ENVIRONMENTAL activists will demonstrate today outside the SNP’s spring conference in Glasgow, calling for a total ban on fracking and underground coal gasification (UCG) ahead of May’s Scottish Parliament elections.

SNP Members Against Unconventional Oil and Gas (Smaug) will join other activists from the Broad Alliance of Communities Against Fracking and Hands Over Our Forth in linking hands around the conference centre to send a clear message to the nationalist party.

Smaug is seeking to remind the SNP of its pledge during last year’s general election campaign to oppose fracking and that three-quarters of its members are opposed to UGE.