The solution I used was to download and build the CVS tip of Emacs - svn
access works like a charm then :-) You can access nightly dumps of the CVS
archives (assumes that you cannot access the CVS tip directly - I am behind
a firewall at work and it won't let me through, so I use the nightly dumps)
from http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs-backup/. Then to build from source it
depends on what OS you are using - if Windows then you'll need to install
cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). You will also need some of the MingW
tools - I really can't remember exactly what I installed here but if you
have a look at http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/w32-build-emacs.html you should
be able to muddle through (well I did :-)).