ABERDEEN, Scotland –- This week, David Cameron, J.K. Rowling and Boris Johnson joined the chorus of Donald Trump critics following his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

And a petition to ban him from coming to the UK signed by more than half a million people suggested the depth of Trump loathing in Britain.

In Aberdeen, though, they really don’t like him. And they disliked him before it was cool.

Scotland’s third largest city is arguably ground zero of anti-Trump sentiment in the UK. Ever since the American billionaire bought acres of prime Scottish sand dunes for a giant golf, hotel and restaurant complex, locals have been fighting the tycoon.

Suzanne Kelly, part of Tripping Up Trump, was an early member of the local resistance, and is the woman behind the petition to ban Trump from coming to the UK.

"I’m starting to feel like the person who said the emperor’s got no clothes on," she says, when I meet her on Thursday in Aberdeen's Cafe 52 to talk about how it feels to have her long held disdain echoed across the country.

Suzanne Kelly started the petition to ban Trump from the UK.

“Having watched how he’d treated the environment, and people just up the road from me, I was already very much disgusted with the man and his behaviour,” she had told me on the phone earlier.

Her “disgust turned to real worry” when Trump became a presidential candidate. She originally drafted the petition in late November after other comments from Trump that she found offensive, but his suggestion to ban Muslims turned it into the most popular e-petition on the government website.

David Milne, who joins us for lunch, wrote the book on Trump resistance. Literally. It’s called Blinded By The Bling, a reference to the way he feels local councils have kowtowed to the developer. He gives me a copy. Its subtitle is “The truth about the Trump Organisation plans to desecrate an almost sacred part of Scotland” and it details the years long battle between developers and locals.

David Milne by the row of trees at the edge of his garden. The Trump clubhouse is between him and the sea.

Milne bought an old coastguard cottage on the windswept coastline north of Aberdeen decades ago but found himself surrounded by Trump land in 2006.

He and another Tripping Up Trump member, Sue Edwards, level a broadside of accusations: Stolen land; compulsory purchase orders; boundary lines changed; phone lines and water supply cut off; “areas of scientific interest desecrated,” as Milne says.

At one point, someone from team Trump erected a fence and charged over £2,500 for the work, he adds, a claim he made four years ago.

A film, You’ve Been Trumped, catalogues many of the struggles the locals have faced. Trump tried unsuccessfully to block the BBC from airing it.

As we get ready to leave the café, owner Steve Bothwell comes over. His views on Donald Trump don’t leave much room for interpretation.

“He’s a cunt,” he says. “You don’t come to Scotland and treat people like shit, take people’s homes away and you don’t destroy the Scottish landscape.”

Surely Trump has some support in Aberdeen? The Tripping Up Trump members name a few locals who have defended the man, all local businessmen. Meanwhile, a counter petition to allow him into the UK, has 28,000 signatures.

Sue Edwards is another member of Tripping Up Trump.

After lunch, Milne drives me to his house. Passing some of the buildings of the Robert Gordon University, which revoked the Republican frontrunner’s honorary degree this week following his remarks, we soon end up outside the city and in the heart of Trump territory. Signs announce Trump International Golf Links in extravagant cursive while a smaller board advertises a somewhat incongruous Santa’s grotto. Milne mutters his disdain.

Smack bang in the middle of Trump land, down a bumpy pot-holed lane that Milne says Trump is obliged to keep maintained, is Milne’s house. Perched on a bluff overlooking the dunes and the sea, it’s an idyllic spot. You can see why he bought it, some 23 years ago, and why he doesn’t want to sell it.

Inside, comfy chairs point towards the sea. A half finished jigsaw of an elephant lays scattered on a table. It’s the perfect spot to relax -– if you can just squint out the clubhouse and car park in the middle distance and the 20 foot trees Milne says were planted at the edge of the estate by his land. Several pictures in the living room depict the vista in the pre-Trump world.

Tall trees have been planted on the edge of the Trump land outside David Milne's garden.

David Milne keeps pictures of a pre-Trump world around his house.

David Milne's pictures provide the only uninterrupted view now.

On all sides of the house, meanwhile, the pristine landscape is earmarked for more development and a second golf course.

In a statement this week, Trump criticised the petition and the likes of Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who joined in calls for him to be barred. "I have done so much for Scotland, including building Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, which has received the highest accolades, and is what many believe to be one of the greatest golf courses anywhere in the world,” he said. (Golf Monthly said in a sponsored article it was an “instant classic.”)

Milne snorts at this sort of assertion.

Milne says he "looks down on the Trump clubhouse, literally. Image: Mashable Tim Chester

Kelly thinks that Trump’s rhetoric comes from “a combination of stupidity and the narcissism that he thinks he can do he wants.” As his comments ratchet up in intensity, though, Milne argues that his words are a gift to the likes of the Islamic State (ISIS). “It’s like feeding oxygen into a firestorm,” he says.

“This is not a time to be fanning flames,” Kelly insists. “This is a time for sensible logical people to be building bridges in communities.”

Whether or not her record-breaking petition results in a full debate in parliament and an actual ban on Trump remains to be seen, although Tripping Up Trump has seen an uptick in interest this week. The Mashable interview is Kelly’s penultimate piece of press, as she’s worried about being dragged into a war of words. A radio interview this morning already turned into “a stupid, irrational slanging match” she says.

“I never really thought we’d get this far, this quickly,” she adds. “So I’m going to let the cards fall where they may.”