Second terror chief attacks anarchist aim of eco protest
EXTINCTION Rebellion (XR) leaders have been accused of threatening permanent recession and the overthrow of capitalism as a second former counterterror chief warned they could pose a future terror threat.
Rupert Read, a spokesman for XR, was challenged over statements by the group’s leaders that the movement “was the best chance we have of bringing down capitalism” and that people “might die” in the process of “bringing down governments”.
They were exposed in an investigation for Policy Exchange, the think tank, by Richard Walton, a former counter-terror chief, who warned that XR should be treated as an extremist anarchist group intent on “revolution” aimed at achieving a breakdown of the state and democracy.
Mr Read, a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, said: “Everybody knows that our current system is failing. We are asking people to stop and take a look at our system and be ready to reassess it. If we don’t do that, then you are in dire trouble.”
He added: “I would rather live on a healthy planet than die but if you look at what happened with the suffragettes and with the civil rights movement people did die on those movements.
“This movement, this struggle, is even bigger than those. If people die it’s not because of us. We are absolutely a non-violent movement.” Questioned on the BBC over XR’S commitment to “stop rising GDP” and “permanent recession,” he said: “The alternatives are these: On the one hand business as usual, climate breakdown and mass death. On the other hand we reassess and try to find a way of going forward together so that we can actually live and prosper together.”
He warned the next target for XR’S campaign of “lawbreaking” would be financial institutions. “It might mean things such as blockading them, such as having some kind of debt strike,” he said. “We might be refusing to repay debts that are taken out from financial institutions that are acting completely irresponsibly because they are putting our futures at risk.”
He said XR planned to cause even more chaos in London in the autumn following the protests in April, which gridlocked the capital for more than a week. “Our rebellion in October will be stronger and bigger than the rebellion in April,” he said.
Pledging that XR was “absolutely prepared to break the law,” he added: “We will be back on the streets until the Government acts and faces up to this terrible crisis which is going to destroy us.”
XR’S handbook, This is Not a Drill, sets out its aim to target the capital to maximise the impact and cost to the economy, with protests running over many consecutive days.
Sir Mark Rowley, former head of counter-terrorism when the UK was hit by five terror attacks, said there was an implication of using violence for political ends in statements by XR’S core leadership. “I know they were at one stage talking about putting drones up over Heathrow, which is massively dangerous and I would class as terrorism,” he said. “To call tens of thousands
‘Our rebellion in October will be stronger and bigger than the rebellion in April’
of people involved terrorists is not right but to say there are some people at the centre who are thinking of acts that may at some stage cross the line is a prospect, listening to that interview [with Mr Read] and reading [Richard Walton’s] report.”
Sixteen XR protesters were arrested yesterday after they blocked a main road in Bristol that leads to the M32.
The movement is staging five days of disruption in five cities around the UK.