Over the weekend, tens of thousands of climate activists and concerned citizens converged on Westminster for “the Big One”, a climate demonstration with more than 200 participating organisations, including trade unions, community groups and charities, and led by Extinction Rebellion (XR). The demonstration’s convivial atmosphere was somewhere between a county fair and Glastonbury: participants tried out screen printing, ate together on College Green and took part in talks about the climate crisis.
It was easy to forget that in 2020, XR was hanging by a thread. The pandemic decimated the movement on the ground – because its members could no longer meet, recruit others or plan activities. Also, the actions of a handful of protesters who blocked a London commuter train used by working-class people in October 2019 were received very badly, and did lasting damage to the group’s reputation (an XR spokesperson later apologised). “People are very keen to talk about the climate crisis,” one XR member recently told me, “but when they find out we’re from Extinction Rebellion, they don’t want to know.”
