128 Tatler October 2019 tatler.comThey’ve superglued themselves to the InterContinental Hotel on ParkLane, parked a giant boat on Oxford Street and a barefoot Prince Harryis rallying to their revolutionary cause. Francesca Carington meetsExtinction Rebellion’s ‘coterie of privileged activists’ f ighting climate chaosON A SUMMER’S DAY IN A PARK NEAR
Waterloo station, a string quartet is playing Mozart as
an appreciative handful of ‘rebels’ rest in the shade. A
mother and her toddler weave through an encamp-
ment of tents that have just been erected, picking up
litter. Everyone is relaxed and smiling in the soporific
heat – but there is also a sense of excitement in the air.
Not since 1817, when the Duke of Wellington
first planted a polished leather boot on Waterloo
Bridge, has SE1 been quite so fashionable. But for
one week only, this dry little park is home to the
colourful climate change activist group Extinction
Rebellion and their festival-like base for the week’s
action. Founded a year ago in October 2018,
Extinction Rebellion’s rise – politically and socially –
has been extraordinary. Their red-robed representatives
appear everywhere, from Glastonbury to Stella
McCartney’s latest ad campaign; their coffers are
filled by scions of the Getty and Kennedy families,
their paraphernalia collected by the V&A.
Hannah Rothschild’s cousin is an active member
of XR (for short); so too is Tamsin Omond, the
granddaughter of a baronet, who spoke in July about
the fast-fashion industry at Port Eliot Festival. And
Greta Thunberg, who chose for her companion
Pierre Casiraghi (Princess Caroline of Hanover’s son)to sail across the Atlantic to attend the UN climate
summit in New York on 23 September. Even Prince
Harry is in on the act in his own way, delivering a
speech, barefoot, at the luxurious Verdura resort in
Sicily this summer on the effects of climate change.
‘We are already living it... it is terrifying,’ he told a
VIP audience at the uber-exclusive Google Camp.
Whilst Coldplay gave the Googlers a private
performance, for the rebels in Waterloo it’s a tenor
singing Schubert’s Lieder, as an extraordinarily good-
looking woman with a silver fish on her head sways
along. Later in the week, a female-fronted band
plays a song called ‘London Gentrified’. Solar panels
power the stage, where a guitarist appears, dressed in
a patterned blazer. There are brightly coloured flags,
banners emblazoned with the now instantly recognis-
able XR symbol and a few chilled-out police officers.
An American rebel approaches and tells me that if
I want a massage, I should check out the Wellbeing
Hub. Nearby, parked outside the Old Vic, is the sig-
nature XR boat, on top of which a bearded rebel is
telling his story with one hand holding the megaphone,
a bag of cheese Doritos in the other. Curious office
workers come and go, to see what it’s all about.
Well, they’re about to find out. This latest offensive- rousingly called the Summer Uprising, with peace-
ful protests held simultaneously across Cardiff,
Glasgow, Bristol and Leeds – is small fry compared to
what’s coming this October. Indeed, so were the
events of April, when the group brought London to a
standstill for 11 days, in the largest act of mass civil
disobedience in recent British history. Back then,
they blockaded streets in central London, glued
themselves to buildings and parked their Barbie-
pink boat in the middle of Oxford Circus, costing
police and businesses an estimated £28 million. Since
April, XR’s ranks have grown by tens of thousands
across 59 countries, but on 7 October 2019, it plans
to go truly global: Berlin, Paris, New York and Lon-
don will be awash with climate change protesters,
and economies will grind to a halt – or so is the plan.
‘It’s going to be the biggest and baddest yet,’ a
privately educated twenty-something supporter tells
me. ‘Wait – don’t say baddest!’
Her anxiety is understandable – for the backlash
in April was immediate. Since no mainstream media
outlet could exactly disparage XR’s green goals, they
settled instead for scorning the rebels’ backgrounds.
They were ‘privileged clowns’ and ‘deluded middle-
class climate warriors’, criticised on live television by
(middle-class) news presenters. Even The Guardian
called XR ‘a coterie of privileged activists’. ] MPHOTOGRAPH: TRUNK ARCHIVEONDSL E T ’ S TA K EA U-TURN10-19WELL-Extinction.indd 128 20/08/2019 16:46