One of Extinction Rebellion’s most prominent backers has condemned the group for smashing the windows of Barclays’ London HQ.
Police arrested seven women from the climate change activist group after they used hammers and chisels to break windows at the building in Canary Wharf yesterday morning.
“Smashing bank windows wins headlines, but it doesn’t win the hearts and minds of the people we need with us to create change,” said Dale Vince, who founded the green energy company Ecotricity. “It’s an aggressive act that will do more harm than good to the cause.
“Barclays undoubtedly have a lot to answer for, but so do many people and companies. This is not the way to reach them.”
Vince supported Extinction Rebellion’s agenda in a letter to The Times that he co-signed in April 2019 after it caused major disruption by blocking roads. The letter from green business leaders and activists said that the costs to businesses and “inconvenience to Londoners” of the protests was tiny compared to the future costs of climate change.
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Vince, who lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire where Extinction Rebellion was founded, said yesterday that he was still a fan of the group but he was concerned by the “slide into anarchy” signalled by the latest action.
The window-smashing protest against Barclays began last week in Stroud when Gail Bradbrook, the group’s co-founder, smashed the window of a branch near Ecotricity’s offices and likened the act to the actions of suffragettes, who in 1912 broke windows across the West End in London in their campaign for the right for women to vote.
The women involved in yesterday’s protest wore patches on their clothes that read “Better broken windows than broken promises”, a reference to a quote from a leading suffragette.
They said they were targeting Barclays because of its investments in fossil fuels.
A Barclays spokesman said: “Extinction Rebellion are entitled to their view on capitalism and climate change, but we would ask that in expressing that view they stop short of behaviour which involves criminal damage to our facilities and puts people’s safety at risk.
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“We have made a commitment to align our entire financing portfolio to the goals of the Paris agreement, with specific targets and transparent reporting, on the way to achieving our ambition to be a net zero bank by 2050, and help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
