The timid child who rebelled

He is middle class, university educated and from a loving and stable family background.

But 24-year-old Alessio Lunghi, son of an Italian wine importer and a primary school administrator, can today be revealed as one of the masterminds behind this year's Mayday demonstrations.

With the tactical acumen of a seasoned soldier and the rat-like cunning of an urban guerrilla, the former engineering student at London University spent yesterday orchestrating the demonstrations.

Although May Day was not to see the same disorder the last three years have thrown up, it still brought the centre of the capital to a standstill, causing massive inconvenience to hundreds of thousands of London workers and cost business millions. Mr Lunghi will take satisfaction in this.

Brought up in a £500,000 house overlooking Myatts Fields in Camberwell, Mr Lunghi turned to anarchism after being stopped and searched by police as a teenager on his way back to the family home from a pop concert.

An anarchist was born, and, after dropping out of London University and discovering the works of the 19th-century Russian nihilist Michael Bakunin, he embraced the anti-capitalist movement with fervour.

Already a veteran of two Mayday riots and violent clashes in Prague and Genoa, Mr Lunghi has risen to the top of the protest group the Wombles, who adopt the white overalls and anti-police padding pioneered by Italian arch-anarchists Ya Basta.

Yesterday he was kept under surveillance by the Evening Standard for more than 10 hours. In that time he was rarely in the same place for more than a few minutes, constantly breaking off from one group of protesters to another and giving instructions on his mobile phone. Always at the head of one of the splinter groups of protesters trying to stretch police resources to the limit, Mr Lunghi could be seen directing groups of demonstrators, leading them this way and that as they attempted to evade the police.

All the time he was conscious not to lead his followers into a trap like last year, when thousands of protesters were corralled in Oxford Circus. "Don't go that way, go this way," he would yell. "Keep moving all the time."

To evade the attention of two policemen who worked in shifts trying to keep tabs on him, he constantly changed his clothes to make himself harder to spot and wore a reinforced plastic baseball hat in case of a baton charge. His Wombles protective gear was in a green plastic sack on his back.

From time to time he would slip away from his cell of protesters and disappear silently through Soho's back alleys to hold snatched conversations with other anarchists. These included a leading light in Ya Basta who was actively involved in violence in last's Genoa riot and several members of Turkish communist organisation PKK, whose members ran amok in London on Mayday two years ago. Together they would formulate plans for continuing the protests before Mr Lunghi would rejoin the main body of the demonstration.

Police believe he was instrumental in organising this year's protest. He has given classes in how to make body armour, advocating foam padding reinforced with plastic sheets from estate agents' notice boards. He is understood to have helped to target and occupy the squat in Liverpool Street where dozens of out-of-town protesters assembled.

He remained there just one night before returning to his Finsbury Park squat, claiming he was worried police would raid the place and seize their banners and protective materials. Mr Lunghi is said to be suing police for the return of a computer - allegedly detailing anarchists' plans for yesterday's event - which officers seized in April. The bilingual former anti-road protester's conversion to anarchy came as a surprise to his family. His Mother Maureen described him as "a timid boy," who preferred playing with his sister Coralinda to getting involved in fights.

Now living 100 miles south of Rome, Mrs Lunghi said she didn't know what began her son's obsession with overcoming world capitalism, but revealed that he had been traumatised at the age of 16 when stopped by six policemen while on his way home from a concert in Charing Cross.

Mrs Lunghi said: "Alessio and his sister started laughing. The police got really annoyed and threatened to take them to the station and strip search them. They didn't but he was deeply shocked and used to go on about it. He was quiet as a child and never into politics. He wasn't rough or interested in games, just his music. He has never been violent, but he seems to have found something to stand up for. He reads a lot and that probably is where he got his ideas from. He didn't like his course at university and just dropped out. He drifted for a while and became converted by something he read or people he met."

Last year Mr Lunghi set up and paid for the anarchist website Mayday Monopoly, which outlined the list of targets for protesters around London, and he is believed to have been active in previous protests in the capital.

He is understood to have helped set up the Wombles after befriending Ya Basta members at the Prague anti-capitalist riots in 2000. Ya Basta, which means "enough now", has been prominent in anti-capitalist protests all over the world and its leaders have evolved into a jetsetting group of international anarchists.

Mr Lunghi was also a leader of the S26 Collective, another anarchist movement, and he arranged for demonstrators to attend the Prague protest from a flat in Streatham. The shabby flat was also the address at which the Monopoly May Day website was registered.

A senior police source said: "He is the driving force behind the Wombles group and one of the key organisers of the protest. We are monitoring his activities closely."