The government has chosen the former, introducing a ban on protest that covers the whole country’s motorways and applies to everyone. In just two months, wilful obstruction of the highway, an offence that normally carries a small fine, has become punishable by up to two years in prison and the threat of losing your house and savings.
This shows what is coming for anyone who steps out of line to demand action on the climate crisis. It shows that when you push, when you really challenge those with privilege and power, as civil resistance has always done, they will lash out. And if you keep on doing it, they will come for you, as oppressed peoples have always known.
So, where do you stand? At what point do you say, “if we tolerate this, then our children will be next”? Because this month, at COP26 in Glasgow, world leaders effectively agreed to continue heating our world for at least the next 30 years, through flood, famine and the collapse of organised society. That will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, gay rights; the destruction of a 250-year-old progressive, social project. The whole thing will come crashing down in the next decade. This is what is happening. It is decision time. Time to live up to the long-established British social traditions of getting organised and fighting back.
This is not about protecting polar bears and whales. As important as those things are, it's about creating socially useful, government-funded jobs that protect us – or accepting the destruction of the economy, of pensions, the NHS, our education. It is about our country, our traditions and our cherished places. It is about basic decency and morality towards our kids and those already suffering in the Global South. It is about averting the end of civilisation.
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