ONE day, last week, taking advantage of the surprisingly good weather, I took a walk to St James’ Park in central London and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw hundreds of tents, colourful flags, banners and even rows of portable loos. They transformed the royal park into some kind of a holiday camp or even a music festival.
The atmosphere was cheerful with music and singing emanating from some of the bigger tents but the messages on banners and those displayed on the tents and marquees were gravely serious. Emblazoned across some of the big tents were, “The Planet is dying”, “This is an Emergency”, and “There’s no Planet B”.
There were posters and banners with symbols of the hourglass, eerily showing that the clock is ticking and the end is coming soon if we do not do anything to stop or slow down climate change. The hourglass has become the symbol of the Extinction Rebellion or XR as they chose to call their movement with the “stated aim of using civil disobedience to compel government action on climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse”.
The ER activists are back taking over parts of central London and other cities around the world. And this, they promised will go on for two weeks.
I sort of bumped into these activists; young, elderly, in wheelchairs and pushchairs, smart suited and hippy-like , when I came out of the Kings Cross train station on Sunday. I was initially greeted by loud beatings of the drums and singing — and then I saw them dancing to the beat. That was the first day of the gathering of these activists who must have come from all corners of Britain to take part in whatever they could do to cause disruption, get attention and finally get the government to act.
Today is the sixth day of mainly partying protests in the streets; shouting slogans and waving banners.
They are very well organised and have planned their routes and strategic places where they would sit in and cause as much disruption without destruction. Their various colourful and eye-catching costumes have attracted a lot of tourists to capture them for social media. The mission is partly achieved.
Walking in the park and later in Trafalgar Square dotted with tents, I felt as though I was walking in The Jungle of Calais where refugees from around the world sought shelter.
But it wasn’t. They were camping and organising sit-ins and marching literally on the doorsteps of the Queen and along the corridors of power that are Whitehall and Downing Street.
I asked a young girl who had come all the way from Colchester whether they had permission to camp in the Royal park. No, she said. And the police who stood a safe distance from them could not do anything. They were not causing trouble. They went about their business with a smile and a song.
There were even tents for meditation, for briefing on climate change and for jamming.
There were also tents for toddlers who were brought along by their parents. It is the concern for the future generation that had brought these people to the streets of London.
The roads from Parliament Square and on the opposite direction from New Scotland Yard were blocked. Tents were already in place along the road to Whitehall. Protesters marched from the Houses of Parliament down Whitehall, a street lined with government departments and ministries — a high-security area even on a normal day.
Cyclists moved about efficiently delivering food to those who needed food and drinks, and youngsters walked about carrying bin bags to collect rubbish left on the green.
More than 10 key sites had been targeted in London and more than 1,000 arrests have been made although by large the demonstrations have been peaceful albeit noisy.
On the third day of the civil disobedient day of action, I made my way to Trafalgar Square and coming from the direction of Embankment, one can already feel the carnival-like atmosphere coming from the iconic site of London.
Tourists would not have recognised some of the famous sites. Even Nelson Column isn’t spared from being pasted on with banners and slogans. One of the lions had a flag of the ER flying in the wind from its mouth.
There were the quiet groups — one held a meditation class in front of the famous statue with a big poster that says “Tell The Truth”, a message to the government to be transparent about the scale of the ecological crisis and declare a climate emergency, “working with other groups and institutions to communicate the urgent need for change”.
Another quiet group donned crimson red robes with deathly white painted faces. They walked slowly and silently amongst the crowd, perhaps symbolising death angels, and stopping to tend to protesters lying on the streets. Then they moved on to face the policemen and women cordoning off the area leading towards Westminster. The traffic lights changed from red to yellow to green and yet no traffic was going through the area taken over by the protesters.
The noisy groups were those with the heavy drums, drowning out speeches by a rabbi in the nearby square.
So far, there have been more than 1,000 arrests. They have done sit-ins on Lambeth Bridge, at the London City Airport, causing delays and disruptions of flights.
One man even bought a flight ticket, only to climb up to the fuselage and glue himself up there until he was removed by the security forces. His action and those of others were all live streamed. Yesterday, there was a sit-in at the BBC office in protest against what they said was the broadcasting house’s silence over the whole climate change issue.
Gluing themselves seemed to be the in-thing; yesterday two protesters glued themselves on the road in front of the Malaysian Tourism office in Trafalgar Square.
It had been an inconvenience to officer workers in the area, which to a certain extent, meant the mission of the protesters had been partly achieved. The police rarely intervened but kept a keen eye on their activities. That evening, there was a bit of tension as flag-waving supporters of the Kurdish Liberation group joined in, threatening to get a share of the publicity.
So far, pedestrians seem tolerant for they, too, care about the environment and are concerned over the change in weather conditions. But if it drags on for too long, causing a lot of disruption, there might be some trouble.
The already overstretched Metropolitan police have had to divert their manpower from the very real and urgent issue of knife crime escalating in the city, to minding the protesters sitting in on the streets or gluing themselves to rubbish bins.
The government is at the moment focused on finding a solution to Brexit and not much has been heard from them.
In the next few days, Extinction Rebellion expects between 20,000 and 30,000 people from local groups across the UK to make their way to the capital. And among them there will no doubt be the troublemaker opportunists whose actions will more than damage their cause.