The climate change protests – whether by Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil or whatever named group – are likely to persist, writes Mark Rowe after attending a pair of events on Wednesday evening in central London, on either side of the Thames.
First, a briefing under the Chatham House rule to Dr David Rubens’ Institute of Strategic Risk Management (ISRM) at New Scotland Yard. Those attending got to see the splendid view from the upstairs balcony – upstream to St Paul’s Cathedral; almost next door downstream are the Houses of Parliament – and heard from the Metropolitan Police. The briefing was wide-ranging, covering covid policing, the Met’s response to the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met policeman; and the prospects for the next year or so. Expected is political instability continuing to the next general election. Some stats; since October the Met has made 12,500 officer shifts to do with the environmental protests; made 750 arrests; and charged 190; and 31 are on remand.
On protest, the stress from the police; they’re not anti-protest; they are anti-crime; everybody has the right to protest, as one of the rights under human rights law; but you don’t have the right to commit crime. That law-based approach was echoed earlier after a ‘constructive’ meeting between senior police and the Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (in other words, climate change protests are highly politically sensitive, as they could become vote-losingly embarrassing to the Government).
In her speech last month to police and crime commissioners, and senior police, Ms Braverman appeared to acknowledge that police view, of having to weigh up (in a sudden and maybe charged situation) the right to protest versus the public’s right to going about their business, when she said: “Free speech and the right to protest do not entitle people in a democracy like ours to break the law.”
However, whether seeking to gain political capital by calling for ‘a firmer line to safeguard public order’, or whether she felt (further) undermined by protests stopping motorway and city road traffic and annoying citizens (and voters), she urged police to ‘step up to your public duties in policing protests. The law-abiding patriotic majority is on your side. This is what common-sense policing means.’
“Too often, a restricted interpretation of legislation is taken,” she complained. “A lack of certainty on the meaning of serious disruption to the life of the community and how the cumulative impact of repeated protests should be considered has led to a limited use of existing powers.” However, as for what police ought to be doing differently, she could only rather lamely hope for ‘improved guidance on these matters so that public order commanders and officers can make full use of the powers available’, and the prospect of (another) public order law, after one was brought in by previous Home Secretary Priti Patel only in the spring, seemingly to no effect.
Interestingly, the Met briefing and an hour later the annual risk forecast by the consultancy Sibylline at their Vauxhall office, each spoke of a lack of trust in institutions (and the Met Police, like courts and the BBC, is an institution). That may express itself in – to quote from the Met briefing – a ‘significant increase’ in football fans’ violence, police being filmed by onlookers if they do things on-street, and a feeling among police of being beleaguered in a divided society. Some people feel strongly – whether about conspiracy theories such as the anti-vaxxers, the extreme left or right, or those concerned about climate change – to protest. Police anticipate such protest to continue, and to grow.
Sibylline, as a risk forecaster serving clients, described the lack of faith in institutions in terms of those institutions including employers; as you only have to look at social media, to see. Employers being quiet on such issues as climate change may be taken as a stance by protesters; companies having to become ‘political’, ‘whether they like it or not’. An implication; workers who are technically inside the system, but feeling that they are against it, may pose an insider threat, whether passing details to protesters about physical security gaps for a demo to exploit, or info that puts the employer in a bad light for a protest campaign to publicise and damage the company reputationally.
Meanwhile, what do the protesters have to say? Just Stop Oil plan a march in central London tomorrow, to be ‘in solidarity with political prisoners’, describing JSO protesters jailed and on remand as ‘peaceful people’, ‘conspiring to care’. Speeches in Parliament Square will feature other protest movements such as Kill the Bill, Stop HS2 and Extinction Rebellion. In other words, as with past movements, jailing people serves to bind bodies of protesters, humanise the movement (pictures of those jailed, young and old, male and female are featured) and give a movement legs; something further to protest about and against.
Photo by Mark Rowe; fly-posting for an ‘Occupy Westminster’ demo, Bloomsbury, central London.
