I drive diesel, says founder of Extinction Rebellion
The confusion over how to deal with their disruptive antics shows the danger of our unclear protest laws
ONE of Extinction Rebellion’s founders has admitted that she drives a diesel car as her colleague jumped to her defence saying, “we’re all hypocrites”.
Dr Gail Bradbrook said she has the environmentally damaging vehicle because she cannot afford an electric car. Yesterday, her protest group brought parts of London to a standstill.
Defending her actions, XR volunteer and city recruiter Jonathan Tassell said that “we are all hypocrites, we are in a system” as he claimed that he could not afford solar power. Panels for the average home cost £6,000, experts said.
Dr Bradbrook admitted that she drives a diesel car during an interview on Talk Radio, claiming: “I can’t get my kids to sports fixtures, they are both into football and rugby.
“I do lots of lift sharing but I can’t get them there because we don’t have buses that run on a Sunday. Some of the things are systemic issues, aren’t they? We all do what we can.”
Diesel cars are considered much more harmful to the environment than electric cars and the Government wants Britons to ditch them to help the UK reach “net zero” in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Last night, the Met Police said it arrested 40 protesters after they blocked roads in Cambridge Circus. Police declared the gathering unlawful from 6.15pm, meaning anyone who remained risked being arrested. At 10.30pm, the Met said traffic resumed. Whitehall was also targeted by XR.
Ahallmark of a free society is the right to legitimate protest. The key word in that sentence is legitimate. Who decides? What are the boundaries? As the climate pressure group Extinction Rebellion (XR) begins its latest campaign of disruption in London and other cities, people whose lives are disrupted by their antics are entitled to know whether their rights are also to be respected by the law.
Activists have set up a giant pink “crisis talks” negotiating table in Covent Garden which the police cannot move because XR members locked their arms inside it and the structure could collapse on them. As the demonstrations spread dozens of arrests have been made.
I had imagined that existing statutes covering criminal damage and obstructing the highway were sufficient to set the parameters for legitimate protest. Overstep them and you get nicked. However, it turns out that matters are not so straightforward.
In September 2017, a protest was staged at the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair held at the Excel Centre in east London. The campaigners, opposed to the arms trade, lay down in the middle of the road, attaching themselves to two heavy boxes. The police took 90 minutes to remove them and they were arrested and charged with wilful obstruction of a highway.
At their first trial before magistrates, however, they were acquitted. The district judge said that given their right to freedom of peaceful assembly under the European Convention on Human Rights, the prosecution had to prove that “limited, targeted and peaceful action, which involved an obstruction of the highway, was unreasonable”. The judge considered a 90-minute disruption to be “reasonable”. At appeal, a higher court reversed that decision so it went to the Supreme Court, which just a few weeks ago ruled that the original decision to acquit should stand.
This is the so-called Ziegler judgment (named after one of the protesters) on which the XR organisation is now claiming legitimacy for its disruption. An XR spokesman said: “The landmark Ziegler ruling confirms our legal right to peaceful protest and we expect the police to respect those rights.” The Met has been placed in an impossible position trying to navigate between statute laws and court rulings that appear to undermine them. Here is another example of judges muddying previously clear waters.
Section 137 of the 1980 Highways Act makes it an offence “if a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway”. That might sound clear enough but in a High Court ruling dating to 1965, judges held that “lawful excuse” should encompass “reasonableness” and this test has been applied ever since even if it was not what Parliament intended.
The Supreme Court cited this in its Ziegler judgment. “Whether or not the ... obstruction is or is not an unreasonable use of the highway is a question of fact. It depends upon all the circumstances, including the length of time the obstruction continues, the place where it occurs, the purpose for which it is done, and whether it does in fact cause an actual obstruction as opposed to a potential obstruction.”
This is the confusing background to the Government’s latest efforts to get to grips with the law on protest through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. This measure has itself become a target for militant protest under the menacingly ambiguous Kill the Bill slogan.
The question is whether it is even possible to set out the parameters in statute. The Bill introduces a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” and includes provisions to make noise unlawful if it is “seriously harmful or oppressive”.
Would this cover that annoying chap Steve Bray who stood outside Parliament for months during the great debates over the EU bellowing Stop Brexit? Quite a few MPS and broadcasters who had to endure Mr Bray’s shouting wished that someone would cart him away. But they had to put up with it while the rest of us watching on TV recognised his right to say what he felt. After all, what is the point of protest if not to get yourself seen and your views heard? This clause should be taken out of the Bill.
But the rest of the proposed legislation is not the heinous attack on liberty that its detractors maintain. Moreover, whatever XR says, the Supreme Court ruling does not confer carte blanche for a small number of campaigners to stop hundreds of thousands of people going about their daily lives thinking they are entitled to do this because of the alleged existential nature of the climate threat.
There is a certain lofty disdain shown by XR protesters towards the rest of us because they believe the causes they espouse are so important that they justify extreme action. How can you be selfish enough to complain about not getting to work on time when the world is about to fry?
None the less, there is a general sense that the balance between the rights of protesters and those of everyone else is seriously out of kilter. The Bill will empower the police to clamp down on peaceful gatherings where they might result in “serious disruption to the life of the community”. But what exactly does that mean? Police chiefs fear that if they are given the discretion to limit protest under certain conditions they will have to adjudicate between protesters, commuters and businesses on the basis “of broad and ambiguous criteria’’.
To return to the question of who decides the legitimate boundaries of free protest in a liberal democracy, the answer is Parliament, so MPS and peers have a duty to get this right. The joint parliamentary committee on human rights recently concluded that the Bill contains provisions that are “unnecessary and disproportionate and confer unacceptably wide and vague powers to curb demonstrations on the Home Secretary and police.”
In passing this new law, therefore, Parliament must ensure both clarity and certainty. When XR activists return with their superglue and pink tables next year they, the police, the courts and the rest of us should know where we all stand.