The police are in thrall to Extinction Revolt in Cambridge

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The police are in thrall to Extinction Revolt in Cambridge

After I learn that police had been invoking emergency powers at an Extinction Revolt protest in Cambridge I believed: about time, too. It meant, I



After I learn that police had been invoking emergency powers at an Extinction Revolt protest in Cambridge I believed: about time, too. It meant, I assumed, that they weren’t going to make the identical mistake because the Met Police final April, after they had been too gradual to cease this bunch of anarchists closing down public thoroughfares.

However one ought to underestimate the plods at one’s peril. The ‘emergency powers’ being utilized by Cambridgeshire Police as an alternative permit them to shut the roads with out giving any discover. Sure, they’re actively facilitating the protest. They turned up of their yellow vests and closed a neighborhood highway on the activists’ behalf. It is going to stay shut all week, affecting bus routes and requiring ambulances to make a detour. It isn’t the one method wherein the police are indulging the group’s actions in Cambridge. Officers have turned a blind eye to felony harm being undertaken by the group in digging up the garden in entrance of Trinity Faculty.

What’s it about Extinction Revolt that has public authorities pathetically in thrall to it? The group offers the outward impression of being anti-establishment, but it appears to have deep tentacles contained in the institution which has allowed it privileges not loved by different teams of protesters. For sure, like spoiled youngsters (effectively, a lot of them are spoiled youngsters) as soon as indulged they merely come again demanding extra, pushing boundaries additional. They blocked Oxford Circus final yr demanding the federal government declare a ‘local weather emergency’ and arrange a ‘residents’ meeting’, and Theresa Might’s administration duly obliged. Now, the Cambridge bunch is demanding that the college and faculties divest from fossil fuels and that the county and metropolis councils arrange their very own residents’ assemblies.

As a Cambridgeshire resident and a member of Cambridge College, I say to the police, council, college and faculty authorities this: Everybody any further goes to take it without any consideration that we now have the police’s permission to shut down any road, for any cause, any time we like. Does anybody in Cambridge assume council tax is simply too excessive? Okay, let’s go and shut down the M11. Assume police should not doing their job in tackling crime? Let’s seize the A14. Simply attempt to cease us, when you have got granted that proper to Extinction Revolt. You’ll be able to overlook, too, making an attempt to gather your £60 fines for straying into bus lanes – you have got given the inexperienced mild for a gaggle to impede buses for an entire week and you can not attempt to deny that proper to others. To the college and faculties I say: don’t give into this bullying by Extinction Revolt and divest from oil firms. If you happen to cave, then you are able to do with out donations from these of us who don’t share Extinction Revolt’s collectivist goals – you’ll be able to sing in your supper.

Police just lately grovelled earlier than Extinction Revolt for placing them on an inventory of extremist organisations. Provided that they’re blockading streets and inflicting felony harm, that was hardly an unreasonable factor to do. The worth of indulging this group might be to make it far more durable to implement public order in future. If police lose management, they’ll have solely themselves accountable.





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