Rex Murphy: Britain’s Home Secretary is right — the climate ‘mob’ needs to be stopped
Suella Braverman decries protests that have included pouring feces on a memorial to beloved veteran Capt. Sir Tom Moore
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Oct 06, 2022 • 1 day ago • 4 minute read • 701 Comments
Who remembers the most impressive protest that took place in Canada in the cold winter months earlier this year?
Why would I call it the most impressive? The answer or answers, is and are, very simple.
Primarily, because it was what I called it when it was taking place. I called it a “real” protest, even going so far as to employ a term I rather dislike in other contexts (you may guess which ones) — organic — meaning that it started and grew almost spontaneously. That it was composed of people who were not some sad, small lot of self-termed activists, or a bunch of the usual types for whom — they have been in so many — a protest is their day at work or, perhaps more accurately, their normal day of non-work.
The truckers protest wasn’t a rote cosplay of tiresome street theatre. It came from citizens over a real issue involving livelihood.
Secondly, it was impressive for the sheer amount of work and determination that it took to mount and execute it. For the typical urban street activist, all a protest demands is that he or she or maybe they roll off the couch a little after noon, pick up five or six more apostles, head to a downtown intersection and sit on it, or glue themselves to something as the case may be, and have the timid city media come to film their “rage” while they spout the usual slogans, and then, mission accomplished, head home to tweet themselves into insomnia.
The truckers protest wasn’t a rote cosplay of tiresome street theatre
The truckers travelled thousands of miles, in hard weather, all the way to Ottawa. Not something you do on a whim.
Real people. Real issue. Real commitment. That’s what made it impressive.
And, oh dear Lord I almost forgot, the truckers protest was the only one, the only protest ever — and there have been so many in these past 20 years or so in Canada — to have prompted the government to bring in the massively authoritarian Emergencies Act to shut it down (a decision still not interrogated or justified).
All of which is but a prologue to note a piece of news from England, a statement from a senior minister in the U.K. government following the spate of silly, vacant and outrageous climate protests in that country. The latest was by a vile 21-year-old who poured buckets of s–t — yes, really, that was her “statement” — over a memorial honouring one of the most loved and admired citizens in all of Britain.
The recently deceased centenarian Capt. Sir Tom Moore rapturously won the hearts of all, including Queen Elizabeth herself, for his extraordinary accomplishment in the last days of his veteran’s life, of raising £33 million for British health care.
Our little “activist” — like the famous Pooh bear “of very little brain” — took it upon herself to dump urine and feces over Moore’s memorial statue in Hatton, Derbyshire. The thinking being — as it always is with these types — that because it was in “protest” of something, then anything, anything at all, is fine. Get a huge bucket of the worst filth and throw it on the statue of a hero.
“I’m a climate activist, so it’s perfectly fine.” Police will stay away. Press will moan in harmony with the “marginalized” protester(s). Normal people will stay mute.
Britain’s Home Secretary, however, did not. In a speech on Tuesday, Suella Braverman said what millions across the Western world have been thinking for ages. That “climate protesters” who choke traffic on a whim, that vandals who “for climate justice” glue themselves to masterpieces — that all those in other words who, in their smugness, arrogate to themselves the “right” to bother, antagonize, interrupt, and even in some cases, endanger the lives of thousands or millions of ordinary, law-respecting citizens — must be stopped.
The theatrics of professional hard leftist protest has waited a long while for someone of sense and authority to call them out. Here’s a bit of what Braverman had to say:
“We need common sense policing. Unashamedly and unapologetically on the side of the law-abiding majority.
“That means that the mob needs to be stopped. The police must have all the powers that they need to stop protesters who use guerrilla tactics and bring chaos and misery to the law-abiding majority.
‘It’s not a human right to vandalize property. It’s not my ‘freedom of expression’ to protest violently. No — you can’t just start a riot or glue yourself to the roads and get away with it.”
It was especially welcome to hear her call out the most annoying and remorseless lot of nuisances — “the mob of climate protesters” threatening “action” all across Britain. That “mob” has been troubling the world forever under the false flag to their planet-loving and the unspeakable righteousness that goes with the claim.
And, as dessert, Braverman also took (another overdue) shot at police forces aligned with wokery and their shameful “taking the knee” to join in with political demonstrations.
“It’s time for the police to stop virtue-signalling and start catching robbers and burglars,” she said.
Three cheers for the Home Secretary.
National Post
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