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.

Despite pressure inside the Scottish government, local communities and from her party’s own membership, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has so far refused to rule out fracking, although she claimed yesterday to be “highly sceptical” about it.

Currently the Scottish government has a moratorium on both fracking and UCG to allow time to conduct research and this will remain in place until after the Holyrood elections in May.

However, Jim Ratcliffe, whose company Ineos holds fracking exploration licences for over 700 miles across Scotland, claimed last year after a meeting with Ms Sturgeon that the SNP was not opposed to fracking.

Scottish Labour environment spokeswoman Sarah Boyack accused the SNP of “pretending to people that a moratorium is a permanent ban, but protests at their own party conference show that even party members aren’t buying that spin.”

She called on Ms Sturgeon to “give a straight answer” on the issue after Scottish Labour confirmed last week that a pledge to oppose fracking would be included in its Holyrood election manifesto.

The protest begins at 11am outside the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre.