LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) - British police deployed in force to face an estimated 10,000 anti-capitalist protesters on Tuesday, vowing to prevent a re-run of the May Day chaos that erupted in central London a year ago.

In Australia, May Day protests were ushered in by demonstrators who sought to shut down stock exchanges in major cities and scuffled with police. The demonstrations were largely peaceful with just a handful of arrests.

The protests are the latest in a series of demonstrations staged around the world against economic globalisation, following violent street action against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in December, 1999 and at international summits in Prague last year and Quebec City last month.

In London, all police leave has been cancelled and more than 6,000 officers will be on the streets, with mobile riot units in the wings and many more officers in reserve ready to snuff out protests that turn violent.

Unlike many European capitals where May Day is a public holiday, the date is a normal working day in Britain.

"We will be highly visible on the streets of London, and...anyone committing crime will be held to account," said assistant police commissioner Michael Todd.

Smaller protests were expected in the cities of Glasgow, Birmingham, Swansea and Manchester.

There was no early sign of disruption to the morning rush hour in London.

Businesses in central shopping streets in the capital have boarded up windows to deter looters, and monuments such as the statue of wartime leader Winston Churchill have been covered to prevent them being defaced as they were last May Day.

Banks told staff to dress in casual clothes, to leave their gold watches at home and not to carry laptop computers.

Along with New York and Tokyo, London, with a population of seven million, is one of the three leading financial centres in the world, and has the largest share of trading in many markets.

Protesters have indicated they will stage a mass bike ride, followed by a token feeding of the pigeons in Trafalgar Square in defiance of a recent ban, and end with a rally in Oxford Street, the shopping heart of the capital, at 4:00 P.M. (1500 GMT).

In between, there are expected to be protests in various parts of the city picking out targets including the McDonald's fast food chain, the offices of the World Bank and the studios of the CNN news channel.

Police turned out in some strength to greet early morning commuters, and a small number of protesters, at London's Marylebone station.

The anarchist movement's sympathisers complain that multi-national corporations wield too much power over people's lives, even to the point of coercing democratically-elected governments.