Insulate Britain Demands ‘Churchillian Response’, Expands Protests and Blocks Major Port

Insulate Britain, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, protesting in the Port of Dover, Ke
Insulate Britain
Victoria Friedman

Extinction Rebellion offshoot Insulate Britain has widened its disruptive tactics to other parts of England, this time blockading the Port of Dover and demanding a “Churchillian response” to alleged manmade climate change.

Insulate Britain, which demands all social housing have insulation and the economy and society be fully ‘decarbonised’, has widened its protests beyond the country’s busy motorways, blockading the Port of Dover in Kent, south-east England.

More than 40 eco-activists blocked two roads leading to one of Britain’s busiest ports from 8:20am on Friday. Kent Police arrived around 30 minutes later, making 17 arrests by 11am, according to The Times.

The protest resulted in vehicles, including lorries carrying goods, being stuck in traffic, hurting British workers and businesses.

Insulate Britain’s attempts to reach out to The Working Man in a measly gesture of compensation backfired, however, when a local cafe owner who lost business as a result of the protest rejected the money activists had donated to them.

“You can’t just have a whip-round for me,” the cafe owner said, according to The Times. “What about all the other thousands of people whose businesses you’ve also ruined today?”

While a judge granted an injunction on Wednesday, which could mean prison for activists who block the M25, the measures cannot also be applied to other roads or motorways. The government has also reportedly been advised against applying for a nationwide injunction as the High Court would likely reject it as disproportionate.

Ministers have applied for a similar injunction on the Port of Dover, but one government source predicted that authorities will continue applying for injunctions after the fact in a cat-and-mouse game, as activists move from one unprotected major road or motorway to another.

Police sources also said that existing safety road laws that could also result in a prison sentence could not be applied because the protesters’ actions had not passed the threshold for what was considered dangerous as they wait until traffic had stopped before creating their roadblocks.

Some protesters boasted they had been arrested four times since demonstrations began last week, including a Labour Party councillor.

Attempting to explain their reason for blocking the port in working-class Dover, a spokeswoman for the eco-extremist group said: “We are blocking Dover this morning to highlight that fuel poverty is killing people in Dover and across the UK.

“We need a Churchillian response: we must tell the truth about the urgent horror of the climate emergency. Change at the necessary speed and scale requires economic disruption. We wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”

It is not the first time Insulate Britain has evoked the great wartime leader when discussing the importance of their cause.

This week, before storming off set after being challenged over the insulation status of his own home and the refusal to change tactics after a woman was reportedly injured as a result of a protest, Insulate Britain spokesman Liam Norton compared his activists to Winston Churchill.

“In 1937, do you know how many MPs supported Churchill when he was trying to fight Hitler? Six MPs supported him, and Churchill was right, wasn’t he? And he only had the support of six MPs… Not always the public are with you, but you’re still right. And we’re right now,” Mr Norton had said.

His colleague Zoe Cohen likewise compared themselves to the Suffragettes, the female campaigners from the turn of the 19th century who used tactics that could today be defined as terrorism to campaign for the right of women to vote.

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