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I
first heard of Extinction/Rebellion a few weeks ago when I happened upon one of
their founders being interviewed on the BBC’s Hardtalk programme. He promised that on April 15, a few weeks
ahead, they would launch a world-wide action of non-violent resistance that
would finally make the somnolent politicians of the world awaken to the need to
do something effective in face if the growing ecological/climate-warming
crisis.
He made it sound as if every
government in the world was going to be confronted by demonstrators who would
be out to prove themselves to be royal pains in the ass, not just demonstrating
passively, marching, shouting, breaking a few windows, burning a few cars and
disused rubber tyres, and then going off home (all of which are
counter-productive actions) but setting
out, rather, to disrupt the exercise of
normal business in many a busy city centre, and, having once done so, to stay
there almost indefinitely.
It sounded so promising that I mentioned
it to a number of my acquaintances, none of whom had even heard of the proposed
action. So I began to wonder if it was all talk. To hear them describe it, they
would need several thousand followers willing to engage in the sort of protest
they were promising ---- locking themselves to railings, climbing the face of
buildings, sitting and lying in the
middle of the road, and refusing to go quietly. They would need to tap into the
sort of fanatics who were prepared to go to prison for their belief in the
efficacy of such actions.
But April 15 has come and gone, and
Extinction/Rebellion is now on everyone’s lips because of the success of their
blockades of four of the central places in London, England --- Piccadilly
Circus, Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Marble Arch. I know each of these places
quite well. The last time I was in London --- it was around 1980, already
nearly 40 years ago --- traffic in those places was so congested that it was
much quicker to get out of your cab and walk, so I could imagine what might
result from a determined effort to disrupt the smooth flow of this log-jam.
A new tactic is that of super-gluing
the hands to railings, to cars and trucks, to each other, in a determined
effort to prevent the police from simply
lifting you up and carrying you off to the Black Maria. Yesterday I
heard a middle-aged woman lawyer,
Farhana Yamin, who has been credited with being responsible for the
inclusion of the achievable target
remissions in the Paris Accord, signed by 195 signatories in April 2016,
explaining on Democracy Now! why she
had moved from working within the system to support for the root-and-branch
opposition posited by the Extinction/Rebellion protests this week.
She said it was simply because the
“legal process is broken right now, and we are having to break law, rather than
make law.” She had super-glued her hands
to the pavement outside the Shell building, and explained: “I joined the mass
civil disobedience movement because of the inaction of companies like Shell who have lobbied governments to
not take action, which is why we are here at this difficult time. And just to
let you know, this action is supported in about 50 countries each one fighting
land degradation, toxic abuse, and human rights abuses, and we are supporting all of those movements around
the rest of the world. “
A younger woman, Clare Fallow, asked
to explain the movement’s rationale,
said it was “well over 30 years of denial and time-wasting, and the
emissions are still going up, so the facts are quite clear that we are on a
catastrophic course and we are not prepared to stand by and allow this to
continue.”
Ms. Yamin said the demonstrators who climbed on to
Shell’s balcony did it to honour Polly Higgins, who has been campaigning for an
ecocide law, which would hold to account companies and governments for criminal
damage to the Earth. "It is absurd that
I was walked off in handcuffs for criminal damage to the Shell building when
Shell itself has been one of the main polluters causing irreversible harm that
is happening all around the world.”
Some 1,000 people have so far been arrested as a
result of the X/R actions, and the home office secretary in Theresa May’s
government was vowing to use the full force of the law to prosecute the offenders.
I can say, having watched a similar
root-and-branch protest in favour of the environment nearly 40 years ago in
British Columbia, that when governments feel really threatened, they never
hesitate to use the prison cell, the law courts, and the full majesty of the
law to punish those who dare to defy them.
I happened to be making a film in the 1980s
just as the Clayquot Sound issue came to the forefront: I remember flying in
a light plane (and one that was sorely
buffeted by those West Coast winds), over the beautiful British Columbia coast
and being utterly appalled at the wanton destruction caused by clearcut logging
of the magnificent rain forests along that coastline. I recall a young woman telling our camera
when she was asked why she was protesting, “Because I get so much energy from
these trees.” She was speaking for the 900 people who were arrested during the
confrontation that ensued, the great
majority of whom were prosecuted and sentenced either to prison sentences
of up to six months, or to fairly heavy fines.
To my mind these protesters were doing the most important thing that
could possibly be done, namely, trying to resist the ruination of our
landscape, the destruction of our environment, and the degradation of our
Earth. But these noble aims carried little weight with the government
compared with the injunction against any action that interfered with the work
being carried out by the logging companies.
That these prison sentences were all
cruel and unusual punishments, certainly not merited by whatever measure (except
perhaps that of a company lawyer, or that of a worker, trying to feed his
family) one might like to suggest, seemed to me obvious at the time. I believe
the Clayquot Sound protest has remained the biggest act of civil disobedience that
has ever occurred in Canada. It did, over many years have an ameliorative
effect on methods of logging, although at one time, government and company, in
a brilliant demonstration of their bad-faith,
managed to string out negotiations with environmentalists and indigenous
protesters for a year, while logging continued
apace.
I would like to say that if I were
thirty years younger I would join the protests of Extinction/Rebellion. But can I really
pretend that my advanced age and fragile health are reason enough to excuse me
from serving alongside the young right now? It sounds like a pretty feeble
excuse to me.
When I was living in London in the 1960s,
a close friend of mine was Robert Resha, who devoted his entire life to trying
to overthrow the apartheid government of South Africa, his home country. In
comparison with his dedication, I used to
feel inadequate.
But he told me, “Don’t worry about
it. Everyone serves in his own way.” And he was quite content to harness my pen
and paper to his cause. Which is what I am doing here.
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