In May, seven XR activists who had admitted causing £25,000 damage to Shell’s London headquarters in 2019 were acquitted by the jury. Juries and judges sympathetic to the climate cause are giving eco-activists an easier ride. Still, there’s evidence opinion seems to have shifted. Since 2019, XR protests have cost the taxpayer more than £50 million in policing, and in order to police these protests, Scotland Yard has warned that officers will have to be diverted from vulnerable communities where they are focused on tackling knife crime and other serious offences. Increasingly, XR struggled to get a grip on actions that were perceived as tone-deaf and out of step with the public, even a public that was broadly sympathetic to the aim.
Commuters hurled drink cans and tried to rip one activist from the train roof. There’s still the stain of the PR disaster of the Canning Town action in 2020, at which two XR members glued themselves to the top of a Tube carriage. But the movement has been through a public trashing. Membership plunged during the pandemic, though it added 2,000 members in the fortnight prior to its August protests (there are 650 groups in 45 countries) and raked in £250,000 in funding as the latest protest nears. “You don’t pour petrol on the fire.”Ĭlearly, their purpose burns as bright as ever, but inside XR there’s been some catching up to do. According to the Government’s energy white paper, promoting their extraction ensures that “the UK remains an attractive destination for global capital”, which is “the best way to secure an orderly and successful transition away from traditional fossil fuels”. It is government policy to “maximise economic recovery” of oil and gas from the UK’s continental shelf.
“Most of us thought it was going to happen to someone else, somewhere else, some other time.” “I feel a sickness in my stomach most days,” says Bradbrook. Now, the IPCC, a group of scientists endorsed by the world’s governments, has issued a “code red for humanity”, warning of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, and habitable temperature limits being broken in just over a decade. When XR first stopped up London in 2019, it was a “Save the Planet” carnival basking under blue skies. But “things have got worse,” says Gail Bradbrook, XR’s co-founder, who has a PhD in molecular biology. In November, COP26 - the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference - was hosted in Glasgow. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.
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