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Revealed: Policing bill was dreamed up by secretive oil-funded think tank

Controversial anti-protest law may have originated in briefing from Policy Exchange, our investigation reveals

By Adam Bychawski
Revealed: Policing bill was dreamed up by secretive oil-funded think tank
Extinction Rebellion banner at a march against the UK’s new policing bill | Marc Gascoigne / Alamy Stock Photo
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The UK government’s legislative crackdown on protest in England and Wales was dreamed up by a secretive right-wing think tank that had been funded by US oil giant ExxonMobil, openDemocracy can reveal.

Policy Exchange explicitly said the government should pass legislation to target Extinction Rebellion (XR) in a 2019 report that got the attention of Tory MPs and peers.

The report called for protest laws to be “urgently reformed in order to strengthen the ability of police to place restrictions on planned protest and deal more effectively with mass law-breaking tactics”.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0