Street scuffles as things go from mellow to militant

On the March: The girl with dreadlocks, her face buried beneath a black hoodie and headscarf, is screaming into the face of the police officer in Edinburgh.

"This is what democracy looks like!" she roars. The policeman dressed in riot gear continues to stare stonily ahead. "F**k the police - no justice, no peace," she screams again.

Office workers in a grey complex of offices in Edinburgh's financial district look on worriedly. A thumping samba beat in the background grows louder. Suddenly dozens of protesters dressed in black surge forward towards the police lines. The officers, linking arms, strain to contain them.

Yesterday's demonstrations - billed by protest groups as the "Carnival for Full Enjoyment" - were a day when protests in the lead-up to this week's G8 summit turned from mellow to militant.

The white T-shirts and family atmosphere of the Make Poverty History on the streets of the Scottish capital were replaced by the black uniform of anti-G8 anarchists and a sense of nervous tension.

There was no serious violence to compare with disruption in Genoa or Seattle. But, as sirens blared and police moved to close off main streets, there were enough scuffles like this one in Canning Street yesterday to put the city on edge for most of the day.

As police reinforcements arrived in Canning Street, penning the protesters into a narrow stretch of roadway, Philip Stevens, from London (21), one of the black-hooded protesters, expressed frustration at police tactics.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "They're stopping kids with hoodies going into shopping centres. People are getting hurt because of how they are treating us." Most of the protesters appeared to be from a number of anarchist groups such as Dissent, although others insisted they were "autonomous individuals".

One of them, a grey-haired protester in his 40s who declined to give his name, said the aim of the march was to draw attention to the "police state" and the damaging policies of the G8.

"Imagine, we don't have freedom to move," he said. "We're the ones who believe in peace. The police aren't defending democracy. We are. What a waste of money this all is." There were a few moments which helped ease the tension. Like 30-year-old Jim Young, a bicycle courier, trying to explain to his bosses over a walkie-talkie that he couldn't make his deliveries as he got inadvertently stuck behind a police cordon.

"I'm trapped," he explained drolly, across a crackling radio. "I'm thinking of billing them £1 a minute for loss of earnings."

As the tens of thousands of protesters from the Make Poverty History rally began to head home, the militant tone for the days ahead seemed to be set by a conference entitled the alternative G8 summit on Sunday night.

The one-day event was organised by a coalition of unions and campaign groups which believes the G8 has too much power. It is pushing policies on "war, occupation, neo-liberal corporate globalisation, poverty and environmental devastation".

Inside a packed Usher Hall in Edinburgh, hundreds of campaigners roared in approval as speakers declared in angry tones that their protests had been hijacked by Geldof, Bono and the British government.

"Do you believe our aims to combat poverty were undermined by yesterday's [ Live 8] concert?" Bianca Jagger, a long-time human rights activist, asked the crowd.

"Yes!" they roared back.

"I believe that Bono and Bob Geldof have not only danced with the devil but slept with the enemy," she said, to more loud applause. "Our event was not linked to the concert because we were talking about substance not soundbites," she said to more cheering and flag waving.

Some of the most extreme rhetoric came from the most unlikely of sources. Warren Bello, a soft-spoken, bespectacled professor of public administration and sociology, led a rousing call for the mass disruption of the next World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong.

"We need to lay bodies on the line to stop this monster. The WTO is like a vampire - it gets back up again and again until you finally draw a stake through its heart."

But the most rousing reception was for George Galloway, the MP of the newly-formed Respect party, who called on everyone present to come out in force at Gleneagles.

"They want us to dance in the streets for £40 billion in aid for Africa, while they are spending £200 billion in Iraq, driving the people deeper and deeper into poverty. We must go to Gleneagles in good numbers and in good hearts. The world is watching."

The crowd roared in approval, giving the MP a standing ovation, and breaking into chants of: "A, anti, anti-capitalista . . . A, anti, anti-capitalista."

Outside the hall, amid the groups selling bus tickets to Gleneagles, one of the audience members, Nicolas Van Labeke (32), a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, said the hostility towards Geldof was due to his close association with politicians such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown .

"I admire Geldof for putting this on the agenda, but the G8 are the cause of these problems of poverty. They are responsible. All their solutions are loaded with strings, such as the privatisation of services."

Back in Canning Street, the protesters began to melt away yesterday evening, only after they had given their names to police and had been photographed.

"This was the carnival, but the big focus is on disrupting the summit," said one protester. "We going to have to use whatever means are necessary."