Eco zealots could face 5 years in jail

Home Secretary threatens to change law after Extinction Rebellion stunt so that...

‘Escaping with fine they pay from trust fund’

EXTINCTION Rebellion protesters who attack our way of life should face jail, Priti Patel warns today.

The Home Secretary has ordered a review of the law aimed at toughening sentences for the environmental extremists after they blockaded newspaper print works in a bid to stifle free speech.

Options being considered include designating the group as an organised crime gang, which would leave militants open to the threat of up to five years in jail.

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Miss Patel says the activists should ‘face the full force of the law’ for pursuing ‘guerrilla tactics... that seek to undermine and cause damage to our society’.

She adds: ‘I am committed to ensuring that the police have powers required to tackle the disruption caused by groups such as Extinction Rebellion. We must defend ourselves against this attack on capitalism, our way of life and ultimately our freedoms.’

A Home Office source confirmed that Miss Patel wants to see harsher sentences against the ringleaders of a group whose actions seem designed to maximise economic damage and disruption.

‘We want to see some people banged up instead of escaping with a fine they can pay from their trust fund,’ the source said. Friday night’s blockade of print facilities in

Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, Merseyside, disrupted the distribution of 1.5million newspapers, including the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph. A printing site near Motherwell, Lanarkshire was also targeted. Miss Patel’s intervention came as: Ministers ordered police to ensure there was no repeat, with Boris Johnson personally ringing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick.

■ Sir Keir Starmer faced pressure to condemn Labour’s former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who likened the XR protesters to the suffragettes.

■ Police chiefs faced criticism for their ‘softly-softly’ approach to the protests.

■ Extinction Rebellion was forced to deny it has been infiltrated by far-Left militants such as the Socialist Workers Party.

Friday’s blockades drew condemnation from across government, with the Prime Minister saying it was ‘completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’s access to news in this way’.

The blockades were the latest in a string of direct action protests that have seen the Metropolitan Police issue 20 fixed penalty notices of £10,000 each under the coronavirus regulations. Last night Government sources said Miss Patel and the PM had asked officials to conduct a rapid review of the law.

Options include using the 2015 Serious Crime Act to designate the group as an organised crime gang – potentially leaving activists open to jail terms of up to five years.

Ministers are also looking at new powers under the Public Order Act to protect ‘critical national infrastructure and tenets of democracy’. This could make it illegal for protesters to blockade sites such as Parliament, the courts or newspaper printing plants.

The Scottish Government said: ‘We support positive calls to climate action and welcome all constructive contributions to the discussion on how we end our contribution to climate change.

‘However, we strongly support the newspaper industry and condemn disruptive action that seeks to undermine freedom of the press.’ John McLellan, director of the Scottish Newspaper Society, called the activists’ actions ‘completely unacceptable’ and ‘little more than eco-fascism’.

Extinction Rebellion said it would be ridiculous to classify the group as an organised crime gang.

In a statement, the group said: ‘According to the Government’s own strategy “organised crime” is “characterised by violence or the threat of violence and by the use of bribery and corruption”. That is hardly an accurate description of the thousands of ordinary people who take part in Extinction Rebellion’s non-violent protests.’

The group claimed its targeting of print works was designed to force newspapers to give more coverage to climate change. But the action led to many Sun readers missing an interview with Sir David Attenborough on the subject.

Academic studies suggest newspaper coverage of climate issues has been rising in recent years.

EXTINCTION Rebellion’s campaign to stifle the free Press is contemptible and deeply sinister. But it should come as no real surprise.

To this gimcrack coalition of pious environmental extremists, anti-capitalists and poundshop anarchists, diversity of opinion is an anathema.

For them, there is just one orthodoxy; that the planet can be saved from destruction only by a return to some imagined pre-industrial nirvana, run by a collectivist ‘citizens’ assembly’.

No fossil fuel, no nuclear, no heavy industry, no globalisation – and no tolerance of dissent. Anyone questioning the credo, or arguing that decarbonising too quickly could devastate the economy and blight millions of lives, must be cancelled or bullied into silence.

The irony of Extinction Rebellion’s blockade of newspaper print plants is that most of the publications they targeted broadly agree that the world must address climate change with more urgency.

Indeed, Britain has an excellent record on cutting emissions and has vowed to become carbon neutral by 2050, possibly sooner.

But these one-eyed protesters have no interest in debate – just shouting down any divergent views.

So where does Labour stand on this blatant affront to free expression? Hackney MP Diane Abbott cheered the protesters on yesterday, likening them to ‘the suffragettes and hunger marchers of the 1930s’.

The latter comparison was particularly bizarre, given that most of these self-styled crusaders come from comfortable middleclass backgrounds.

(If last year’s election had gone another way, Ms Abbott could now be Home Secretary – a truly chilling thought.)

Amid the furore yesterday, new legislation was mooted under which Extinction Rebellion could be classed as an organised crime group, with stiffer penalties to match. One can see the exasperation behind such calls, but these demonstrators must not be allowed to make martyrs of themselves.

Surely far better than making new laws would be for the police to enforce those we already have.

Wilful obstruction of a public highway is a criminal offence, as is aggravated trespass. So why did the police vacillate for so long before moving in to make arrests?

Yes, the right to protest is enshrined in British law. Malicious trespass, obstruction and illegal restraint of trade are not. They are crimes. It’s about time chief constables remembered the distinction.