The Extinction Rebels have a noble cause. What they don’t need now is tactical stupidity

Considering its rapid expansion, formal commitment to causing chaos and decentralised approach to mobilising, Extinction Rebellion has been, certainly until last week’s underground setback, a triumph of non-violent direct action.

Polls have suggested impressive levels of support from non-protesters. As for the rebels, name-calling, including by the prime minister, dredging up a 90s term from his insult back-catalogue, only underlined their organisational flair. These same “uncooperative crusties” have persuaded a previous parliament to declare a climate emergency, changed the national conversation and initiated policy change.

Bad publicity has been restricted, on the whole, to a misfiring fake-blood hose, and – although systemic rather than individual change is XR’s purpose – the scant evidence that its A-list supporters are addressing their own carbon footprints.

That celebrated social disruptor, Stanley Johnson – who invited him? – was happy to confirm, for instance, shortly after exhibiting himself at an XR occupation, his commitment to frequent long-haul flying. It’s OK, apparently, if the flier is going to make “some speech about the environmental problems or write about the animals”. If you would like to support Stanley in this vital work, it may not be too late to join him, and fellow Telegraph readers, on a 13-night “Treasures of India” holiday: “Stanley will be with you for the duration of this tour.”

Another sign that XR’s influencer collection could be more discerning was the involvement of Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor having evidently reconciled his anxiety about the climate emergency with his optimism for a new MG SUV. Expected in both petrol and diesel versions, the Hector, according to Cumberbatch in his MG ad, “may well be a classic of the future”. Maybe it’s not all doom and gloom! Someone should tell Greta Thunberg.

Again, it’s probably a credit to the movement’s focus that such alleged inconsistency appears to have inflicted only minor reputational damage and may even have diverted media attention, quite usefully, from more substantial questions. Such as: why do so many XR occupations look like an audience in search of the National Theatre? And why would an XR campaigner think it persuasive to tweet: “We are engineers. We are lawyers. We are doctors. We are everyone”? Maybe they run a prep school. As George Monbiot wrote last week, before going off to get himself arrested: “Extinction Rebellion is too white, and too middle class.” But perhaps that’s in the nature of this form of direct action? If online activism as argued by Helen Margetts et al in Political Turbulence “increases the access of the poor to political action and reduces the relative advantage of the rich”, then XR’s focus on extended physical occupations appears to do the opposite.

It could be that its main ambition, to force change through disruption – as opposed to by petitions, by cost-free micro-interventions – is indeed at odds with social inclusiveness. Ayesha Hazarika said, on Radio 4’s The News Quiz: “It is literally all white people. And it’s all like white schoolkids because no Asian schoolkid would be allowed to miss school.” The movement’s commitment to multiple arrests will deter, or keep at the margins, individuals for whom arrest or being in trouble involves real fear or jeopardy.

Whether it’s exclusionary, unavoidable or even irrelevant, given what’s at stake, this is not a great look. So at least while XR’s critics are ridiculing luvvies they aren’t dwelling on diversity – or the lack of it; the movement’s apparent remoteness from people who might want to paint their faces white, dress up in red and parade along blocked roads making artistic gestures at police officers, but have to get to work instead.

But that changed, of course, when a sub-group of rebels, ignoring the majority view that this was a bad idea, stopped a train at Canning Town in rush hour. While nobody could deny their bravery, since even a non-rucksack-remover in these rammed conditions would be widely regarded as asking for it, the resulting scene, showing the climate protesters looking, literally de haut en bas, upon the struggling commuters below, might as well have been directed by Adam Boulton, based on an original preconception by Piers Morgan. Although one man’s shout, at an elevated rebel – “I need to get to work! I have to feed my kids!” – would probably have been cut, being too close to something Richard Littlejohn might make up.

The same social media that has, thanks to XR’s volunteer amplifiers, communicated its more edifying spectacles – the pink octopus, the cute boat, the dignified octogenarian arrestees – to the world, then ensured maximum damage, from this ugly, privilege v workers narrative, in the shortest time. As they came in, reactions from different parts of XR’s membership, largely disapproving or furious, though also defensive, occasionally patronising, were what you’d expect from a decentralised movement that repudiates hierarchical organisation in favour of bottom-up “affinity groups”, disrupting on their own initiative. One spokesman, Rupert Read, said he was “really sorry”. Another, Howard Rees, said: “Was it the right thing to do? I am not sure.” One of the movement’s co-founders, Clare Farrell, said it was justified: “The public, I don’t think, realise quite how serious this situation is.”

If not, you could argue, after multiple major protests, and any number of arrests, that this is a good moment for a strategic review. To build on its achievements and extract change, XR must find a way, as Occupy and other mobilisations have not, of sustaining participation, whether mass or niche. That seems less, not more, likely to happen if some of its affinity groups appear, and not only in Canning Town, to regard fellow citizens as incidental to their higher purpose. Having said that, I’ve never had the chance to be educated when already late for work, by a retired vicar, stuck to a tube door.

• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist