Extinction Rebellion facing 'organised crime' curbs

Extinction Rebellion could be treated as an organised crime group as part of a major crackdown on its activities that may also include new protections for MPs, judges and the press, The Telegraph can disclose.

Whitehall sources said Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have asked officials to take a "fresh look" at how the group is classified under the law, after the Prime Minister described its blockading of major printing presses  as "completely unacceptable".

On Saturday, police were criticised for failing to act more quickly after the blockade began on Friday evening.

Hertfordshire police faced anger for stating that officers were “working to facilitate the rights of both the protesters and those affected by their presence” but protesters were not cooperating.

"It's clear they're not your normal protest group, so you have to look at them in a different way," said one Whitehall source.

Ministers are also considering new powers making it easier for police to stop demonstrators from entering particular areas, bolstering protections for parts of the UK's critical national infrastructure, and explicitly outlawing disruption to "tenets of democracy", such as MPs voting in Parliament, judges attending court, and the printing and distribution of the free press.

The move comes after nearly 200 activists used vehicles and bamboo structures to block roads outside major printing works at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, near Liverpool.

The presses print The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, along with Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp titles including the Sun and the Times.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) accused the newspapers of failing to report on climate change and chained themselves to the bamboo structures to obstruct the roads outside the works.

But there are fears the group has been infiltrated by far-Left groups, who want it to pursue a more overtly militant socialist agenda.

By Saturday night, 80 people had been arrested after the blockades resulted in delays to the distribution of several national publications to shops across the country.

Many readers of The Daily Telegraph were among those prevented from accessing a newspaper.

The Met Police issued fines totalling £200,000 to activists after they exceeded the limit of 30 people in any one gathering.

The demonstrations were condemned by Labour, whose shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said: "A free press is vital for our democracy. People have the right to read the newspapers they want. Stopping them from being distributed and printers from doing their jobs is wrong.”

However Conservative MPs questioned why Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, failed to personally condemn the blockade.

Amanda Milling, the Conservative chairman, said Sir Keir should say whether he stood by previous comments that it was "completely wrong and counterproductive" to place Extinction Rebellion on a list of extreme ideologies.

On Saturday Mr Johnson held talks with Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, amid concerns that the blockade had had a "hugely damaging effect not just on the businesses themselves but also the newsagents and other shops which sell them".

The Prime Minister was "extremely concerned", said a source.

Mr Johnson tweeted: "A free press is vital in holding the government and other powerful institutions to account on issues critical for the future of our country, including the fight against climate change.

"It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public's access to news in this way."

Ms Patel also held talks with police chiefs, including agreeing on a plan for a major police presence to protect a reoccurrence at printworks on Saturday night.

She is said to have told officers to "get stuck in".

Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, said: "I think they're mixing up historic debate about picketing with protest relating to political issues, which can be dealt with through the normal democratic process."

He added: "Peaceful protest using distancing is acceptable, anarchy is not."

Richard Walton, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank and former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: “The actions of Extinction Rebellion cross the line from protest into planned criminality and should be treated as such. The police need to get better at gathering intelligence pre-emptively and intervening to prevent such acts of criminality and upholding the rule of law."

The Government is considering bolstering powers in the Public Order Act to allow police to tackle unauthorised protests, as well as possible new powers to "protect elements of critical national infrastructure and tenets of democracy" - including the freedom for MPs to take part in Commons votes and the distribution of newspapers.

On Saturday, senior ministers were also discussing whether and how the group could be reclassified to help police to crack down on its activities.

A Whitehall source said one option under discussion was for XR to be viewed as an organised crime group, which could result in its members being policed primarily by the National Crime Agency - Britain's FBI.

Under the 2015 Serious Crime Act an organised crime group "has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the carrying on of criminal activities", and "consists of three or more people who agree to act together to further that purpose".

Those found to have participated in the activities of an organised crime group can be imprisoned for up to five years.

More than a thousand XR members have been arrested amid demonstrations since 2018. Activists have been convicted for public order offences, criminal damage and obstructing an engine or a carriage using a railway.

A second Whitehall source said: "They do this in a way that makes it as hard as possible for the police to remove them. The Home Office is looking at various ways we could deal with this kind of incident."

Some discussions have taken place about whether the group could even be proscribed as a terror organisation, but the source said it was thought to be highly unlikely that it would meet the legal threshold for such a move.

Last year, in a report published by Policy Exchange, Mr Walton said XR should be treated as an extremist anarchist group, after finding that it had a “subversive” agenda rooted in the “political extremism of anarchism” rather than just campaigning on climate change.

Responding to the report, an XR spokesman said the research’s conclusions were inaccurate and did not reflect the movement.

“The subversive and extreme agenda is that espoused by the government: ignore the crisis, occasionally say something that sounds as if they get it, then proceed with business as usual at full pace," the group claimed.