The military aspect was no accident. This was a “war summit”, where about 300 anarchists — some dressed in urban guerrilla garb in freezing temperatures — had gathered to draw up plans to paralyse Scotland during the G8 meeting at Gleneagles in July.

At this so-called Festival of Dissent, held on the land surrounding the imposing 17th-century Birkhill House at Coalburn, a secretive group of militants drew up plans to blockade the summit by cutting road and rail links.

Under the plans, tens of thousands of protesters are to be housed in three camps strategically placed across Scotland and will be deployed through a communications network designed to outflank the police.

Despite the group’s obsessive secrecy, The Times was able to penetrate it to discover the nature of many of its plans — and the willingness of some militants to resort to violence in their determination to disrupt the summit.

After attending a series of meetings under an assumed identity, a Times journalist also established that two key figures in the network are a university dropout named Alessio Lunghi and Mark Aston, a university administrator.

Mr Lunghi, 27, is a leading light within the Wombles, the hardcore anarchist group that was behind the May Day chaos visited on London in 2002. The son of an Italian wine importer and a primary school inspector, Mr Lunghi, from South London, has been directly involved in anti-G8 groups in the run-up to the summit.

He favours combat trousers and heavy, military-style boots, and admitted at one meeting that there was no point to the anti-globalisation protests if there was no violence.

Mr Aston, who works at Cardiff University and was the vice-president of the Cardiff branch of the Association of University Teachers last year, is a key organiser of the anti-globalisation group Dissent, which was behind the festival.

Set up in 2003, Dissent is an umbrella organisation for anarchists and other radical groups, which say that they wish to see the overthrow of capitalism through “direct action”.

The event last weekend at the farm 32 miles southeast of Glasgow attracted radicals from Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Spain and Iceland, along with a broad section of Britain’s anti-globalisation movement.

These included a PhD student from Cambridge University, a sales representative from London, a professional artist from Cambridge and an assortment of eco- warriors. They were housed in a tent city set in the farm’s 50 acres that included a military-style mess hall, where activists lined up in orderly queues for vegan meals.

Using a large map of the Gleneagles area pinned to the canvas wall of the main marquee, Mr Aston explained to the listening militants the benefits of cutting off the A9 trunk road from Glasgow to Perth and the Forth Road Bridge. “This would effectively cut off the north of Scotland,” he said. “We have to make sure that we can transport the protesters around the area and make sure they have maximum impact and blockade Gleneagles.”

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