Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Grant Griffiths; It looks like commuter patience with Extinction Rebellion’s disruptive tactics has finally snapped.
Furious commuters drag Extinction Rebellion protesters from top of Tube
Climate change activists carry out London-wide protests in defiance of a police ban as leaders try to get the ban lifted.
Alix Culbertson
News reporter @alixculbertsonAngry commuters have pulled Extinction Rebellion protesters from the top of a Tube as activists disrupted services across London.
A Catholic and Anglican priest also climbed onto a train at a different station as part of the protest.
At Canning Town station in east London dozens of commuters were seen pulling two campaigners, dressed in jacket and tie, from the top of a Jubilee Line Tube train after they unfurled a banner saying, “Business as usual = death”.
The pair used a ladder to climb onto the roof, prompting an immediate reaction from commuters, including one who threw his sandwich at them. A drink was also hurled at one of them.
…
Read more (includes video): https://news.sky.com/story/furious-commuters-drag-extinction-rebellion-protester-from-top-of-tube-11837385
A video of the event:
I hope the Extinction Rebellion protestors were not harmed.
But frankly something like this was inevitable. Big city commuting is miserable enough, even without a bunch of idiot hippies adding to people’s stress and unhappiness with their meaningless daily obstruction and protests.
Update (EW): The commuters who attacked the protestors are being “sought by police“.
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Not clear if they superglued themselves to the trains?
The protesters sure look like climate Remainers, or Remoaners.
Hope once they are off the train it will return to schedule. With the East Enders luck, the police will spend half the day taking statements while holding up the line.
No chance of that!
“Bristol grandad, 83, glues himself to Tube train in London over ‘suffering and death on enormous scale'”
He needs reminding that thanks to fossil fuel and electricity he has lived 13 years beyond his alloted years. He’s also had 18 years pension paid for by the same things.
I passed through that station around 10.30 am (3 hours after it happened). The tube line was back to normal with no delays, loads of police still on the platform but no sign of problems.
I wish there was a more than Like tab for this;-)
other report said the transport police protected the silly sods
pity
but with luck it might make other exreb fools think twice
about time the masses of public fought back
yaaaay
“I hope the Extinction Rebellion protestors were not harmed.”
You’re a better man than I am.
The XR protestors weren’t actually threatening anyone’s life, so I think what happened was a little excessive, though having been on the receiving end of London’s unreliable transport system I understand people’s anger boiling over after weeks of unnecessary delays caused by those idiots.
The action of XR protestors climbing on trains is unlawful. As I understand it, preventing an unlawful act is a legitimate action of a civilian, providing they only use “reasonable force”.
The first XR protestor clearly aims and lands a kick on the first guy trying to climb on the train. That is an assault. Any subsequent rough handling to drag him down does not seem inappropriate given the initial violence of the first protestor.
Frankly, given this took place in Canning Town in the tough East End of London the XR protestors were lucky to get away with a just a bit of kicking and some rough handling and argy-bargy. The XR protestors must want their hands examining for pissing off such a crowd in this part of London. If XR don’t rein it in they are going to find themselves on the wrong side of a very angry mob and a few kicks is going to be the least of it.
Anyway, long may XR continue. Nothing could switch public opinion away from claims of catastrophic climate change more quickly than seeing these muppets performing.
You are absolutely correct. Their actions were unlawful, intimidating for political aims and thus falls under the definition of terrorism.
“Frankly, given this took place in Canning Town in the tough East End of London the XR protestors were lucky to get away with a just a bit of kicking and some rough handling and argy-bargy.”
Are you insane man??? Someone threw a sandwich!! A SANDWICH!!! Let that sink in for a while. I mean, that sandwich might have had MEAT in it! Or *gasp* dairy products!!! Someone could have gotten CANCER from the impact!!!
Let us know your progress with trying to repeal the law of the jungle.
There is a tipping point. A tipping point when someone becomes so tedious that you just want to, well, how shall we put it? Choke the living dog crap out of them!!!!
Pack up for the commute with stale veggies, bricks, sticks, and mud. Or a sampler pack can be purchased outside the terminals.
Stale veggies? How about half-rotten but still solid enough to launch? Wear gloves and goggles, too!!!
I wouldn’t use bricks. Your aim might be off and you could hit a friend instead of some stinking hippie protester. How about balloons or thin plastic bags full of water-based red paint, instead? My newspaper comes in a plastic sleeve. I usually use those for cleaning jobs around the house. Saves me some money on gloves and they’re filled with junk that ends up in the landfill, anyway, but it’s contained. Just saying, don’t use something that might hurt YOUR friends.
Without any Transport Police the rule of law is replaced by the mob.
This is a sign of austerity damaging London just as much as it’s a sign of XR damaging London.
It hardly looked like a ‘mob’- and to be honest the commuters have been remarkably patient up to now. This has nothing to do with austerity and everything to do with a bunch of nutters who think they are above everyone else. Don’t want pulling from the top of a train? Don’t climb up in the first place! Personally I think we need Paris style riot police to sort them out- I’d pay for that…..
How can you blame “austerity” when the police budget of £13 Billion is exceeded by the foreign aid budget of £14.5 billion, and the destination of most of that money seems never to be publicly disclosed without jumping through FOI hoops. Just reassign some of this foreign aid money (OUR money that is) to where it can benefit the people from whom it was extracted.
It is not austerity but a gross misunderstanding of priorities through slavish devotion by all parties to wha is judged to be politically correct.
It is not” austerity” that is an issue when the Mayor of London presides over a city where the knife murders are out of control, but he feels obliged to criticise the Met for attempting (but clearly their hearts are not in it) to ban these illegal stunts.
And when the Police do arrive it seems they are more concerned to arrest the angry commuters than the extremists, not due to “austerity” but again due to the constant theme of political correctness.
Please! Stop being an apologist for these types. Their actions were unlawful, intimidating for political aims and thus falls under the definition of terrorism.
Quartermain was right. There is evil brewing down there.
A number of commuters have pointed out to XR protestors that the Docklands Light Railway and the Underground in London are all electric. Isn’t that the type of transport system the protestors claim to support?
One Londoner simply called the XR protestors “muppets” which, seeing as some are apparently receiving £400 per week in expenses to protest seems apt (thinking “sock puppets” here).
This protest simply reinforces the naiveté and stupidity of the XR protestors. They chose to protest on a busy commuter morning on a train in Canning Town, heartland of the working class and the East End of London. Annoy some of these people and you are will be lucky just get away with a good kicking, as they did.
As for the Police looking for the commuters pulling them off the train, they may find that there are no witnesses and nobody saw nuffin’…just sayin’!
Lawful protest is fine. When the protestors think they can impose their views on others (as opposed to persuade) and the Police abrogate their responsibilities to ensure people can go about their lawful business without hindrance don’t be surprised when the public get pissed off and take matters into their own hands.
This just confirms to me that XR protestors are complete muppets. They have no clue about the science at all and the interviews they have given show their beliefs are largely irrational. Hysterical, gullible and naïve.
If climate hysteria passes in a decade or so and the world doesn’t end by 2030 these people are going to look and feel so stupid. And a nice criminal record to help them along too, with luck. Prats.
One Londoner simply called the XR protestors “muppets”
How insulting! That Londoner owns Jim Henson’s creations a huge apology for comparing them to such trash (apologies to trash the world over for that comparison)
I appreciate the public getting involved.
From the Daily Telegraph:
‘Those on the platform blocked from going to work who took matters into their own hands could be investigated by police, who said their actions were unacceptable.’
More police time wasted……
From the article:
“But those on the platform blocked from going to work who “took matters into their own hands” could be investigated by police, who said their actions were “unacceptable”.”
If the actions of the protestors are unlawful, surely the commuters were simply doing their duty as citizens and acting to prevent a crime in progress?
Point 1: It’s a matter of proportionality. The idiots were being disruptive. But one (mis-timed) kick is hardly worth a beating.
Point 2: The failure of the police to keep the peace is a very public disgrace. They have a defensive need to try and distract from their weakness.
MC – Fair points.
But I think that under the circumstances the actions of the commuters were proportionate. No-one makes the XR protesters do what they do and piss off all the commuters, they did that all on their own. I think they got off pretty lightly under the circumstances.
How many times could I kick you before you’d decide a beating is warranted?
Could be you are more evolved than I.
M,
re: Point 1
If you assault someone, they have both the right and moral duty to defend themselves. If you start a fight, and kicking someone is starting a fight, don’t complain if it gets too rough for you!
From the streets: “Don’t start nothin, Won’t be nothin!”
Proportionality.
That wasn’t 1 on 1.
Then don’t start a fight with a group of larger than your own. The XR idiot doesn’t deserve any sympathy.
M,
From your perspective then, it would be ‘proportionally unfair’ for a good samaritan citizen to come to the aid of a person assaulted (kicked in the face) by a thug?
Alternately, if I am attacked by ER 2 thugs, should I wait for them to get more thugs to help them, to ‘proportionally even up the sides’ and make it a fair fight?
You are arguing from a proportionally weak position. Suggest you ‘stop digging’….
Dress it up anyway you like, 20 guys beating up on 1 and then saying “Yeah, but he started it” is not a civilised way to catch a train.
That’s why we pay police to stop a mob getting out of hand.
M,
Is kicking someone in the face a ‘civilized’ way to stop anyone from catching a commuter train home, in your proportional view? You demonstrate a skewed moral perspective, perhaps constrained by the depth of the hole you have progressively delved, in attempting to defend the indefensible.
Again M, ” don’t start a fight with a group of larger than your own”. Proportional or not, the XR thug was stupid and reaped the easily predicted consequences of his own stupidity. No sympathy here.
@M Courtney
You aren’t thinking like a left green would, all you do is get the public to organize an agreed statement. I would suggest the something like “the guy made terror threats” and then you have 20 witness claims and your actions become lawful. That is how the greens got things this far they never let truth get in the way of an agenda.
Is it proportional when five cops arrest one man with violence because he”s violent? Your logic is should only be one on one. And no clubs or mace.
I’d like to see the public acting together doing citizens arrests and restraining such offenders until they can be passed over to the police.
As I posted below, anyone on top of a car is breaking transport law. I hope they get prosecuted for it (Rather than electrocuted. They could have slipped off and landed on the power rail. 600v/dc+ will leave a mark).
The Police said “It is important that commuters and other rail users allow the police, who are specially trained, to manage these incidents.”
Doesn’t look to me like much “special training” is needed, just a little positive action and assertiveness by the commuters got the job done in just a couple of minutes.
The Police said “It is important that commuters and other rail users allow the police, who are specially trained, to manage these incidents.”
If so it about time Mr Plodd got off his fat arse and did something about it
It appears this is the beginning of the end for XR. At least they didn’t have to wait, what,,,, 12 years, no,,,,, its 11 now? I can’t keep up with all these end of the world dates anylonger. I gave up after Y2K 😉
Too bad they weren’t seriously injured is what I say. It might prevent more of these rtards from doing this again. A serious brain injury might be an improvement.
Shouldn’t the whole debate be AGW vs CAGW?
1/10th of a degree warming vs 4 degrees?
Big mistake. That’s just gonna make the Climate Crusaders mad.
Look out. Now they’ll take harsher actions.
Better to stay weak and timid so they don’t get upset.
-50
I’m hoping you just forgot the /sarc tag.
I do hope the police don’t start prosecuting people who deal with these pointless idiots when necessary.
That would confirm they really don’t work for most of us, but rather themselves and the elites who pay them and are unaffected by any of this, in their privilege. It must be made clearer to ER that they WILL will get what they deserve, so the police must stay out of such events until the crowd have finished with them, to arrest the suitably chastised ER member. Perhaps the public should strip them with minimal physical harm?
PS UK Police are wholly useless at protecting us and disabling criminals summarily, with minimal disruption to the rest of us. Better at collecting evidence after the event, doing H&S assessments, or conducting risk free mob handed dawn raids, and using the deranged or innocent for low risk target practice. In the UK, criminals are often better protected than the law abiding people they offend against. Sadly, that seems unlikely to change.
“Brian R Catt October 17, 2019 at 10:56 am
PS UK Police are wholly useless at protecting us and disabling criminals…”
So true. But step on the cracks in the pavement or wear a loud shirt in a built up area you’ll attract the attention of the riot squad in no time.
Ha! So true.
In my rather colourful youth in London, I once flipped the bird to a police van that went straight through a pedestrian crossing I was about to cross (in the uk pedestrians have right of way at such crossings).
They stopped, leapt out and forcibly hauled me into the van, and proceeded to keep me without charge for most of the day, driving around London.
Finally they took me to Edgeware Rd police station. It turned your that they were SPG (Special Police Group) who are known to be thugs. The station chief hauled then all (5 or 6?) in front of me, said to me, and I quote (it was 40 years ago, but a fine memory I’ll never forget) :
“We are the metropolitan police. We don’t behave like this. Would you like to press charges?” (holding me without charging was illegal).
I declined, but only because they knew where I lived and I knew they would hound me and my friends forever if I did. A very satisfying moment, however.
“Zig Zag Wanderer October 17, 2019 at 9:38 pm
(in the uk pedestrians have right of way at such crossings).”
Not when sirens are sounding.
Anyway, I got “nicked” by the Royal Naval “Provost” (Navy Police) for being with naval personnel in and around Portsmouth in the 80’s. Took me a while to convince them I was a “civvy”.
Have a heart, guys.
They weren’t really Extinction Rebellion protesters; they were just creative fare dodgers trying to get home.
The police, and government in general are worse than useless in this whole “climate” charade. People are angry, and no wonder. Yellow vests anyone?
If the cops would have done their jobs from the beginning, all of this would be a non-issue. To “serve and protect” my a$$. No one has a legal right to interfere with the legal travel of others. Doing so is at least a misdemeanor in much of the civilized world.
The police will be there tomorrow, protecting the protesters from the public…..
Exactly!
The primary job of the British police these days is to protect criminals from their victims. If the police went on holiday for a week, most of Britain’s problems would be solved by the time they got back to work.
I guess Prince Charles would need a golden ladder and helpers to climb up there but we will send Jane Fonda instead.
The commuters who “attacked” (i.e., removed the obstacles) are being “sought by Gestapo (excuse me, I miss typed, I meant police”). England was a foundation state for modern values of fraternity, liberty, and justice. It IS now GONE. Replaced by the fictional year of 1984 now. The “native” Brits are slowly dying and being replaced by peoples USED to dictatorial systems. Thus they become 1984 with “Big Brother” watching and keeping the serfs in line. I have NO SYMPATHY for them and their demise.
When I first read “Atlas Shrugged”. I was puzzled by Ayn Rand’s characterization of England, and Europe in general, as being socialist or communist.
Now, I’m astonished at her prescience.
Me too. Every time I read it it seems more relevant. Unreal. Out of interest, if you want to wind up a bunch of hippies, sit and read Atlas Shrugged prominently in a trendy cafe…….
Beware of riding the gravy train !
Update (EW): The commuters who attacked the protestors are being “sought by police“.
Typical, the police are incapable of catching criminals, but they are happy to expend resources on persecuting the honest.
I wonder how much legal assistance the public would give to anyone the police apprehended?
‘The Bold Gendarmes’
Having suck up politicians suck up to you is one thing.
P*****g off the general public is a whole different thing.