Banking on Breakdown

Thomas Dorrington

On October 7, 2019, Extinction Rebellion began their largest act of mass participation, non-violent, civil disobedience yet. Aiming to shut down central Westminster for up to two weeks with 11 protest sites, their demands were clear: force the government to Act Now on the climate and ecological emergency and set up a Citizens’ Assembly to fix our broken politics.

While the focus was on the government and government departments in and around Westminster, the world’s most genocidal corporations were not left off the hook, and on Monday 14th October activists took to the City of London to protest against the complicity of the financial sector in the climate crisis. Money is the oxygen that fuels the fire of climate change, and with nine of the world’s top fossil fuel investors having headquarters in the City over the last three years, this is the epicentre of “business as usual”.

This came on the same day that police issued a London-wide Section 14, effectively banning Extinction Rebellion protests from within the capital, and began clearing the previously legitimate protest site at Trafalgar Square. For the first time in Extinction Rebellion protests, it became evident how much economic disruption the activists were really causing.

Since the closing of this chapter in Extinction Rebellion’s mass protests, senior judges of the High Court ruled the ban to be unlawful. How this ruling will affect future protests, in particular the next International Rebellion in April 2020, and whether the Met will push for a change in law to cope with future protests, is yet to be seen.

7am. Hundreds of activists blocked routes around Bank Junction and the City of London. An analysis by Rainforest Action Network showed that 33 big banks provided $654bn to 1800 fossil fuel companies last year, equivalent to 70% of the total capital expenditure of the entire fossil fuel industry.

Activists glue themselves to the front entrance of Barclays Headquarters in Canary Wharf. Barclays is the sixth largest provider of financial services to the fossil fuel industry in the world and first in Europe. Unlike many others UK banks, Barclays are willing to fund tar sands exploitation and Arctic oil and gas exploration.

Roadblocks were set up across the City, disrupting routes that financial district workers take to work.

A key message of the day was on climate justice and the class war that climate change threatens: those that have contributed least to the problem will suffer the most, and are in fact already suffering. The day of disruption sought to highlight the greater turmoil already faced by countries around the world as a result of the UK’s financial sector and UK backed companies.

For the first time in Extinction Rebellion’s uprising history, police began to use so-called ‘pain and compliance’. Fingers were broken, but not on this particular occasion. The technique was first employed at the London City Airport protests the previous week.

Ecocide is defined as the mass damage or destruction of natural living systems. Stop Ecocide is a global campaign trying to establish a law of ecocide, making large-scale & systematic destruction of nature an international crime, alongside Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Many Extinction Rebellion activists sign up as an Earth Protector, or Conscientious Protector, which provides primary evidence for the courts that you are not a criminal, but acting to prevent harm. Conscientious Protectors not only refuse to participate in the destructive systems in which we find ourselves, but also take direct action to force change.

In an emerging movement of movements, Doctors for Extinction Rebellion launched on the 25th September 2019, when 30 doctors protested at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) against governmental inaction, glueing themselves to the building and mounting the doors, leading to four arrests. Over the course of the first week of the Rebellion, at least 10 doctors were arrested, and on the Saturday over 300 health professionals marched through Central London to Trafalgar Square, where 110 pairs of shoes were laid out to highlight the daily deaths as a result of air pollution across the UK. Hayley from Extinction Rebellion Norwich, pictured here, was arrested after glueing herself to the main entrance of Barclays HQ. At the time of publishing this over 700 health professionals have joined Doctors for Extinction Rebellion.

Activists use lock-on tubes to slow down their removal. By glueing or handcuffing themselves to other activists through concrete tubes or PVC pipes, specialist Protest Removal Teams must be called in. Trained and equipped to deal with protesters using locks and glue, specialist police from across England were drafted in to London and assigned to the protests.

Analogous to Doctors for Extinction Rebellion, Scientists for Extinction Rebellion is a scientists collective who believe it is time to take non-violent direct action to confront catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown. At the time of publishing this, over 1500 practising scientists across the spectrum of scientific disciplines holding a Master’s Degree or higher have declared themselves in Rebellion against governments and support non-violent direction against their criminal inaction.

Scientists for Extinction Rebellion joined the City of London protests by closing the entrance road to London Bridge. They were quickly removed by police, but subsequently de-arrested because of the negative backlash arresting respected scientific professionals would have on the police.

Bio

In 2018 I experienced first-hand one of the many threats the climate emergency poses, in the form of an infectious disease: Lyme disease. Soon after I made the decision to withdraw from my Masters Degree at Cambridge University and volunteer full-time with Extinction Rebellion. Since then I have worked in the Media & Messaging team at a local and national level, with a focus on content and photography, documenting both the April and October 2019 Rebellions.

Photography is my form of activism. For me, this means using photos as a way of humanising and normalising civil disobedience: capturing the stories of those taking part in direct action, and giving their voice a platform. Not only does this serve as a means of documentation, but it also has its place in movement building. By giving someone a personal story they can relate to, not just reciting abstract facts or numbers, it helps to see themselves as a part of the movement and mobilises them to want to take action.

I now work part-time as a freelance photographer in Cambridge, where I continue to support activist movements through photography. Outside of Extinction Rebellion, other movements I have worked with include Anonymous for the Voiceless, Zero Carbon Cambridge, Youth Strike 4 Climate, The Save Movement, and Animal Rebellion where I also held the role of Content Coordinator for a period of time.

You can find my portfolio at: https://thomas-terl-photography.co.uk.

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