Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Blockading Gleneagles

cream | 08.07.2005 16:02 | G8 2005

At about 6 am Tuesday morning around 50 protesters, including sambaband, jumped down on the M-9 motorway near Stirling, direction Gleneagles.

Over them a banner drops down from the bridge, saying: Queers block the G8. At the road another banner gets unfolded. No Deportations! it shouts in pink. The banner starts its way down south, accompanied by the sound of the samba, intending to meet and stop the traffic. What the protesters at this point don’t know is that they are not going to meet any cars, except the police vans, as blockades further south has already stopped the motorway traffic, as well as in the other direction blockades are spread out along the entire motorway from Glasgow and Edinburgh up towards Gleneagles. Together with blockades on other crucial traffic points it builds a very effective blockade of the entire Gleneagles area.

After a short while the police starts appearing and the group retreats back to the bridge, starting collecting old wood and other materials for barricading.
Slowly more people start showing up on the bridge, some enthusiastic supporting, some shouting words in disagreement. Running over the fields, a determined group of other protesters joins in on the road, to the dancing and building of barricades.
After around two hours on the road the group hears news from another group blockading at the next bridge north. This group wants to move further towards Gleneagles, taking the next bridge, and in coordination with others start a wave of moving blockades rolling upwards, closer to the G8 meeting.
The group starts to walk at around the same time as the police decides to go forward, showing up in the distance with lines of riot cops on the one side of the road, and queues of police cars on the other.

The now close to 100 protesters head towards the group under the next bridge, with 30-50 police vans moving forward behind them only stopping for a few minutes to remove the barricades from the road. After that the police speed up their cars and the protesters start to run in attempt to reach the other group. Before they succeed in that though, the police cars are covering the whole stretch between the two bridges. Riot cops jump out from the vans and the protesters retreat over the barbed wire to a field at the side. While the police in steps move towards the protesters, they move further back from the motorway. Only two persons don’t manage to get off the field as a disturbed herd of cows run into them, one ending up with a broken leg.

The group is now totally off the motorway, part of them having reached a local road, as three police vans rush up to the side of them, managing to arrest as far as we know at least between 25 and 30 people, the rest escaping through the woods or over nearby fields.

During and after the arrest several caravans of more police vans drove on to the M-9, in the direction of other blockades still maintaining their protest positions on the roads. The network of blockades turned out to be pretty resistant as some of them stayed on well into the afternoon. As well the police found it so difficult to handle the situation that they offered deals to the protesters, such as dropping charges in exchange for voluntarily dissolving the blockades.

The overall goal of the day, to disrupt the G8 summit, seemed to be largely reached in minds of many protesters, as they managed to blockade the transport network so effectively that many of the delegates could not make it to Gleneagles and thereby parts of the G8 meeting were made not to happen that day.

cream
- e-mail: cream@gofairtrade.net

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech