Only two people spoke to me, a little girl who knew me from the Infants School and a gentleman whose opening gambit was to ask me what the Church thought of XR and its tactics. He then said he was a plant biologist working for a company advising on the growth of trees and crops, and in his opinion it was irresponsible to spread alarm about climate change when nobody can be sure what's going to happen: 'I remember watching An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore said that all the Arctic sea ice would be gone by 2012, and that wasn't right, was it?' I agreed that it was rash to be very definite about dates, but that the overall direction of movement was fairly clear. He then told me carbon dioxide 'isn't a greenhouse gas anyway', that because conifers evolved when atmospheric CO2 was twelve times what it is now the climate could easily absorb similar levels without anything bad happening, and that his greatest fear was that someone would invent a way of extracting all the CO2 from the atmosphere and kill all the plants. At that point I decided not to worry too much about his ideas, great though I'm sure he is at growing trees. I did only last a few more minutes before the rain got the better of me and I cycled home.
By the end of this week, of course, the protests were still going, so I did travel up to London to join in. I don't mind admitting that part of my motivation is to support my friends Ms Trollsmiter and Lady Metalmoomin who are far more active in the cause: if they're prepared to take the risk the very least I can do is to back them up. There is nothing wrong in being influenced (in what you do, if not what you think) by people you respect. Quite apart from the climate issue itself, I felt the Metropolitan Police's blanket ban on all Extinction Rebellion activity in the capital was so sweeping (and has yet to be proved legal - opinion is that they were just chancing their luck in the hope that demonstrators would be put off) that for the sake of freedom of assembly if I was going to do anything, it ought to be this, and now. As I turned into Whitehall Gardens and found what was then a few hundred people but which became probably a couple of thousand I was extremely nervous at how I might be received but in fact nobody paid me any attention. I spotted a figure in a clerical collar who turned out to be from another Surrey church (though in the Southwark Diocese) and of course clergy always at least pretend to be glad to see each other. That put me a bit more at my ease.
It took ages to set off. Ms Trollsmiter turned up at 12.25 and warned she could only stay an hour: I said that at the rate we were going, we'd be lucky if we'd made it out of the gardens by then. As it turned out, the march was so slow that by the time we got to the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall and then turned round to head south towards Downing Street, she and I were able to go and have coffee and a sandwich, and when I emerged I could still catch the procession up along Tothill Street which was where I met Lady Metalmoomin ('Yah, apart from the end of the world, things are really good at the moment'). We halted in Petty France outside the Ministry of Justice for a couple of very short speeches and not long after that I peeled off to go home, via what turned out to be a most circuitous route as the police had closed off Westminster Bridge, presumably to stop anyone protesting on it: like the famed Vietnam War general who stated 'to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it', the bridge had to be closed to stop it being obstructed.
It was an odd occasion. Technically the whole thing was an illegal gathering, but there the police were, facilitating it, and talking perfectly amicably to the XR liaison people. Admittedly, they did seem to be picking demonstrators at random for arrest, just to make the point, which was why I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but it was all quite good-natured otherwise. I was struck by the levels of preparedness and organisation: this is not just a group of people turning up in a London street. Whenever someone was arrested the cry would be passed down the line 'Legal observer! Legal observer!', sometimes in call-and-response form: Legal Observer (Legal Observer!), Up the front (Up the front!), On the left (On the left!). And you know you're not in a normal political demonstration when, as the police lay hands on someone or other, everyone around the spot cries 'We love you! We love you!' to the officers of the Law. You could also tell because - in contrast to every other political demonstration I have ever taken part in - the obligatory couple of Socialist Workers Party activists making sure as many people as possible are given their SWP placards to wave were nowhere to be seen.
Of course I have my quibbles with the XR approach, both its style and aspects of its rhetoric, but I am also a representative of the Church of England and I don't go along with all of that, either. Wait until you find an organisation which suits you in every detail, and you'll wait a long time. Some people don't like XR's Red Brigade, who symbolise the destructiveness and suffering of climate change, but I find their sombre presence a masterstroke. Doing nothing but walk slowly and make simple hand-gestures, they manage to be an intensely powerful visual and emotional focus. But, watching them in the flesh for the first time, as an old Dr Who aficionado my mind flies back to The Fires of Pompeii, and I speculate whether there's a Whovian in the XR design department. Spot the difference.
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