How utterly predictable that Extinction Rebellion should have re-emerged this week to block streets with its boats. You just have to ask yourself what happened last week: most universities broke up for the summer. The group’s activities have now settled into something of a pattern. When universities are on vacation we get these big protests, sucking in protesters from all over the country. During term-time, on the other hand, we get small protests in university towns as we had in Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh in May and June.
It says all you need to know about Extinction Rebellion – it is, above all else, a movement of students and left-wing academics. It was launched, last October, in a letter to the Guardian from 100 academics. Its leaders, in as much as it has any, are people like Gail Bradbrook and Roger Hallam, who have spent a large proportion of their adult life in academia (although there are a distinct lack of climate scientists among them – Hallam’s PhD on ‘digitally-enhanced political resistance and empowerment strategies’ is more par for the course).
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