We law-abiding folk need our own protest group to stop this eco mob
Does anyone else feel like setting up a peaceful protest group called Just stop Activists, to demand that the police, courts and other authorities finally start taking decisive action against illegal methods of protest?
The first move would be to chain ourselves to whatever vehicles the likes of Animal Rebellion are using to get to the nation’s dairy plants before they can blockade them and disrupt the supply of milk to supermarkets.
Yet again, a Left-wing pressure group is threatening to disrupt people going about their lawful, everyday lives – and yet again it looks as if they are going to get away with it.
Dairies run by Arla and Muller have been targeted by Animal Rebellion, an extinction Rebellion off- shoot which thinks the entire country should be forced to adopt a vegan diet and has vowed to block the supply of milk in order to further its objectives.
If the protests are allowed to continue, the companies have warned, we will have milk shortages within a fortnight – a misery for families and households already paring back their weekly shop.
To be fair to the police, 31 protesters were arrested at the Arla distribution centre. But we know from depressing past experience what to expect next: the same protesters will be back at the site within hours, having been released without charge.
It was left to Arla, by the way, to obtain a High Court injunction to stop the activists closing down their facilities.
By contrast, the Government dillied and dallied for weeks before issuing injunctions against a similar group of protesters, Insulate Britain, for blocking roads.
I will defend to the death the right to protest, even when the
beliefs of the protesters are in direct opposition to my own. But the actions in which these groups are engaged are not protests. They are acts of obstruction and vandalism by mainly privileged egotists.
Just last month we had the frustrating sight of activists from Just stop oil blocking the entrance to petrol stations and smashing pumps, untroubled by the police.
The Met eventually arrested 43 but the damage had been done.
During extinction Rebellion’s encampment of oxford Circus – in the heart of London’s main shopping thoroughfare – police were filmed dancing alongside the protesters. Unfathomably, the jamboree in April 2019 – centred around a pink yacht – was allowed to continue for a fortnight.
What is so extraordinary is that
these lax attitudes seem to apply only to green protesters.
Councils have no problem, for example, designating exclusion zones where anti-abortion protesters must not unfurl their banners – even in peaceful protest. But smash up petrol pumps and sit in the middle of road in the name of fighting climate change and you seem to be untouchable.
Green protests have grown ever more audacious because they have been met with such feeble policing. Activists know they wouldn’t get away with it in other countries – even ones with strong environmental sympathies.
In February, when members of a group calling itself the Uprising of the Last Generation glued themselves to roads around Germany, protesting at food waste, security officials were unequivocal. ‘To massively impede people’s mobility or block the movement of goods is a serious breach of the law,’ Bavaria’s chief security officer told the protesters. even the German Green party was quick to condemn their actions. PRoTesTeRs
who tried to block flights departing from Malmo airport in sweden were swiftly arrested and charged with airport robbery. And when, in 2019, extinction Rebellion activists tried blocking the Pont de sully bridge in Paris, they were teargassed by the gendarmes.
I simply do not understand why these illegal forms of direct action are indulged in Britain. Groups such as extinction Rebellion aren’t even causing mayhem without notice. They are proudly announcing what they intend to do, and where and when they intend to do it.
Yet every time, police seem to act as if they have been caught out. And even when they do finally reach the scene they seem to stand back – as if they believe that to intervene would somehow be an improper use of their powers.
It is a very serious business when a political group sets out deliberately to disrupt the supply of food. society cannot function if everyone with a grudge is allowed to commit acts of sabotage and obstruction.
The right to protest is sacrosanct. But so is the right of people to go about their daily business without being blocked by a group of anarchists.