A NATIONWIDE protest against high fuel prices fell flat yesterday with most drivers either unaware or opposed to a petrol station boycott.
A blockade of the port of Dover, intended to coincide with the dump the pump campaign, was similarly unsuccessful, with only 12 of the expected 200 vehicles taking part.
The forecourt boycott was co-ordinated by businessman Garry Russell, of Chingford in Essex, who wants drivers to continue the dump the pump campaign every Monday from now on.
He warned: ''If we sit back and do nothing, then before too long we will have the #5 gallon.''
However, business was brisk at the Esso service station in West Street, Tradeston, Glasgow, as motorists queued to buy fuel.
Mr Stephen McMahon, a self-employed home improvements tradesman from Glasgow, said he had to fill his van so he could go to his work.
He said: ''I knew about the dump the pump thing but there's no real alternative. I mean, you can't just fill up with water can you?''
SNP shadow deputy spokes-woman for transport Linda Fabiani said the campaign wouldn't change anything.
''In rural areas especially, people need petrol to take them where they need to go. If they don't buy it on a Monday, then they're going to buy it on a Sunday or Tuesday,'' she said.
''I can see the value of this kind of thing as a protest but the only thing that will change anything is for Gordon Brown to review tax on fuel.''
In the Highlands, where petrol can be as much as #1 a litre, most people carried on as normal.
Mr Douglas Gow, who runs a car sales firm in Muir of Ord, 15 miles from Inverness, said: ''I need fuel every day and I have no intention of getting involved in futile boycotts.''
Executive director of the Scottish Motor Traders' Association, Mr Douglas Robertson, said alternative methods of persuading the Government to reduce fuel tax were needed.
He said: ''It's been a fairly damp squib. Places I went to this morning said it was business as normal.
''The public have said this is not the way to do it and it's not the way because it hits the small petrol retailers. The rural petrol stations are finding it hard enough to survive as it is - a day without trade could kill them.''
The dump the pump campaign was damaged further by the refusal of the RAC and AA to support it, advising motorists to write directly to their MP.
A Scottish Conservative Party spokesman backed this stance. He said: ''We sympathise very much with people who are victims of Labour's taxation policy. We congratulate the organisers of dump the pump but we would agree with the RAC foundation and the AA in that protests of this type are likely to penalise small garages.''
Scotland Office Minister Brian Wilson dismissed Conservative criticism of Labour's tax policies as ''childish'', saying that, under Labour, tax had gone down from 78% of the price of petrol to 72%.
He said: ''This isn't something the Labour Government has invented. I fully understand people's anxiety but equally I know that 17p of the fuel price increase has come from the trebling of the price of oil.''
Meanwhile, plans to bring England's busiest port to a standstill proved to be over optimistic as just a dozen supporters took part in the 30mph crawl to Dover.
The Hauliers Farmers Alliance, which organised the protest, had hoped for a four-hour ''rolling roadblock'' between Ashford and Dover but in just under an hour it had ground to a halt.
Alliance chairman Len Johnson said: ''We just stopped at Dover and had a cup of tea. It sends out all the wrong signals to the Government and makes them think hauliers don't mind paying the high taxes on fuel.''
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