t is just before 8am on a Friday morning at Old Street roundabout, and 20 Insulate Britain activists have just finished their team huddle. They wait for traffic lights to turn red, and walk into the A501. Putting on high visibility jackets and unfurling banners, and sit down in the road. Some stick themselves to the tarmac with a superglue-like formula.
There is a moment’s silence as people in traffic slowly realise what is going on. Then the street erupts. Horns beep furiously, and cars make last minute attempts to turn around. Trapped drivers get out of their cars and vans to remonstrate. It turns nasty. One white van man, screaming, drags someone out of the road. Another shouts that none of these people have jobs. Sitting with his van, kitchen delivery man Rezwan Chouwdhury is apoplectic. “It’s stopping us from working. If I’m late for one job they cut my wages” he says. School kids gather round to watch and a man screams that two seven-year-olds are having to walk for miles now their bus is blocked. But no one quite knows what the protestors want.
It’s just another morning for the activist group, who have been creating a storm by blocking roads and motorways. The group say 124 people have been arrested a total of 629 times. But Insulate Britain don’t care: they burned their injunctions outside the High Court. This week they have caused delays on the M25 by walking alongside oncoming traffic.
The Government have taken against the activists. Home Secretary Priti Patel has repeatedly attempted to speed up laws to keep them in jail, while Boris Johnson called the group “irresponsible crusties”, and not “legitimate protestors”. In his speech to Conservative conference, the PM said he planned to “insulate them snugly in prison where they belong”.
So what are Insulate Britain’s aims? The connection between Insulation and traffic is at first confusing, but their goals are actually quite simple. The group argue that the Government is not sticking to its climate pledges. While claiming we will get to ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050, administrations are doing little to actually meet the targets. IB have decided that the smartest single way the Government could help global warming is to insulate every home in Britain by 2030, starting with council stock. They say this will save people money on fuel, and create jobs. It is also more popular than telling individuals not to fly on holiday or turn off the lights. The plan is to block roads until the Government agrees to the changes, or – perhaps more likely – they are put in jail.
IB are a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, itself only formed in 2018. They feel that XR is not radical enough, only calling for meetings rather than urgent action. The reason for their stunts is largely to get public attention. This part seems to work, if the media huddle here is anything to go by. And yet, looking at the anger it is hard to tell whether Insulate Britain are winning hearts and minds. Activists also know that their confrontations with drivers are part of the spectacle. But it puts the protestors, many of whom are older, at risk of being hurt by the public. On top of this, drivers get angry with the media for giving the oxygen of publicity. In all, it’s an uncomfortable place to be.
Roger Hallam is one of IB’s most influential members
/ Getty ImagesLeadership is not entirely clear, with some collective decision-making. But one of the most influential figures is Roger Hallam, who was asked to leave XR over his disruptive methods. Once a farmer in Wales, Hallam studied for a PhD in civil disobedience and radical movements at Kings College in London. He was imprisoned for flying drones around Heathrow to disrupt flights in 2019, and started an unsuccessful political project, Burning Pink. He has previously had success with disruptive protest: in 2017, he was fined £7,000 for spray-painting Kings College in a protest about divesting from fossil fuels, causing outrage. Five weeks later, the university divested. Whether or not he can have a similar effect on national policy, having made an enemy of the Government, remains to be seen.
Hallam is intentionally controversial, recently saying he would have sat in front of an ambulance even if it meant someone might die. Hallam himself has been accused of hypocrisy – his own farm in Wales is not well insulated. IB say that this is part of the point: that much of the UK’s housing stock needs insulation.
IB are relatively well-organised. They number around 60 or 70 people, working in small groups. They are broken down into media teams, with spokespeople. They only have a few followers on social media. They plan where to block late the night before, and share the information with a few journalists. It had taken me a while to secure this meeting, as previous arrangements changed at the last minute.
The group are frustrated by enquiry about their inner workings, and argue that media should focus on the climate science. They may have a point, as scientists warn we are running out of time to act. This year’s IPCC report found that humans have already warmed up the world by 1.1C since the pre-industrial era, and is likely to reach 1.5C in the next two decades, meaning huge changes around the world. A recent Chatham House study estimates that global warming will mean that 10 million people a year are likely to be exposed to heat stress beyond the ‘survivability threshold’ by 2030s, meaning an incomprehensibly high number of deaths. IB are hoping to get the Government to act before COP 26 UN world climate change summit in Glasgow, which starts this weekend. Of course, the whole world needs to act.
My mum hates what I am doing, she changes the subject each time I bring it up
There are also benefits at home to insulation. ONS figures estimate that 8,500 people died due to cold rooms last year, unable to heat their homes. Insulate Britain say insulation will save money and lives. Their sums can be vague: an official document says it would cost between £360 and £600 billion pounds. Other groups have drawn up less expensive plans. The New Economics Foundation have suggested the Government spend £11.7bn over the next three years, to retrofit 19 million homes. Keir Starmer has said he supports their ideas.
Outside the High Courts of justice on the Strand, I meet some of the Insulate Britain activists. What kind of person upends their lives to risk prison? They are largely white and middle class – though not rich – and have the camaraderie of a family. They are friendly but often quietly serious during their public moments, seeming uncomfortable as the centre of attention. All are deeply worried about climate change.
Retired charity director Mary Adams, 68, is one of the determined group. She is dressed smartly, wearing heeled leather boots and dark glasses. Her partner is also in the group. She became aware of climate change from seeing extreme weather events in India, and trained with Al Gore in America. She tells me how “dramatic and intense” it is before blocking traffic at 8am, and expresses genuine remorse for the delays. “Nobody wants to be there. I do not want to be there”. Adams is partly doing her protests for her two grandchildren. “I told the little kids I was on a secret mission. They know that I was arrested.” she says. She’s aware that she may not see them for a while. “I don’t want to not see them for six months or however long, but I’m willing to”.
Nearby, Tim Speers, 36, is dressed in jeans and a purple cagoule, and has dark long hair. He worked as a professional poker player for a decade, before watching the Netflix documentary Cowspiracy about sustainability. It changed his whole worldview. He thinks disruption is the only way that movements such as IB get heard. “Women didn’t get the right to vote from just asking politely on the side of the road” he says. Not everyone in his life is supportive. “My mum hates it,” he says. “She changes the subject any time I bring up any of these sorts of things.”
Janine Eagling, 60, also has a purple coat and dark glasses. She quit her job as an IT consultant three years ago to become a cycling instructor and activist. “I’ve been a law abiding citizen all my life, I’ve kept my head down,” she says. “This isn’t really how I want to spend my old age, but equally I don’t want to spend it sitting at home in extreme weather events waiting for the roof to blow off.” Eagling says that she feels sorry for the people that are stopped, but that some give as good as they get. She was in the street last Monday where a woman sobbed that her mother was going to hospital and she needed to be there. “That lady actually tried to run me over. And people were goading her on,” Eagling says. “She was practically over my legs. I did of course move out of the way,” she says. Despite what Hallam said, IB do let motorbikes and ambulances through their roadblocks, but there can be delays as traffic backs up.
Many have dedicated their whole lives to the cause, giving up their other jobs. Joshua Smith, 28, was a bricklayer in Manchester, but says he quit his job six weeks ago to join the protests. He is one of the youngest members of the group. (One newspaper says Smith owns an expensive property portfolio, itself not well insulated. Smith contests the value of the homes). He’d never been arrested before August, but is now a seasoned visitor to the cells. “In a couple of decades from now when the world’s burning, am I going to regret having gone to prison for six months? The answer is not one bit” he says. “I would like to have a nice quiet life and raise a family. But I feel I have a moral responsibility to stand up and be counted”. Smith says he is inspired by his fellow activists, some of whom are risking careers and relationships to keep working with the group. One such seems to be Cathy Eastburn, who is married to Ben Plowden, a director in TfL’s surface transport team. This had reportedly led to difficult conversations at home.
At the front of the court, spokesperson Tim Gough is the one chosen to speak to cameras. He is wearing a fancy red woollen scarf and is patiently explaining that the world is “approaching Armageddon”. A voice wafts out of the window of a passing black cab: “Bastards”. Gough sighs. “They always call you a bastard even if you’re a bloody customer… London f*cking cabbies”. He goes on talking.
Back on the street when I went down, police arrive in large numbers in large vans. Paramedics arrive with a chemical that can break down the glue slowly. Someone shouts out ‘Chop their arm off’ but in general the atmosphere becomes calmer. Someone quips that traffic is usually stopped at Old Street anyway – so what’s the difference. Protesters are slowly carried out of the road, going limp to make themselves harder to move. Some police are getting to know the activists, discussing the terms of injunctions that are being handed out to the group – well over 100 so far. I notice Mary being arrested by an officer. Also in the road is Joshua Smith, as a medic tries to remove his hand from the tarmac. “It’s just another day at the office,” he says, with no intention of slowing down. “They can either insulate the homes of Britain, or they can put us in prison, and that is our line in the sand,” he says. Expect to see more of these scenes in the weeks ahead.
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