UCL students at Extinction Rebellion’s Students Rise Up meeting
Tom Cross reports on Extinction Rebellion’s Students Rise Up meeting, attended by UCL Extinction Rebellion members.
A group of about a dozen UCL students attended the Extinction Rebellion Students Rise Up meeting and debate on 11th October. The meeting was hosted at one of Extinction Rebellion’s new camps on Lambeth Council land near Vauxhall station.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a climate protest group whose aim is to force governments and companies into acting to combat global warming following the October 2018 IPCC report. The group is characterised by its use of civil disobedience, and arrest of its activists.
Those present at last week’s meeting were not concerned by the low turnout, remarking that UCL XR is still young and is not yet a cohesive organisation. However, they did agree that they will need to do more to raise awareness among students.
It was also agreed at the meeting that UCL XR should exert pressure on universities to ensure they divest, and that they should ask universities to consider which employers they invite onto campus. An agreement was reached around the need to raise awareness of activists in the Global South.
There was concern about the criticisms of XR, with agreement that there needs to be greater clarity about what they stand for. One key criticism of the group is that it alienates people who may face greater issues if arrested, such as individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds, BAME or LGBT members. However, students were aware of this; they looked to highlight other ways to volunteer as well as increase involvement in decolonisation and with BAME groups.
Other XR members were highly positive about the assembly. One member, Connor, remarked that it had been “incredibly successful” and that in the past two months they had “managed to facilitate 25 more [university] groups”. The most popular idea for future protests was to organise a synchronised die-in across all London Universities as part of the global climate strikes.
By law, it is currently Lambeth Council’s responsibility to deal with protesters at the XR Vauxhall camp. There was substantial presence of both police and community officers, but their actions were limited to simply patrolling the campsite.
A police liaison officer did, however, say that there had been “points of high tension” with police. If it becomes anything more than a campsite, “the police would come down on it with full force”. Given the Metropolitan Police declaration on 14th October that all XR protests in London are illegal, this outcome is likely. Commentators such as Molly Scott Cato have called the police declaration “a terrible sight in a democracy”.
Extinction Rebellion activists confirmed that they were determined to continue with the protests. If the camp at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens stays, it is likely to be dissolved forcefully.