No, Extinction Rebellion are not ‘storming’ Windsor Castle. Here’s what we’re doing instead

The Daily Mail ran a story earlier this month claiming Extinction Rebellion was plotting to “storm” Windsor Castle on 30 August. A Telegraph journalist phoned XRUK later that same morning informing us they had read the story, but didn’t want to republish anything untrue.

Hundreds of people will indeed descend on the crown estate next Friday, not to storm but to begin a three day occupation of the King’s grounds. We will be bringing our tents. We will be leaving our trebuchets at home. The only projectile we aim to catapult into our broken institutions is an imaginative upgrade on our antiquated concepts of functioning democracy.

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We are not targeting the King. We know he is sympathetic to our call for climate and ecological justice. The castle is a symbol of the system of power and how it is preserved. We will be targeting that wider broken system.

Take for example the revolving door of opportunities for political leaders to assume roles in the oil and gas industry – and vice versa. 

That merry-go-round is always turning. 127 former oil and gas officials – including 49 industry bosses or senior executives – have been recruited into influential government positions and ministerial advisory boards since 2011.

Almost three in four of those to pass through the revolving door into parliament’s corridors of power have worked for at least one of three major energy giants: BP, Shell or Centrica.

The Conservative government has gone but similar patterns are playing out under Labour.

Graham Stringer MP was considered to be a suitable Labour candidate despite his membership of the climate denying Global Warming Policy Foundation. And chancellor Rachel Reeves reportedly accepted a donation of £10,000 from former GWPF chair Lord Donoghue before dramatically scaling back Labour’s key commitment to funding the green transition.

This summer, the country’s two largest parties attracted their smallest share of the vote across any national poll since 1918. Labour won 63% of the seats on only a third of the vote in what has been called the “most disproportionate election in history” by campaigners and academics.

Lack of trust in politics was the primary reason people gave for not voting.

The Mail disingenuously claimed Extinction Rebellion is plotting to create a diversion on day one of Upgrade Democracy, our upcoming Windsor occupation. They said a theatrical protest on the Friday has been designed to provide cover for rebels to trespass into out-of-bounds areas.

In contrast it is the Mail’s story that is diversionary – diverting from the climate and ecological emergency declared in the UK five years ago, shortly after XRUK’s 2018 clarion call.

That declaration – to tell the truth – was the first of our three demands. Our other demands called for governments to act now; to think beyond politics.

That’s where Upgrade Democracy comes in. The centre-piece of the Windsor weekend will be Saturday’s ‘massembly’, potentially the largest citizens’ assembly ever held.

Together, hundreds of us will consider and conceive how climate and ecological justice can be urgently achieved.

We have no plans to storm the castle or disrupt the public, but we will scale the metaphorical walls of a broken system, fixing it through channelling our collective imagination.

Marijn van de Geer is a member of Extinction Rebellion UK’s Citizens’ Assembly Working Group.

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