone contact with (from several groups) that reported that there was strong support for the blockades, with people cheering support and waving as the coaches skirted some of the blockades. Phone calls were also made from coaches that aided them in trying to avoid the police road blocks which were at one point specifically targeting the coaches and trying to stop them from getting near to the summit.

In terms of road blocks there were in fact lots, more than I had thought would happen. There were at least ten different distinct blockades, maybe up to twenty in total. They succeeded in causing significant disruption to the start of the summit and delayed hundreds of delegates and support staff for several hours.

I think in the end most objectives of most groups were successfully met in what was a quite amazing day, despite the pouring rain of the morning (grrr if only it had been sunny!) - which itself is an amazing achievement.

In short I can't agree that there was a total lack of co-operation or communication, in fact I think that despite many of the problems this was one of the best examples of cooperation and things working in tandem that I've seen in this island for quite some time - there's a long way to go, but there always is....