Extinction Rebellion members, dressed as Suffragettes, took to Cornmarket Street to raise public awareness about the increased number of protesters who face criminal sentences. Members of the group were handing out leaflets and talking to the public during their protest on Friday 24th January.
The group’s actions precedes the appeals of 16 climate protesters at the Royal Courts of Justice on 29th and 30th January. They hope that their presence on Cornmarket Street will draw awareness to these sentencing appeals and generate public awareness about new laws restricting disruptive protests, introduced last year.
One Extinction Rebellion member told Cherwell: “This is about courage, about sticking up for things that you believe in. It’s really important that the public knows what’s going on.”
Extinction Rebellion is an environmental protest movement who use nonviolent methods to try to influence government action and public opinion on climate change. Members of the group are normally distinguishable by their green and black banners, but this afternoon they ditched their normal attire for outfits resembling the Suffragettes who campaigned for women’s voting rights in the early 1900s.
They hope to draw parallels between imprisoned Suffragettes and members of their own movement who have been prosecuted under new protesting laws. Over a thousand Suffragettes were imprisoned for public disorder. They gained widespread publicity by heckling MPs, locking-on to railings, and burning buildings.
The Public Order Act 2023 was introduced by the previous Conservative government in an attempt to crack down on disruptive protests. The act allowed courts to introduce specific restrictions on protests with “serious prevention orders”. Infringing these orders carries a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. The act also made illegal concealing one’s identity at certain protests, climbing on war memorials, and possessing flares.
Home Secretary at the time, James Cleverly, said that “the public has a democratic right to protest and this government will always uphold that. However, recent months have shown certain individuals are just dedicated to wreaking havoc and causing severe disruption to the everyday lives of the public.” He said that the legislation aimed to stop those who ignore warnings from law enforcements to go “cannot continue to cause turmoil unpunished”.
Ines, who was taking part in the public engagement on Cornmarket, said that: “The majority of climate protesters adhere to non-violence, and these changes to the law seem absolutely ridiculous. They’re draconian in their implementation. We might cause disruption, but we’re never violent. The current laws simply don’t seem proportionate for their non-violent protests.”
This was not the only Extinction Rebellion activity Cornmarket bore witness to this week. The following day, the group protested outside of Barclays, holding a flag which read “this bank funds climate change” and playing drums loudly. Flyers being handed out described Barclays as “Europe’s biggest financier of fossil fuels” and said that it “funds extreme oil and gas projects incompatible with tackling the climate crisis”.
A Barclays spokesperson told Cherwell they had no comment on the protest activity itself but noted that “building a new energy system that provides clean, reliable and affordable energy won’t happen overnight – a period of transition is necessary. Barclays is committed to providing the finance to meet current energy needs while financing the scaling of clean energy, delivering against our target to facilitate $1trn of Sustainable and Transition Finance by 2030.”