Eco-zealot gets a taste of own paint at spy HQ
THIS is the moment a passer-by tackled a protester spraying MI5’s headquarters in London with orange paint yesterday.
Getting his head and rucksack covered in paint for his troubles, the man grappled with the Just Stop Oil activist, eventually managing to spray the modified fire extinguisher at the fanatic.
MI5’s office in Millbank, Westminster, was one of four buildings targeted by the climate change activists yesterday.
The others were the Home Office in Marsham Street, the Bank of England in the City of London and News UK’s offices at London Bridge.
Six protesters were arrested for criminal damage.
‘I want our future back’
It came as a High Court judge ordered more than 180 named Just Stop Oil protesters not to block roads in London. Mr Justice Freedman granted injunctions at a hearing in London after an application by Transport for London.
Just Stop Oil’s protests over the past month have seen paintthrowing activists flouting the law and targeting car dealerships, art galleries and tourist attractions.
During the incident at MI5, activist Tez Burns, a 34-year-old bicycle mechanic from Swansea, demanded ‘no new fossil fuel licences’ in an expletive-laden exchange with the passer-by. Burns said afterwards: ‘The Government has taken our future, I want our future back. It’s criminal inaction.’ Just Stop Oil said the buildings targeted represented the ‘four pillars’ of the fossil fuel economy – the Government, security, finance and the media.
A spokesman added: ‘We are not prepared to stand by and watch while everything we love is destroyed, while vulnerable people go hungry and fossil fuel companies and the rich profit from our misery.
‘The era of fossil fuels should be long gone.’ Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Matt Twist said he ‘understood’ the frustration felt by members of the public who got caught up in the protests, but added that drivers should ‘call us, and we will deal’ with climate activists.
On Sunday, Just Stop Oil blocked traffic by sitting in two roads in east London, prompting a woman to drag one of the activists off the road as angry drivers beeped their horns. More than 600 activists were arrested last month following a host of stunts, from throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting, to scaling the QE2 Bridge and causing more than a dozen major roadblocks.
Other actions include a chocolate-cake attack on King Charles’s waxwork in Madame Tussauds, and blocking the zebra crossing on Abbey Road, made famous by The Beatles.