From Tomorrow, 16 Days of Rebellion and Protest Against the UK Government — for the Climate, the Economy and Justice

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Over the last few weeks, much of London has been plastered with posters advertising the environmental protest group Just Stop OIl’s ‘Occupy Westminster’ protest, beginning on Oct 1. The timing could hardly have been better, as, since it was first announced many weeks ago, a new fossil fuel-loving, climate change-denying government has been put in place — elected by just 81,326 Tory Party members and with no mandate from the people of the UK — which has proceeded to refuse to levy windfall taxes on the energy companies’ vast and unearned recent and future profits (choosing instead to put the burden on taxpayers for an energy price cap that was required to save the country from economic collapse), has lifted the ban on fracking, and has promised to open the floodgates to new oil and gas extraction (as well as, most recently, crashing the UK economy in the most alarming manner via unjustifiable and fiscally deranged tax cuts for the rich).

Backed by the malevolent far-right ‘libertarian’ think-tanks based in Tufton Street, close to Parliament, including the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), described by climate researchers and environmental groups as “the UK’s most prominent source of climate denialism”, Truss’s government has no interest in investing in renewables, even though the majority of the British public backs new on- and off-shore wind power, solar power and wave power, rather than fossil fuels, and also has no interest in investing to insulate Britain’s leaky homes, even though it would vastly reduce our energy needs, and well as providing significant employment.

The occupation of Westminster begins tomorrow (October 1), with activists gathering first at Euston, Paddington and Waterloo stations at 11am, and then converging on Westminster, with the plan repeated on Sunday October 2 (when, incidentally, the Tories’ train wreck of a conference begins in Birmingham), and, from Monday October 3, moving to Whitehall, opposite 10 Downing Street at 11am every day.

The group’s mission is “to ensure that the government commits to ending all new licenses and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”, and, as they explain, “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”

This weekend’s actions will be a test of the extent to which the police will allow protest and free speech, or whether they will take advantage of controversial anti-protest measures in the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill introduced by the previous home secretary Priti Patel, but if deterence is meant to be an objective of the bill, that will not impress Just Stop Oil’s most committed activists, as 51 protestors risked arrest — and were duly arrested — last week after breaking a private inunction preventing them from protesting outside Kingsbury in Warwickshire, the UK’s largest inland oil storage depot, and as Just Stop Oil have explained, “Since April 1st when supporters of Just Stop Oil first began blocking oil terminals there have been over 1,350 arrests.”

Also tomorrow, Enough Is Enough, a campaign set up by trade unions and community organisations to fight the cost of living crisis, which has been holding packed rallies across the country, is holding a day of action involving actions in at least 45 towns and cities, with the London event beginning at 12 noon at Kings Cross.

On Wednesday October 5, there will be a vigil outside Parliament by the UK Guantánamo Network, a campaign that I’m involved in, who will be calling for the UK government to play its part in urging the Biden administration to finally close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The network involves Amnesty International, Freedom From Torture, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign, and takes place from 1 to 3pm, with campaigners wearing orange jumpsuits (and with some available to anyone wishing to join in on the day). The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and will continue to be at Parliament Square except for next month (Wednesday November 2), when it will be across the road from the US Embassy in Nine Elms.

On Saturday October 8, at 1pm, an extraordinary Human Chain will be formed, surrounding Parliament, to call for the release from HMP Belmarsh of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who is still challenging his proposed extradition to the US to face espionage charges (and a potential sentence of 125 years) for his role in releasing US government documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, including The Guantánamo Files, on which I worked as a media partner. The release of these documents was in the public interest, and the proposal to prosecute Assange poses a grave threat to press freedom, which is a key element that distinguishes our so-called ‘free’ societies from full-blown dictatorships. To join the Human Chain, along with more than 3,500 other people to date, please sign up here.

And finally, from Friday October 14 to Sunday October 16, Extinction Rebellion will be holding a long weekend of action in Westminster, coming together “for disruptive nonviolent civil disobedience and to join forces with other groups organising around the cost of living scandal”, hoping to work towards “bring[ing] 100,000 people onto the streets of London from April 21st, 2023 to create change.”

As they say, “Around 10,000 people working together” succeeded in “getting Parliament to declare an environment and climate emergency in 2019”, adding, “Imagine what 100,000 people coming out on the streets and refusing to leave could do.”

Personally, I think a million would it — just half the number of people who protested against the Iraq War in 2003, but who made the fatal error of going home at the end of the day instead of all — ALL — staying and precipitating a Velvet Revolution.

But as we Brits know all too well, sadly, it’s hard to get people out on the streets with the self-belief and in sufficient numbers to bring about otherwise unimaginable change. Hopefully, tomorrow will see that begin to change. After all, we have a suicidally incompetent government led by Liz Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng, and the planet continues to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that we’re rapidly running out of time to keep our one and only extraordinary home habitable.

As activists over the years have always pointed out, no excuse for inaction is possible. The only question to ask is, “If not now, when? If not you, who?”

See you on the streets.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.

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