Climate extremist group Insulate Britain has defied a court order and blocked the M25 for the sixth time in two weeks, with its spokesman telling Britain to expect “wave after wave” of protesters willing to go to prison for domestic insulation.
Last week, the National Highways agency was granted injunctions meaning that courts could apply penalties of up to two years in prison to those blocking the M25 and A20, but the threats have not stopped eco-extremists Insulate Britain, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion (XR).
On Monday morning, 52 Insulate Britain activists blocked the M25 for the sixth time in just over two weeks, this time at Junction 14 near Heathrow airport, according to The Telegraph.
Police then moved the protesters to the grass verge before most had time to attach themselves to the road or other vehicles — a tactic adopted from XR demonstrations. However, the Evening Standard reports one man in the centre of the M25 had glued down his hands before officers could get to him.
Insulate Britain spokesman Liam Norton — who was criticised for his reaction to the reported serious injury by a stroke of a woman caught in traffic due to one of his protests and has compared his activists to Winston Churchill — said on Monday: “You can throw as many injunctions at us as you like, but we are going nowhere.
“You can raid our savings and confiscate our property. You can deny us our liberty and put us behind bars. But that is only shooting the messenger.
“The truth is that this country is going to hell unless you take emergency action to stop putting carbon into the air.”
The group took their protest to the town of Dover in Kent, one of Britain’s busiest ports on Friday, resulting in goods and travellers being stuck on their way to the Continent.
At the time, the only injunction in place was that on the M25, with government ministers reportedly being warned not to attempt to apply for a blanket injunction across the whole of Britain, because it would likely be rejected by the High Court on the grounds that it was excessive.
Government sources speaking to the media speculated that authorities would be forced into a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with the activists, applying for fresh injunctions for every new stretch of highway they disrupt. Clearly, the threats of imprisonment did not prevent Monday’s protest on the M25.
Police and Crime Commissioner for Kent Matthew Scott said that the Johnson administration needs to do more than reactively apply for injunctions, calling for emergency legislation to be passed protecting critical infrastructure, which would include roads.
The group, however, is adamant that no amount of punishment will dissuade them from their disruption actions, with Insulate Britain spokesman Craig Scudders passing on a message to Home Secretary Priti Patel on Monday via Sky News, saying: “We are going nowhere. There is going to be wave after wave of protesters willing to spend time in prison.”
Insulate Britain is calling for insulation to be installed in all social housing by 2025 — the government is already investing £1.3 billion in taxpayers’ money to support such measures — and for all homes to receive “low-energy and low-carbon” retrofits by 2030, “as part of a just transition to full decarbonisation of all parts of society and the economy”.
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