Environmental protest groups have claimed they will team up this fall to Westminster come to a stop and drive the police to the “breaking point”.
Hundreds of activists held a sit-in outside parliament on Saturday, in what one organizer described as “normal people diving a toe” before widespread civil disobedience on Oct. 1.
Groups like Insulate Britain, Stop the War, Just Stop Oil and former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project wants the Government to reduce energy bills while banning fossil fuel extraction.
“The idea is that normal people take a toehold in civil disobedience, and being on the road is really the first step to not doing what you’re told,” Gabby Ditton, 28, of Norwich, a Saturday organizer protested.
“And then hopefully everyone will come back in October where the plan is to have thousands of people arrested.
“When they ask you to move, say, ‘I’m so sorry officer, I can’t do that unless you give me my demand.’
“In fact you get so many people arrested that the police reach the breaking point, they can’t take it anymore.”
Several activists in Westminster appeared to be from the ranks of Extinction Rebellion, wearing the same XR flags seen when London ground to a halt in 2019.
Russ Peterson, an Extinction Rebellion member who traveled down from Northampton, said he was marching for his children and grandchildren.
“Look at what we’re doing to the planet and what they’re going to have to live with,” he said.
“We got a little glimpse of it on Monday and Tuesday this week when it was 40C, and you think that was two days.
“Can you imagine that for a week or two? It would be unbearable, and that’s what’s going to happen unless we change things drastically.”
Protesters came to Westminster from various locations in the capital, shouting slogans against fossil fuels as they moved through central London.
Cheers erupted as two groups met at the corner of Whitehall Place on their way to? Parliament Squarewhich has been stripped of its grass by this week’s heat wave.
Among the protesters against climate change was Nelly, a makeshift white elephant and veteran of a dozen marches, who created theater designer Michael Taylor from plastazote, nylon and bamboo.
The costume was kept in the air for over an hour by two activists, dressed in thick quilted trousers, as they made their way to Parliament in temperatures of around 24°C.
A third man, dressed in camouflage and what appeared to be a bus conductor’s hat, held onto Nelly’s suitcase with a string and bent occasionally to check on the occupants.
“It’s hot and it’s heavy — it’s okay for about two hours, and that’s really when you’re longing to hand it over to someone else,” Mr Taylor said.