Priti Patel has slammed environmental “thugs” for “waging a war against the British people” after they spent days digging tunnels beneath highways, impeding the delivery of groceries and gasoline as well as the printing of the Daily Mail.
The Just Stop Oil activists’ demonstration blocking a gasoline station forced the closure of the highways leading to printworks, and the Home Secretary asked police to crack down harder on these “lawless” protesters.
After a last-minute agreement to print at other locations, The Mail was only able to distribute newspapers to customers yesterday morning. Some delivery trucks were redirected many miles away, and other drivers were rushed in to fill orders.
Because activists claimed their tunnelling had degraded the road, Essex Police had barred any cars from using it.
Early in the morning, it was reopened, but only to “priority traffic”; newspaper delivery was presumably excluded because of official instruction.
Yesterday afternoon, newspaper delivery vehicles were finally put to the list of priorities, so more disruption was not anticipated.
“These thugs and so-called eco-warriors are waging war on the British people by going out of their way with deliberate disturbances impacting our everyday way of life — our liberties, our free Press,” said Miss Patel. They are at fault.
“In my opinion, they should all be halted. This is a symptomatic example of the lawlessness in our nation, where it is accepted that these individuals may act in such a manner. It is not acceptable.
“The police must use the full weight of the law and prevent these demonstrators from entering the area.” Utilize the laws that have been put in place.
There are already laws that allow for aggravated trespass arrests, and my Public Order Bill would add additional criminal offences for similar protesting techniques.
However, Assistant Chief Constable Glen Pavelin used a different tone when he suggested that the demonstrators leave.
He declared: “We are prepared to collaborate with you to ensure that your rights to peaceful protest may be used without members breaching the law. We take the concerns of this specific protest organisation, its members, and supporters seriously.
“The present course of action is hazardous and endangers life.” We urge anyone concerned to reconsider their course of action.
For a week, activists have been digging under the two major access roads close to the depot in an effort to sabotage the supply of gasoline.
After tunnelling below, they forced police to barricade Stoneness Road in Essex last Tuesday, albeit this hideout is now empty after the remaining activists were apprehended yesterday night.
Late on Sunday night, they climbed onto an oil tanker and deflated its tyres, blocking St. Clements Way.
In a second tunnel under St. Clements Way, protesters said that they had managed to breach the surface of the road to within an inch of it and that the tunnel was in danger of collapsing.
In order to keep the route from being overworked, the police limited the amount of HGVs that may travel on it. Police officials waived through roadblocks yesterday morning for Co-op trucks, oil tankers, and HGVs carrying medications, while other traffic that wasn’t on the list was turned away from entering or leaving the industrial area.
One businessman said that if his drivers weren’t permitted through, his freight firm may “go to the wall.”
Joanne Collison, CEO of a haulage company, estimated that the road closures would cost her business up to £30,000.
Unintentional greater disruption to other firms, including the print centre, according to a Just Stop Oil representative.
Their goal, according to her, is to “keep pressing the UK Government to stop licencing and consenting to new fossil fuel projects.” Eight people have been arrested.
The Queen’s Speech included the Public Order Bill, which includes tougher penalties and new criminal offences for certain eco-protesters’ techniques, such as “locking on” to public transportation infrastructure.
activists with a narrow focus who are determined to create havoc
by Josh White and Ryan Hooper
With their protests, they have already ruined Premier League football and created havoc on the red carpet.
However, proponents of Just Stop Oil show no signs of slowing down, with an increasing number of their followers willing to attach themselves to sidewalks and roads in order to support their cause.
Demonstrators have been digging beneath road surfaces in Thurrock, Essex, for the past week in an effort to sabotage fuel supplies.
On Sunday night, eight people were detained after they blocked a tanker, inflated its tyres, and boarded the vehicle.
The campaign group only recently organised its first significant protest, which was just a little over six months ago.
A group of about 30 supporters surrounded the Baftas ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in the heart of London, banging drums, yelling, and bursting smoke bombs to demand an end to new fossil fuel projects.
Then 21-year-old serial protester Louis McKechnie ran onto the Goodison Park field to disrupt an Everton vs. Newcastle United football game and cable-tied himself to a goalpost.
The British Grand Prix track at Silverstone was then overrun by five activists, and two of them remained fixated on John Constable’s masterpiece The Hay Wain at the National Gallery in London.
The experienced environmentalist Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, founded Just Stop Oil towards the end of 2021.
Although there was no exact count of supporters at the time, one organiser asserted that the number was “increasing week by week.”
One of them is Dr. Larch Maxey, a 50-year-old scholar who was detained after coming out of the tunnel under Stoneness Road in Thurrock on Sunday on suspicion of creating public annoyance.
He had left a coworker in the tunnel, but yesterday, both of them departed the burrow.
Another group in the adjoining St. Clements Way tunnel declares their intention to stay until the government modifies its environmental policy.
I spent six days in the tunnel, according to Dr. Maxey. Being able to take action that really changed a lot was incredibly powerful.
The government is behaving dishonestly by allowing oil ships to pass over their heads.
They prioritise the needs of big oil above the needs of regular people who are having trouble making ends meet.
The organisation wants the government to stop issuing any new licences for the exploration and production of fossil fuels in the UK and is organising massive blockades in central London in October.
They claimed that the Climate Emergency Fund, a Los Angeles-based organisation founded in 2019, provides the majority of their money.
Too frequently, cops seem to be more concerned with the thugs than the victims.
Leo McKinstry’s commentary
The extreme green agitators have numerous flaws, including conceit, self-righteousness, and immaturity. A persistent absence of irony may be added to that list.
These extremists want to make the production of electricity even more costly by stopping the usage of oil and gas and upsetting supply networks at a time when our nation is in critical need of less priced energy.
Although they complain about “fuel poverty,” their ideas would unavoidably result in blackouts and additional, astronomical increases in energy costs.
The continuing demonstrations in Thurrock, Essex, are typical of their obnoxious, conceited behaviour.
They are intended to stop oil supplies from the massive factory at the site and were organised by the organisation Just Stop Oil, which now joins the permanent youths of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain in the green hall of infamy.
The Essex police prevented other supply chains, such as the local council’s garbage collection service and the delivery of newspapers, including this one, from the big printing plant at Thurrock, thus the gang was not totally successful in their aim.
A free press, according to Winston Churchill, “is the unsleeping defender of every other liberty that free men treasure.” However, authorities claim that this is insufficient for it to qualify as a “vital service,” thus no effort was made to make room for the Mail’s vehicles on Sunday night.
The total lack of accountability in the hardline green movement is what stands out the most.
A organisation like Good Stop Oil does not have the authority to stop trucks or destroy gas stations, as they did last week, but its members believe that their cause is just and that they have the right to hold our country to ransom.
And the Just Stop Oil demonstration in Thurrock is simply a small component of a larger agenda of widespread anarchy planned for the fall.
Extinction Rebellion warns on its website that a significant demonstration will take place in central London in the first few days of September and will be preceded by direct action actions like the “Paint the Streets” campaign.
The “Big One,” a similarly massive gathering in the capital that will be the focal point of “a lengthy period of disruption until the Government agrees to form an independent Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice,” will take place in October after that.
There will be a campaign to recruit at least 100,000 people for “massive, non-violent, civic resistance” in addition to the demand for the Assembly. Extinction Rebellion declares in strident tones that “we will refuse to leave until our demands are realised.”
Having the freedom to protest is essential to our culture. But Just Stop Oil’s and the other dogmatists’ antics go far further than that. Their actions have shown that they are opponents of freedom.
Van drivers deliver their products late, travellers to airports miss their flights, and kids arrive late for school all as a result of activists who tape their hands to the pavement of major thoroughfares.
Police all too often give the impression that they are more concerned about the welfare of the protesters than the everyday workers whose lives they make miserable.
In one online video clip, a policeman addresses a crowd of protesters and says, “If any of you need anything, just let us know.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, angry drivers have been known to consider using force to enforce the law. Police officers will, however, physically obstruct anyone who tries to remove protesters by themselves.
The police do have the right to disperse threatening protests in accordance with laws like the Public Order Act or the prohibition on obstructing a public highway.
The weekend’s events in Thurrock, however, made it clearer than ever that the police must have more authority to deal with these careless, anti-democratic troublemakers.
When Parliament reconvenes, Tory MPs should band together to push for the swift passage of legislation imposing harsher penalties for their illegal behaviour.
The wreckers cannot be allowed to have the upper hand, that much is evident. Their view is a formula for calamity and upheaval in a nation already beset by an energy crisis.