Protest leaders care more about anarchy than the environment

The anarchist environmentalist protest group Extinction Rebellion is once more engaged in protest and illegal mass disruption, this time across London, Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow and Cardiff.

Since its launch, just nine months ago, it has managed to capture the public imagination, becoming the UK’S most active campaign group, taking the nation by storm with its direct action and successfully persuading the Government to radically change its policies on carbon emissions.

Using maxims of “rebellion” and “non-violent protest”, it has rapidly enlisted tens of thousands of supporters, large numbers of whom have been prepared to block roads and bridges and be arrested for their cause.

But in a paper entitled Extremism Rebellion – A review of ideology and tactics published today by the think tank Policy Exchange, I lift the lid on its leaders’ true motives and ideology. It will make uncomfortable reading for

several politicians, in particular, Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell who strongly endorsed the group. As the paper shows, its leaders seek a more alarming agenda than pure environmentalism, one that is rooted in an “open rebellion against the Government” and in the political extremism of anarchism and anticapitalism. The “civil resistance model” they espouse is intended to achieve mass protest accompanied by law breaking, leading eventually to the breakdown of democracy and the state.

Obscured from public view, these objectives mark Extinction Rebellion’s campaign out as a subversive one that seeks to break down the established civil order and liberal democracy in the UK. Many followers of Extinction Rebellion are completely unaware of the intentions of their leaders, despite them being explicit in Youtube posts of their speeches and in their publications. Followers have been seduced into believing that Extinction Rebellion’s methods and tactics are honourable and justified when they are clearly not. Despite its lawbreaking, Extinction Rebellion’s brand remains remarkably strong, with apparently high levels of public support, including from leading figures who should know better.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, writing the afterword in Extinction Rebellion’s handbook This is Not a Drill (published by Penguin) states: “Extinction Rebellion urges on us the revolution of coming to ourselves, coming to truthfulness, healing the broken connection with what we are.”

Four pages on, the handbook illustrates how activists can block roads and shut bridges.

Those who accept planned mass law breaking in a liberal democracy in furtherance of a political cause are effectively condoning extremism and a breakdown of the rule of law. They may assert that breaking the law is a means to an end, that there is a crisis that needs addressing and that law breaking is the only tactic that will change government policy, but in doing so they have become extremists.

If we fail to confront those who incite and encourage mass law breaking, we are failing in our duty to confront extremism.

This new form of extremism needs to be tackled head-on by ministers, the police, politicians and the Commission for Countering Extremism, which should ensure that far-left, anarchist and environmentalist extremists are sufficiently recognised and challenged within a national extremism strategy.

The honeymoon that Extinction Rebellion has enjoyed needs to come to an end with the public fully aware that this is not an organisation whose strategy and tactics should be applauded and copied.

As a result of the publication of this paper, no one can now plead ignorance of the ominous and threatening intentions of its leaders. It lays bare the history, strategy and tactics of Extinction Rebellion, revealing its malign underlying philosophy and intentions.

It is time to reboot our approach to all forms of extremism, calling out those who undermine the rule of law and our nation’s values.

This includes the likes of Roger Hallam, a founder of Extinction Rebellion, who once chillingly said: “We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose ... and yes, some may die in the process.”

We have been warned.

Richard Walton is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and a former Head of Counter-terrorism Command at the Metropolitan Police

‘Followers have been seduced into believing that their methods and tactics are honourable and justified when they are clearly not’