Police regained control last night of Oxford Circus, central London, from the climate change campaigners who had blocked it for six days and officers were battling to remove hundreds more protesters on Waterloo Bridge and in Parliament Square as they struggled to end one of the capital’s longest protests. The battle to regain control of London’s main roads saw hundreds of officers surrounding each of the protest sites, arresting hundreds of campaigners who refused to move. Many used superglue or bike locks to fix themselves to obstacles such as railings but were cut free by officers using angle-grinders. A protester named Hanna, 41, a marine scientist from Swansea who was seven months pregnant, was the last Oxford Circus protester removed after being cut free from railings she had locked herself to. Gail Bradbrook and Roger Hallam, both former scientists, spent three years studying the history of social protests — quantifying the factors that make them succeed and even turning them into an equation before launching ER. They calculate that if ER can win the support of just 3.5% of the population, get 10,000 people onto London’s streets and exceed more than 1,000 arrests, then the government may have to cave in. This weekend well over 800 people had been arrested. The surge in support was so great last week that Hallam and Bradbrook claim to have abandoned any planned end date. “Our actions are based on analyses of 300 social struggles since 1900. They showed 54% of non-violent revolutions are successful, compared with 25% of violent ones,” said Hallam, a social science researcher at King’s College London. “Respect is a key part of our approach,” said Bradbrook, who has a PhD in molecular physics. “Other groups criticise us for this — they have had a more hostile relationship with the police but . . . it’s a scientific fact that being nice to people is massively underestimated and it works in spreading ideas.”
Times 21st April 2019 read more »
Independent 20th April 2019 read more »
Scotland Yard has asked for around 200 extra officers from police forces outside London to help deal with the climate change protests in the capital. As the demonstrations continued for a sixth day on Saturday, Metropolitan Police revealed that 715 people have been arrested and 28 have been charged since the Extinction Rebellion disruption began on Monday.
Independent 20th April 2019 read more »
How Extinction Rebellion protesters reclaimed the streets – and injected fresh energy into the climate movement.
Independent 20th April 2019 read more »
Dominic Lawson: Is Extinction Rebellion a Big Oil conspiracy? “the point of all this is to discredit the guys trying to ruin our business. This Robin Boardman-Pattison creation is perfectly judged to make the public think the Extinction Rebellion movement is an exercise in organised hypocrisy — well, not that organised, but you get my point.” “And which was your favourite actor in our little West End show, Seb?” “That has to be Dame Emma Thompson. She flew in 5,400 miles from Los Angeles so she could star at the demo. She made a clenched-fist salute, telling the nation that the occupation would continue until the government does what she wants.”
Times 21st April 2019 read more »
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl behind the global School Strike for Climate movement, will join Extinction Rebellion protesters in London today with a call for British youngsters to quit classrooms and join the campaign. She will speak in a rally at Marble Arch this evening before a week in which she meets British politicians including the environment secretary, Michael Gove, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas. So far, Greta has met the Pope and addressed the European parliament.
Times 21st April 2019 read more »
SCOTTISH activists from protest group Extinction Rebellion (ER) have said direct action seen in Edinburgh last week is “only the beginning” of a continued campaign planned to highlight the need to save our planet for ecological meltdown. ER Scotland is calling for the Scottish Government to “tell the truth” about the climate emergency, set up Citizen’s Assemblies to address the issue and cut carbon emissions to zero by 2025. While Scotland is already seeing evidence of severe weather, research by the Climate Ready Clyde review found that severe storms, regular heatwaves and heavy flooding would substantially impact Glasgow by 2050. The stark nature of the crisis was underlined last week by David Attenborough with the first of his new series, Climate Change: the Facts. In the documentary he warned: “It may sound frightening but if we have not taken dramatic action in the next decade we face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.” Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “Decades of failure to act with the necessary urgency has meant unprecedented and catastrophic impacts already being felt. Politicians in Scotland and the UK are encouraging even more exploration and drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.” With the Climate Bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament he urged politicians to put in place far stronger targets to cut emissions within the next decade. “The situation is very urgent but the current proposals from the Scottish Government would result in no extra emissions reduction effort at all between now and 2030,” he said.
The National 21st April 2019 read more »
Mhairi Black: Media nonsense is part of the climate change problem.
The National 20th April 2019 read more »
Issue of the week: Who are Extinction Rebellion and what do they want?
Herald 20th April 2019 read more »
