Last Monday, Extinction Rebellion wheeled their big pink boat into the middle of Oxford Circus, kicking off what’s now been just over a week of sustained street protest throughout central London. Whether they’re any closer to achieving their goal – having the government “tell the truth” about the “climate emergency” and commit to cutting CO2 emissions to almost zero by 2025 – is debatable.
As protesters enter the second week of demonstrations – after over 1,000 arrests, an address from Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg and heavy-handed police moving the group from their various bases to Marble Arch over the Easter weekend – government ministers still don’t seem to have all that much to say about XR’s bugbear, i.e. the single greatest threat facing humanity.
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Theresa May has scurried as far away from the protests as she can possibly can: to Maidenhead, her constituency, where she spent the weekend marshalling a 10-mile running race. The last we heard from Environment Secretary Michael Gove on the issue was his remark, six days ago – two days into the protests – that, “We’ve got the message.” And on Sunday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan reversed what had seemed to be his tacit support for the movement, saying in a statement that the disruption is “now taking a real toll on our city”.
Either way, XR activists are sticking around. Having been ejected from their protest sites on Oxford Street, Waterloo Bridge and Parliament Square over the weekend, they’re planning to gather today to march on Parliament. We’ll be there to cover that, but until then: here’s what the past week of demonstrations has looked like.
