Extinction Rebellion climate protesters plot further action against press
EXTINCTION Rebellion protesters have vowed to continue their attacks on the press after activists escaped convictions for a printworks blockade on a technicality.
Emboldened by victory in recent court cases, this weekend the climate activists will return to their tactics of mass disruption with around 200 roadblocks planned across the country. Despite widespread condemnation of targeted attacks on the press, they are also plotting further action against newspapers in the coming months, The can disclose.
Katie Anne Ritchie-moulin, 22, Harrison Radcliffe, 21, and Luca Vitale, 22, were all cleared of trespass after blockading a printing press in Knowsley in September last year.
In a night of chaos that prevented the distribution of 500,000 copies of national newspapers, including The Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Sun, activists targeted the Merseyside plant and a second in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
But the three from Knowsley were cleared at Liverpool magistrates’ court this week after the manager could not say with certainty where the boundary was between public and private land.
After the verdict, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said: “The free press is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the disruptive and frankly dangerous tactics deployed by these individuals last year were totally unacceptable.”
She said the Government was strengthening protest laws as the police say “current legislation used for managing protests is not fit for purpose”.
Sources at the time of the blockades claimed the decision of Hertfordshire Police to charge 51 people with the lesser offence of obstruction of the highway was made because of the same difficulty in establishing that boundary.
The verdict came just days after six XR protesters were cleared by a jury of criminal damage on Shell’s London headquarters despite the judge directing that they had no defence in law.
An XR spokesman yesterday confirmed that they were planning a mass “Free the Press” “uprising” on Sunday June 27.
Details of how they plan to target newspapers including The Telegraph have yet to be revealed, but the proposals have caused concern among free speech campaigners.
Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “Political protesters targeting newspapers because they’re not more sympathetic to their cause is a very worrying development.”
He said that he had no objection to XR protesting peacefully but added: “In a democracy the way to win a public debate is to use evidence and reason, not brute force.
“The tactics employed by Extinction Rebellion remind me of those a populist demagogue would use to silence his critics.”
‘The disruptive and frankly dangerous tactics used by these individuals last year were totally unacceptable’