The XR verdict that paves the way for anarchy
by Peter Mullen, The Conservative Woman:
[…] In April 2019 six Extinction Rebellion protesters targeted the London HQ of the oil company Shell. They smashed windows, glued themselves to doors, climbed on to the entrance canopy, poured fake oil around, and sprayed the slogans Climate Criminals and Lies on the walls.
A couple of weeks ago the six appeared at Southwark Crown Court accused of criminal damage. They pleaded not guilty on the grounds that they had committed their vandalism as part of their project to save the planet.
They conducted their own defence and addressed the jury of seven women and five men in turn. One said: ‘This is not about what the Crown needs or the government wants, what big business wants. It is about life and death, about how we face our future or fail to do so. What is a smashed window compared to a smashed world?’
Judge Gregory Perrins directed jurors that even if they thought the protesters were ‘morally justified’ it did not provide them with a lawful excuse to commit criminal damage. He said: ‘They don’t have any defence in law for the charges they face,’ and cautioned the jury: ‘I have given you clear direction on what the law is and your duty to apply that law to the facts as you find them to be. These are not empty words.’
However they did indeed prove to be empty words because after deliberating for just over seven hours, the jury cleared the defendants of all charges. This is not trivial. Criminal vandals sought to put themselves above the law and succeeded. The judge was made a fool of.
Worse, it is not merely that authority has been scorned, for those appointed to be the guardians of moral authority are taking the side of the anarchists. For example, in September last year the fatuous former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams marched through central London – in his anti-Covid mask – to express his allegiance with the XR militants in the same week that they held up the traffic, defaced public buildings and prevented the publication of a national newspaper – thus denying to others the freedom of speech which they themselves so conspicuously enjoy.
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