Extinction Rebellion Protestors Admit They Made A Mistake

After much deliberation and questions over whether it was the right (and a legal) move to make, police have banned extinction rebellion protests from happening anywhere in London. This has been condemned by politicians and legal experts as a “worrying attack on basic civil liberties”, and many people are torn about the decision. 

Activists were warned that they faced arrest if they continued the peaceful protests for climate change - a quick change of police tactic. Legal experts expressed surprise at the ban, which they said could potentially be challenged in court. This move likely reflects the enormous political pressure the Met is under, but many consider it to be a huge overreach of the statutory power. 

 

Since the ban was put into place, several thousand arrests have been made in London. The ban outlaws "any assembly linked to the Extinction Rebellion 'Autumn Uprising'" within the Greater London area. 

Although this is deemed a questionable move by many, senior figures in the Extinction Rebellion admit that they made a mistake when they targeted London’s public transport network at rush hour. Opinion is split on this, but their future strategies are now being reassessed to ensure a better result and less backlash. Working towards a better environment and working for peace is no easy task. Recently, British Transport Police confirmed it was also investigating and looking to acquire evidence against a number of commuters who appeared to embark on a vigilante-style attack on one of the Canning Town protesters.

There are now provisional plans to move away from the disruption scheduled to take place twice each year, according to XR. Rather, the movement will look into building high profile platforms for experts on subjects like food security so that they can shape global debate on the climate change emergency. 

Although there’s split opinions over the actions of Extinction Rebellion protestors, the two week long action has seen criticism of policing tactics too. The tactics that officers chose to implement may be sketchy - they have already discussed strengthening public order laws to allow a tougher crackdown on future XR demonstrations.

Many people still stand by large scale disruption tactics in order to make change, and say that the government needs this pressure to actually tackle climate emergency. However, Extinction Rebellion Protestors are having to learn where to draw the line. The leaders are currently considering how they will move forward from all of the backlash received over the last few weeks. 

However, people do believe that the recent campaign was successful at drawing attention to the climate emergency, as the movement was mentioned more than 70,000 times in online media reports. Of these, 43.5% of online coverage was in the UK followed by 15.2% from Germany, 14.6 % in Australia and 12.1% in the US. Around 30,000 passionate activists who want change joined the protests in London. 

Were XR wrong in the way they protested or have the police used an overreaching tactic? Let us know. 

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