Thursday 10 November 2022 10:44 PM As lone protester forces the M25 to shut and seventeen officers stand around, ... trends now
A top police officer last night defied the Home Secretary’s calls for a crackdown on disruptive eco-zealots.
Chief Constable Chris Noble, who leads the National Police Chiefs Council on tackling protests, rejected Suella Braverman’s demands for officers to take a ‘firmer line’.
Amid growing anger at the damaging impact of the stunts, he said: ‘We’re not going to arrest our way out of environmental protest.’ The extraordinary row came as members of the Just Stop Oil group climbed gantries over the M25 for a fourth day running, causing more mayhem on Britain’s busiest motorway.
In an indictment of the authorities’ failure to stop the demonstrations, among them were activists who have previously found themselves before the courts over their protests. A carload of protesters with climbing equipment and banners was arrested en route to the M25 in Westerham, Kent, and dragged screaming into a police van.
A top police officer last night defied the Home Secretary’s calls for a crackdown on disruptive eco-zealots
Yesterday’s protests provoked an angry reaction from those caught in the disruption. One mother wrote on Twitter: ‘Just beyond selfish! My five and seven-year-olds can’t get to school – stuck on a non-moving M25 with their dad, who cannot get to work for a very busy day on a job we need him to do as we have to feed our family and heat our home!
‘You make my blood boil! You are losing support doing this.’
As the zealots continued to make a mockery of the law, a debate between a police chief, a peer and a police and crime commissioner yesterday descended into squabbling over the best way to tackle the demonstrators.
In unedifying scenes at the annual summit of the National Police Chiefs Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, there was fury after one elected leader tried to blame the media for the chaos on the roads.
David Lloyd, the police commissioner for Hertfordshire, whose force wrongly arrested a journalist for covering the protests this week, sparked outrage after claiming the BBC and other media were ‘fanning the flames’ of protest by reporting on the disruption caused.
He told BBC newsreader Clive Myrie, who was hosting the event: ‘Organisations like the BBC need to ask yourselves that in giving independent journalism, are you really serving the country best by aggravating, by adding fuel to the flames of the Just Stop Oil protest?
Chief Constable Chris Noble, who leads the National Police Chiefs Council on tackling protests, rejected Suella Braverman’s demands for officers to take a ‘firmer line’
The extraordinary row came as members of the Just Stop Oil group climbed gantries over the M25 for a fourth day running, causing more mayhem on Britain’s busiest motorway
‘Editorial decisions mean we are getting more protests.’
Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the House of Lords, described his comments as an attack on the free Press, but Mr Lloyd hit back, accusing her of being rude and insisting: ‘I don’t talk nonsense!’
Mr Noble then waded into the row to say the law on policing protests was not clear. ‘This is too important an area to be arrogant or complacent,’ he said. ‘What is the job of the police? To have zero impact from protests? To facilitate protests assuming they are not unlawful?
‘We need to have a bit more of a conversation about what exactly do we want, considering we still live in [a] democracy around expression of rights. I’m more than content if people want to clearly define what is the job of policing protest with absolute regularity and details because the law does not make it clear – it is a matter of judgment for the police.’
Mr Noble, the Staffordshire Chief Constable, said police were being damned either way, whether they are ‘too soft’ or ‘too robust’ on demonstrators. Asked about the Home Secretary’s criticism of police for ‘humouring’ protesters, he said: ‘There’s a fair challenge about how effectively we are dealing with these particular protests, but we operate according to the law, we work within a liberal democracy and the answer to some of the challenges we face is not a policing answer.
‘We’re part of it, but we’re not going to arrest our way out of environmental protest.’
On Wednesday, Mrs Braverman condemned the police’s ‘institutional reluctance’ to tackle what she called ‘extremists’.
Mr Noble, the Staffordshire Chief Constable, said police were being damned either way, whether they are ‘too soft’ or ‘too robust’ on demonstrators
When Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, addressed the policing conference, she twice refused to say whether she considered the protesters ‘extremists’, admitting only: ‘I think they are irresponsible and I think they’re dangerous.’
She claimed Labour would bring in ‘a simpler injunction process’ to tackle demonstrators.
But Essex Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington rejected the need for new legislation, said: ‘Do we need more powers to deal with JSO [Just Stop Oil]? My answer is no. We need JSO to stop what they’re doing in a dangerous place.’
Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said: ‘We can’t take snipers, apparently, to people who are climbing the gantries. When we use the angle grinders, we have to apparently just take off the locks, we can’t take off the limbs at the same time. There are limits to how you can do this at speed.’
Just Stop Oil, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, has staged protests almost every day over the past month in a bid to force the Government to stop handing out new licences for fossil fuels.
One man missed his father’s funeral on Monday after protesters shut down the M25 for the first day of action this week.
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