A police ban on climate activist group Extinction Rebellion protesting in London contravenes human rights and should be reversed, an application for a judicial review of the decision has claimed.
Green party MP Caroline Lucas, former deputy London mayor Jenny Jones and journalist George Monbiot were among seven claimants who said the Metropolitan Police’s blanket ban imposed on Extinction Rebellion’s London protest was unlawful, disproportionate and a breach of the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
On Monday night, the Met — using a so-called section 14 order — ordered all Extinction Rebellion protesters to cease demonstrating in London or face arrest. The group had planned to protest for two weeks in more than 60 cities worldwide — including the UK capital, where activists blockaded roads around Westminster and the City of London.
More than 1,640 protesters have been arrested in London since the start of the group’s “October rebellion”.
But this week, the police said the action, which began last Monday, had been excessively disruptive and protesters had repeatedly failed to stick to an order to remain only in the pedestrianised area of Trafalgar Square.
Extinction Rebellion has demanded that politicians and the media “tell the truth” about the risks posed by climate change and called for specific action to be taken to slow global warming, including bringing forward the UK government’s goal for reaching net zero carbon emissions from 2050 to 2025.
Protests continued on Tuesday and Wednesday in defiance of the ban. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the London offices of Google and YouTube on Wednesday to demand the organisations ban fossil fuel companies from advertising on their platforms and remove climate denying content.
Hundreds more attended a “People’s Assembly” in Trafalgar Square, where Mr Monbiot and Jonathan Bartley, Green party co-leader, were among those arrested.
Google-owned YouTube said false information was not banned unless it was hate speech, harassment, inciting violence or scams. It said in the last year it had changed its algorithms to promote credible news sources, and introduced measures to help users fact-check information.
Wednesday’s “urgent challenge” said the police order prohibited “any assembly linked to Extinction Rebellion anywhere in London”.
“There was no reasonable basis for such a wide-ranging condition,” it said. “If a group of schoolchildren gather in a local park before 19 October 2019 to protest about climate change, and raise an Extinction Rebellion flag, they are at risk of arrest.”
The claimants said the ban was “wholly disproportionate and inconsistent” with articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantee freedom of expression and assembly.
The order to cease protesting would have a “chilling” effect by “creating an environment of fear for potential protesters”, the filing said. It alleged that in failing to outline specific geographic areas where the peaceful protests were banned, the Met had contravened the rules that a section 14 ban be “clear, precise and capable of being understood”.
“The defendant could and should have imposed lesser measures to protect and preserve the right to protest,” the application said.
It also stressed that Extinction Rebellion is a decentralised movement, and that the Met was wrong to amalgamate all the “autonomous” demonstrations taking place around London, led by different regional and affiliate groups, into a single protest it could ban.
According to Wednesday’s filing, the police declined a request made by the group on Tuesday to lift the ban, and rejected the idea that the protests were distinct from each other.
Tobias Garnett, a human rights lawyer working with Extinction Rebellion’s legal team, said a hearing was likely to be heard on Thursday.
The Met said the demonstrations represented a “single continuous action by XR” and the two-week protest was “undoubtedly a single event” and the group “cannot have it both ways”.
The Home Office said the right to protest peacefully was a “longstanding tradition in this country and a vital foundation of our democracy” but stressed “it is also essential that people can go about their daily business without disruption” and that “operational decisions are a matter for the police”.
Separately the government announced on Wednesday that Boris Johnson, the prime minister, would chair a new cabinet committee on climate change. Ministers who will be members will include the chancellor and the secretaries of state for the environment, business, transport, housing, foreign affairs and overseas aid.
