A far-left Insulate Britain protester who glued his face to a road in London on Monday expressed instant regret, admitting that it was not one of his “better moves” as others attempted to release him.
Matthew Tulley, who was one of the 52 eco-warrior protesters arrested as Insulate Britain attempted to shut down Central London, glued his own face to the tarmac in order to “make a statement” on the supposed perils of climate change.
In footage shared on social media, the activist was heard saying: “I’m trying to cut the hair by my temple because my face was totally glued, but now I’ve worked most of that off but the hair is still stuck.”
“It was to make a statement that things are fairly critical, and so I was wanting to have an extreme action to reflect the extreme nature of the emergency that we’re facing.”
“It wasn’t one of my better moves,” he added, as those around him used scissors to cut off hair that remained stuck to the road.
After finally being cut free, without major injury, Tulley was arrested alongside 51 other of his far-left climate comrades, The Telegraph reported.
While Boris Johnson’s government had previously secured injunctions against the group to increase penalties for blocking certain motorways, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps secured a nationwide injunction at the High Court on Monday.
The temporary injunction will grant the government the power to impose two-year prison sentences for anyone blocking the “entire strategic road network”.
“We are making use of every avenue of existing law to try to prevent the continued life-endangering action being carried out by Insulate Britain, which is causing intolerable disruption to motorists’ lives and livelihoods,” Shapps claimed.
The Department for Transport explained further that the injunction will criminalise “activities that obstruct traffic and prevent access to 4,300 miles of motorways and major A roads” and will ban “activities which cause damage to the road surface and infrastructure” — including radicals glueing themselves to the road.
Undeterred by the prospect of the new injunction, on Tuesday morning the group declared that the M25 motorway will be the site of “nonviolent civil resistance”, saying that “you can’t imprison a flood, there are no unlimited fines against a famine, you can’t bankrupt a fire.”
Promising to enact more road blockades on Wednesday morning, Insulate Britain called for public support, asking that people refrain from using the busy M25 motorway, or if they have to, to drive at a reduced speed of “20 mph to minimise the risk of accidents.”
The eco-warrior offshoot of Extinction Rebellion went on to demand that police do not arrest activists for blocking the road, claiming: “We are upholding the British constitution and they have a duty to refuse to obey any government that fails to uphold its first and most important responsibility: the protection of people in Britain.”
Rather than gaining support from the public, the stunts from the activist group have increasingly been met with anger from the average citizen, with instances of exasperated drivers prevented from reaching work or even hospital pulling the radicals off the road being witnessed up and down the country.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka