London’s Metropolitan Police ‘Acting Unlawfully’ say Extinction Rebellion’s Lawyers

Lawyers acting for Extinction Rebellion (XR) have applied to the High Court for a judicial reveue into the Metropolitan Police’s blanket ban on ecological protests across the whole of London. The police issued the ban under a section 14 of the Public Order Act on Monday night, effectively outlawing protests by XR in the city.

Since imposing the order, the police have cleared Trafalgar Square of protesters, where the activists had previously been allowed, even encouraged, by the authorities to move their protests to this single site. No laws were being broken in the Square, but now the police’s change of tack risks criminalising peaceful protest, which is a fundamental right of any democracy worthy of the name.

A protest camp at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, south of the Thames, was also dismantled on Tuesday, even though again, no laws were being broken and the local authority, the London Borough of Lambeth, had given permission for protesters to be there. Smaller protests around the capital have continued, with over 1,600 arrests made by police. 

This is a very worrying development, where the police can effectively ban any peaceful protest they want to. It has all the hallmarks of a police state, not a state that adheres to the rule of law, and the police surely know this.

The Green party MEP Ellie Chowns was among those arrested in Trafalgar Square on Monday night. She is now one of several claimants in the judicial review. She said she had not even been part of XR’s protests but was arrested after asking questions of police about the legality of their actions.

There has clearly been political pressure applied to the police, presumably by the new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, the hardline ‘law and order’ minister. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has distanced himself from the action, which he was apparently not consulted about. But why has such draconian action has been taken, when the protests only caused minor inconvenience to the public in the city?

I work in Westminster where many of the road blocking protests have taken place, and what has struck me is that many of my work colleagues, who normally take little interest in ecological matters, have commented how much better the environment is in the area, without all of the usual traffic clogging up roads and spewing toxic fumes into the air. There has been no great outcry from the public for the protests to be stopped.

However, plans to disrupt the underground train network on Thursday may well change public perceptions, if they go ahead. I hope XR re-thinks this one, because apart from the potential loss of public support for the rebels, they should be encouraging the use of public transport, especially electric powered transport. Will this action force workers into their cars or onto diesel powered buses? I think it will, so is rather counter-productive.

I think the main reason that the police have taken this unprecedented action is that they are over extended, and can’t cope with the protests carrying for the rest of this week. I have seen police vans in the area from Kent and even Scotland, so obviously these police officers have been drafted into London, indicating just how stretched the London police are.

But could not another approach have been attempted? The police were quick to say that the protests were taking officers away from more important work, like tackling street crime in the city. Well, why not concentrate their resources on that then? The protests only need minimal policing, what does it matter if a few roads are blocked? Privately, some officers have commented as much, but their orders are to keep the traffic moving around London, in the process poisoning the public in the area.

I guess it comes down to money, as all seem to these days. There is an economic cost to businesses in London, although not that great in reality. It is perhaps no coincidence either that the hardline stance began after protests in the city of London began, the centre of the money making machine in the UK. Can’t have that happening can we?