Extinction Rebellion is making ordinary people collateral damage and they shouldn't be indulged

We’re told that the movement is “non-violent”, but it evidently feels that its mission allows it license to do whatever it wants

Monday, 7th October 2019, 6:07 pm
Updated Monday, 7th October 2019, 6:14 pm
Extinction Rebellion demonstrators outside the HS2 headquarters (Photo by Giles Anderson/PA Wire)

Pity the mild and moderate environmentalists. Imagine the experience of those who, over the last 15 years, have worked so hard to move green issues into the mainstream of political, public and even corporate life. Those campaigners, policymakers and lobbyists made dramatic in-roads, securing support for their cause in places that were previously assumed to be deeply unlikely, from City boardrooms to the leadership of the Conservative Party.

You might support their various policies - from green taxes to emissions zones - or not. But it’s undeniable that their campaign was a canny one. They advanced step by step, persevering with a clever and considered strategy, and focusing on tailoring their argument to their audience. They adapted their movement to look and sound more like the wider society it sought to persuade, and less like the fringe direct action groups of the past.

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That approach is now under all-out assault from Extinction Rebellion. Supposedly the advances of the green movement were too slow, its tone was too reasonable, and its compromises with the prevailing economic and democratic system were too much to swallow.

(Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Bye bye, Powerpoint presentations to business conventions and detailed consultation submissions to government departments. Hello gluing yourself to commuter trains, inexplicable costumes that probably made sense when someone came up with the idea, and wild statements about the apocalypse.

There’s a good reason why the previous generation of greens, while fond about their movement’s tradition of protest, tended not to target the general public with disruptive direct action: in a democracy you need to persuade large numbers of people to support your cause. Extinction Rebellion, on the other hand, seem to veer between seeing their fellow citizens as legitimate targets (who, after all, keeps on using all that electricity and irresponsibly procreating?) and merely collateral damage.

Given widespread reports that their roadblocks stopped a Bristol man from reaching his dying father’s bedside in July, it is surprising that they seem not to have considered the implications of obstructing roads near a major London hospital.

Asked about the impact on patients and their families, a spokeswoman said that “It’s about understanding the wider perspective” and promised “conversations...if people really, really need to get there, about letting them through, possibly.” That’s not very reassuring to those in pain, or desperate to see their loved ones: don’t worry, you might be let through if you make a good enough case to Extinction Rebellion’s self-appointed commissars. We’re sure you can spare the time.

Extinction Rebellion activists at Oxford Circus in April (Photo: OLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty)

That sense of all-conquering entitlement stems from a genuine belief that they are saving the world. It increasingly seems to go well beyond the science and evidence and into the realms of millenarian religion. Roger Hallam, an XR co-founder, recently predicted six billion deaths from climate change, an apparently home-made vision rather than a scientific forecast. Elsewhere, we see almost medieval scenes of protesters weeping in the streets at the imminent end of the world.

The rhetoric accordingly gets out of hand. A week after everyone decided that the word ‘surrender’ was unacceptably violent, the same commentators had little to say about Extinction Rebellion spraying the Treasury with 1800 litres of fake blood and announcing that “the Treasury has blood on its hands”.

We’re told that the movement is “non-violent”, but it evidently feels that its mission allows it license to do whatever it wants because the threat of climate change is worse. I see that as a dangerous precedent to pursue.

Campaigners are unwise to take that approach, not least because of the way it can alienate the public. But if they choose to do so nonetheless, then it falls to the police to restrain their disruption of others. So far, the Met have seemed alarmingly indulgent - thereby appearing to fuel the problem by implying tacit consent. Now they may have a bigger job to do to reassert the law.