The climate crisis is here and now. Just this week in Libya 10,000 people were swept into the sea as an atmospheric river dumped 10cm of rain in just 3 days, while in Greece last week the same storm event turned rivers into raging torrents leaving 700km2 underwater and half the country cut off as roads and railways collapsed. The police and rescue services in Libya and Southern Europe are overwhelmed. [1][2][3]
At what point will you say enough is enough and demand action from your government? A Government that is planning to “max out the UK’s oil and gas reserves”, an action that will result in the deaths of countless millions while demanding that you detain those lawfully seeking to halt the mass murder.
Just Stop Oil will be back on the streets of London from October 29th. You know what that means. We’ve been here before. Our 13 week campaign between April and July this year cost the Metropolitan Police more than £7.7m and required the equivalent of an extra 23,500 officer shifts. [4]
The NPCC lead for Protest Policing Chief Constable Chris Noble has said “we’re not going to arrest our way out of environmental protest.” He is right. We urge the Police Federation to follow the example of their Dutch counterparts and demand that the government talk to Just Stop Oil. [5]
Last week, in advance of massive protests on the A12 motorway in The Hague by Extinction Rebellion Netherlands, four Dutch police unions made an urgent appeal to their government to avert the blockades.[6]
In an open letter shared with Extinction Rebellion, officials from the Dutch Police Federation, ANPV , Equipe and ACP asked politicians to negotiate with the group. They argued that managing the actions would require a disproportionate police deployment that the Netherlands can no longer afford and divert much needed police resources from their day to day work. Sound familiar?
In what was a steadfastly apolitical letter, the Dutch police unions argued that politicians had failed to listen to Extinction Rebellion and urged them to “get over their pride and come out and talk to the citizens gathered there who so badly want to be heard and understood by them.”
It concluded that: “Deploying the police to oversee climate demonstrations is carrying water to the sea and only leads to an even higher workload within the already overburdened force. Politics can prevent this by opening its doors, listening to concerned citizens and looking for a solution together.”
We understand that here in the UK police officers are at breaking point. The strain of an ever rising workload, a real terms pay cut of 28% since 2010 and increasing incidents of assault has led to “unprecedented levels of mental exhaustion and mental ill health” within the police. [7]
We are ready to talk.
Just Stop Oil
Copy to: Police Federation of England and Wales, Scottish Police Federation, Police Federation for Northern Ireland, Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, Superintendents’ Association of Northern Ireland, UNISON, PCS, Unite, GMB, Prospect, TSSA
ENDS
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Notes to Editors
[1] Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to demand that the government immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK. Just Stop Oil is a member of the A22 Network of civil resistance projects. Climate Emergency Fund is Just Stop Oil’s primary funder for recruitment, training, and capacity building.
Just Stop Oil ‘Blue Lights’ policy: our policy is, and has always been, to move out of the way for emergency vehicles with siren sounding and ‘blue lights’ on.
[2] Libya floods wipe out quarter of city, thousands dead: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/more-than-1000-bodies-recovered-libyan-city-after-floods-minister-2023-09-12/
[3] In flood-stricken central Greece, residents face acute water shortages and a public health warning: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/greece-ap-athens-kyriakos-mitsotakis-european-union-b2409297.html
[4 ] Just Stop Oil protests cost Met Police £7.7m since April: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66301164
[5] ‘We’re not going to arrest our way out of this’: Police chief hits back at Suella Braverman https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11413989/Police-chief-hits-Suella-Bravermans-call-crackdown-Just-Stop-Oil-protests.html
[6] Letter from Dutch Police Federation, ANPV , Equipe and ACP to the Dutch government
WILL POLICE CONTINUE TO BEAR THE BRUNT OF POLITICAL PRIDE? Sep 8, 2023, Capacity
The protest movement Extinction Rebellion is going to block the A12 in The Hague every day starting next Saturday. Managing these actions will require a disproportionate police deployment that the Netherlands can no longer afford. The four police unions are therefore making an urgent appeal to politicians to step forward to avert the blockades.
To be clear, helping to realise the right to free speech and the right to demonstrate is a job that police officers value and take extremely seriously. When they are given such a job to do, they try to do it as well, safely and independently as possible. But the increasing commitment to supervising protests is also starting to rub off. The officers want to get back into the neighbourhood, catch criminals, and be there for the citizens. Too much of that regular work is now being left behind.
Where the government fails to take the unrest out of society, it also fails to take good care of police personnel. The same government that does demand that the police ensure that nothing happens to the protesters, everything is safe and peaceful, and highways are cleared.
Understaffing
The National Police are struggling with severe understaffing, which will continue for at least four more years. The result is that the police can be less in the neighbourhoods, many cases remain on the shelf and reports have to wait longer to be processed or are not processed at all. At least as worrisome are the consequences of the unprecedented workload for current employees. They are working on the edge of overwork, in part because it has become increasingly difficult to take leave. Many feel that they are running a marathon with no end in sight.
In that situation, extra deployment of colleagues to maintain public order elsewhere in the country during a protest is almost impossible to absorb. The police no longer have buffers in that area, all auxiliaries are already constantly being utilised, it’s on.
If the police are asked to supervise such a large demonstration of XR while also keeping exit roads clear, this would require over 450 people, who would be pulled away from their regular duties for 10 hours. Not to mention the deployment of equipment, such as the cordoning off the ADO parking lot for a detective street, and ten HTM buses.
On Saturday, September 9, Extinction Rebellion will block the A12 in The Hague for the eighth time. An action that will be repeated daily thereafter. It is well known why the Utrechtsebaan is chosen each time: it lies exactly between the temporary Lower House and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. These are the two bodies on which the climate activists want to exert political pressure to achieve their goal: the abolition of subsidies for the fossil industry.
Taking blows
So far, politics has not once given home when Extinction Rebellion rattled through a blockade on the A12 to the doors of political The Hague to be heard. The only people the activists faced were police officers. Only to end up sweeping that same A12 clear (over and over again). The frustration about this is growing, we as a police union notice this like no other. More and more often the police have to literally take the blows for politicians.
That in itself is logical, because the police are the executive power of politics and thus the face of the decisive power. But that is really one door down. And that door has so far remained shut tight. So it would be nice if politicians on Saturday, Sept. 9, would get over their pride and come out and talk to the citizens gathered there who so badly want to be heard and understood by them.
This call says nothing about the political views of the writers. Of course our members are a reflection of society, they all have opinions. But the police wear a uniform and are independent. Therefore, this piece does not come up with a political solution, because that is not up to us or our members. The job of the police is literally to be vigilant and subservient and they do that with great dedication. Deploying the police to oversee climate demonstrations is carrying water to the sea and only leads to an even higher workload within the already overburdened force. Politics can prevent this by opening its doors, listening to concerned citizens and looking for a solution together.
Nine Kooiman, union secretary Dutch Police Federation
Xander Simonis, Chairman ANPV
Miriam Barendse, President Equipe
Wim Groeneweg, Chairman ACP
[6] Pay, Conditions and Rights in Focus, Police Federation Magazine, February 2023 https://content.yudu.com/web/440a7/0A440oc/February2023/html/index.html?page=20&origin=reader
