‘GET STUCK IN’
Priti Patel orders police to protect print plants after climate extremists sabotage newspaper distribution
HOME Secretary Priti Patel ordered the police to guard newspaper printing plants last night to try to prevent a repeat of the disruption environmental activists caused on Friday night – and told officers to ‘get stuck in’.
Ms Patel, who described the climate change protests by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) group as an ‘attack on democracy’, told forces to provide a police presence at all of the printing sites.
It came after XR delayed the distribution of hundreds of thousands of copies of national newspapers, including the Daily Mail, to shops yesterday by blocking access to printing presses at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire and Knowsley in Merseyside. In Scotland, a handful of XR protesters targeted presses near Motherwell, North Lanarkshire.
A Home Office source said: ‘Priti was furious. She told the police to “get stuck in” to stop a second night of disruption.’
On Friday night, protesters used vehicles and bamboo structures to block roads to highlight what they claimed was the media’s failure to ‘report on the climate and ecological emergency’. The presses print the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, the London Evening Standard, the Sun, Times, Sun on Sunday and Sunday Times, as well as the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.
Yesterday, Hertfordshire Police said that 50 people were arrested at the demonstration in Broxbourne while another 30 were arrested on Merseyside. A Police Scotland spokesman said: ‘Officers were called to a report of a protest at Eurocentral. The protest was peaceful and there were no issues.’
However, the Metropolitan Police said that it had handed out a total of £200,000 of fixed penalty fines to 20 XR protesters for organising illegal gatherings of more than 30 people in breach of coronavirus social distancing rules.
Ms Patel said: ‘This attack on all of the free press impacted many workers going about their jobs. Overnight print workers, delivery drivers, wholesale workers and retail newsagents have faced delays and financial penalty. This is a matter for the police and the Home Office.’
The Federation of Independent Retailers said the protest left small businesses with ‘angry customers’ to deal with as well as affecting home delivery services.
Stuart Reddish, the body’s national president, said: ‘It means that we are unable to get newspapers to our elderly and vulnerable customers.
‘Newsagents have played a critical role during Covid-19 in getting newspapers into the hands of readers and this is not helpful at a time when every sale counts.’
Other newspaper publishers swiftly helped pick up capacity on their presses to limit the disruption to distribution.
Under a banner reading ‘Free the truth’, XR tweeted that it was using the disruption to expose newspapers’ ‘failure to report on the climate and ecological emergency’ adding: ‘We’re going to filter out the lies and take the power back for a night.’
Alanna Byrne, from XR, said: ‘We will only tackle the climate and ecological emergency by breaking the traditional impasse of oppositional politics and coming together, despite our differences.’
The Society of Editors executive director Ian Murray called the climate protest ‘foolish and anti-democratic’.
He added: ‘The irony of protesters who wish to have their voices heard and their message listened to attempting to silence others by preventing the distribution of newspapers would be laughable if it was not so serious.
‘You have to wonder whether those planning and taking part in these foolish actions understand anything from history.
‘Controlling or shutting down free speech and an independent media is the first action of totalitarian regimes and dictators.’
A source at News UK, publisher of the Sun and Times, defended the company’s stance on climate, saying that Saturday’s Sun carried an article by naturalist David Attenborough on how to tackle the climate crisis.
The company was also moving to scrap all single-use plastic used to wrap its titles.
Although Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer failed to make a comment yesterday, Shadow International Trade Secretary Emily Thornberry said that the protest was ‘very worrying’ amid concerns elderly people may miss out on their newspaper deliveries.
Extinction Rebellion Glasgow activist Susanna Hotham said: ‘We are taking action tonight to make a statement about the lack of democracy in a press majority-owned by billionaires.’