Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists have gathered in London on Monday morning as they prepare to bring more chaos to the capital later this week after blocking two major bridges on Sunday.
Gatekeepers News reports that the climate demonstrators gathered at The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens on Monday morning dressed in doctors’ scrubs and holding signs saying ‘the Earth is in a critical condition’.
The XR activists have promised a week of action as they continue their calls for no new investment in fossil fuels.
Earlier on Monday, the activists met in Hyde Park to hold ‘non-violent’ direct action training, while others carried out a ‘mass outreach’ in central London including the presence of a papier-mache elephant at Kensington Gardens.
They were also sighted carrying out a demonstration in south Kensington on Monday afternoon.
However, the group’s website revealed that there are no planned ‘actions’ of potential roadblocks until Wednesday this week, with more planned for the Easter weekend.
Over the weekend, the activists tried to bring London to a standstill by carrying out roadblocks, including the blocking of Lambeth and Vauxhall Bridges on Sunday afternoon.
Demonstrators sat in the middle of the road, waving multicoloured flags bearing the group’s ‘extinction’ symbol and placards that read ‘there is no planet B’ and ‘we want to live’, and listened to music and speakers in sunny weather.
However, the crowd allowed ambulances and fire engines to cross the bridges, with organisers parting the crowd by shouting ‘blue light’.
Extinction Rebellion have billed the latest protests as part of ‘the final push in the plan to end fossil fuels’.
The group wrote on their website, “Come to London from April 9 to April 17 and be ready to continue in civil resistance on at least the following three weekends.
“This is a crucial moment. Our reliance on fossil fuels is funding wars, driving the cost of living scandal and leading to climate breakdown. This is why we are demanding an immediate end to all new fossil fuel investments.”
According to the group, similar action to block ‘areas of the city for as long as possible’ is planned every day for a week or more.
The Extinction Rebellion website added pledged that “our disruption will not stop until the fossil fuel economy comes to an end.”
Meanwhile, there are no planned ‘actions’ – potential roadblocks – until Wednesday this week, however, more are planned for the Easter weekend.
Police after clearing first Lambeth and then Vauxhall Bridge on Sunday said 38 arrests were made in the process.
The officers warned the protesters that there was evidence they were causing ‘serious disruption’ to the public, threatening them to leave or face arrest.
Police physically removed the last of the activists, a number of whom were taken away in police vans.
The Metropolitan Police tweeted on Sunday evening, “Both demonstrations within the Vauxhall Area have now concluded and the roads have reopened.
“As a result of today’s policing operation, we have made 38 arrests.”
Extinction Rebellion tweeted that doctors and nurses from a small group of medical workers who refused to leave Lambeth Bridge were among those arrested.
The Met said it had imposed conditions under section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 on Extinction Rebellion to clear areas around Vauxhall Bridge.
Activist and student Kiri Ley, 21, from Birmingham, said the group was occupying the capital peacefully in order to try and force the Government to make a change when nothing else had worked.
Ley said, “I know that very often people will question our tactics about disruption for example, to ordinary people, stuff like roadblocks, like gluing on, locking on, and so on.
“What I would ask people if you make that criticism, is what actually do you suggest that we do?
“We tried all the other methods – we’ve written letters, we’ve marched, we’ve spoken to our MPs, we’ve done literally everything we can, and time and time again we see them doing completely the opposite of what the scientific evidence says and this is what is left to us, really, we do it because we know it works.”
Adam, a sexagenarian from York, said, “This may seem disruptive, but it is chicken feed in comparison to climate change.”
Former Love Island contestant Amy Hart tweeted a photograph of herself with protesters while on her way to the Olivier Awards, with the caption, “Extinction Rebellion have closed Lambeth Bridge so we’re literally doing the Lambeth walk oi x.”
Earlier, campaigners spray painted red hands outside the London corporate offices of oilfield services company Schlumberger.
According to Extinction Rebellion, it came a day after some 8,000 protesters flooded the streets of London.
On the first day of mass action on Saturday, they blockaded roads around Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square.
Extinction Rebellion has vowed to ‘block areas of the city for as long as possible’ every day for at least a week and on the next three weekends.
Meanwhile, the environmental activist group on its website said there were plans to recruit new ‘rebels’ and hold training in non-violent action and resistance tactics in Hyde Park in the mornings before marching into the city centre ‘en masse.’
“Our disruption will not stop until the fossil fuel economy comes to an end,” it said.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said that some Extinction Rebellion protests are counterproductive, but their disruptive actions are the ‘only way that people feel they can make their voices heard’.
Lucas told Sunday Morning on BBC One, “I think that being on the streets of London has been shown to be a way of capturing people’s imaginations. People have joined those protests who have never protested before. They are doing it because they know we have to leave new fossil fuels in the ground.
“The International Energy Agency says that the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report says that and yet this Government and this energy strategy .. is foreseeing getting out even more oil and gas from the North Sea, that is frankly immoral and said the UN general secretary said that is frankly both morally and economically mad.”
