the times | Monday April 4 2022 2GM 19
News
A climate activist glued his hand to a
microphone during a radio interview in
London about protests at oil terminals.
Nathan McGovern, 22, told the LBC
presenter Tom Swarbrick that he was
taking the action because the station
was not using its “massive platform” to
tell its listeners about the climate crisis.
His hand was free before police arrived.
Officers said that more than 200
people were arrested as protests by Just
Stop Oil entered a third day. Warwick-
shire police made 54 arrests for offen-
ces including criminal damage,
obstructing the highway and public
order in relation to a protest at Kings-
bury Oil Terminal.
In Essex officers have arrested a total
of 155 people following protests in the
Thurrock district.
Activists from Just Stop Oil have
been blocking access to terminals and
demanding that the government stops
new oil and gas projects.
Yesterday Warwickshire police said
that a “significant operation remainsongoing” at Kingsbury. Ben Smith, the
assistant chief constable leading the
operation, said: “We fully acknowledge
every person’s right to engage in lawful
protest. However, when that protest
becomes unlawful and disproportion-
ate in nature, we will act to protect the
rights of others.”
Essex police said that 63 arrests were
made on Friday, 57 on Saturday and a
further 35 yesterday, for a variety of
offences.
On Saturday activists from Just Stop
Oil said that they had blocked access tothe Titan Truck Park and entered a net-
work of underground tunnels at the
Navigator and Grays oil terminals.
The Metropolitan Police arrested 14
people who broke into a facility at
Staines, Surrey, and West Midlands
police arrested six people at a terminal
in Birmingham.
Hampshire police said that protests
took place on Friday at Hythe and four
people were arrested. Two were
arrested on suspicion of aggravated
trespass and two others were held for
failing to comply with conditions.Climate activist glues hand to microphone in protest at radio silence
Charlie Moloney
About 25 cars and vans were set alight
yesterday during an “appalling and
shameful” crime spree that left a “trail
of destruction” across Bristol.
Emergency services responded to a
series of incidents in south Gloucester-
shire yesterday morning after vehicles
were set alight in Stoke Gifford, Bradley
Stoke, Little Stoke and Filton.
One attack on a Rolls-Royce aero-
space site in Filton at 3.45am destroyed
15 minibuses that had been used by
schools and vulnerable people.
The minibuses are owned by the
charity Four Towns and Vale Link
Community Transport, which helps
people with mobility issues to be “self-
sufficient and maintain their personal
independence”, the BBC said. It is un-
derstood that some of the vehicles
would have been used to take children
to school this morning.
Emergency services were called to
New Road, Stoke Gifford, shortly
before 1.30am yesterday, after reports
that a vehicle had been set alight. By
4am, several vehicles were on fire at theNathan McGovern’s hand was freed
before police arrived at LBC’s studiosTelevision Carol Midgley
Vehicles burnt in crime spree
Rolls-Royce site, which opened two
years ago. Vehicles in a ten-mile radius
were targeted and residents in Filton
were woken by fuel tanks exploding.
Pictures and videos on social media
showed the Rolls-Royce site engulfed in
flames, with thick black smoke pouring
out of the car park. Two council vehi-
cles were also damaged. There were no
reports of any injuries.
Police said about 15 minibuses and
between eight and ten cars and vans
had been damaged during the attack.
Tom Aditya, the mayor of Bradley
Stoke, condemned the attack as
“appalling and shameful”. He told the
BBC that police should “deploy a dedi-
cated team to identify the culprit”.
One witness , who was alerted when
his dog started barking, said the attack
had left a “trail of destruction across the
area”. He said: “Two vehicles wereburning 50 metres in front of me on
Gatcombe Drive and another one may-
be 100 metres behind me down on San-
dringham Road.
“I was approached by a neighbour
shortly afterwards who said he’d heard
of up to five in the area.”
Police said last night that the extent
of the damage was making it difficult to
identify vehicles and notify owners.
Avon and Somerset police said:
“We’re working closely with the fire
and rescue service to respond to these
incidents. Officers will be carrying out
house-to-house inquiries and making a
thorough investigation alongside Avon
Fire and Rescue Service.
“We’d like to hear from anyone who
finds their vehicle has been damaged,
as well as anyone with information or
dashcam, CCTV or other footage which
could help with our inquiries.”Kieran Gair
Nursery aide
was wrongly
sacked for
hugging boy
A teaching assistant has won more than
£7,000 after she was unfairly sacked for
hugging a young pupil.
Sabrina Willmott was judged by her
school to have “abused her position of
trust” by embracing a child with special
needs to calm him down. She was later
accused of kissing the nursery-age
pupil, an employment tribunal was told.
Although she denied this latter alle-
gation, she was sacked for gross mis-
conduct.
Pioneer Learning Trust, her former
employer, has been ordered to pay
Willmott £7,257 in compensation after
she won her case for unfair dismissal.
The tribunal, held in Watford, was
told that Willmott started working as a
level-one teaching assistant at White-
field Primary Academy, Luton, in 2016.
In October 2019 she was assigned to
a child in the school’s nursery who re-
quired support from a teaching assist-
ant because of his special needs.
The tribunal was told that in January
2020 the child “reacted badly” to a re-
quest from Willmott. She said that she
was concerned he was going to harm
himself and “placed her arms around
him in a hug to prevent a physical out-
burst, to intervene before an outburst
commenced”.
The following Monday, a meeting
was called after a local authority safe-
guarding officer raised concerns about
the hugging incident. Willmott was told
an allegation had been made against
her that she had behaved ”inappropri-
ately towards the child by hugging him
and kissing him”.
She “strongly and vehemently de-
nied” that she had kissed the child but
admitted embracing him, the tribunal
was told.
In February 2020 another teaching
assistant said that she saw Willmott get
on her knees, put the pupil’s coat on,
talk to him and give him a kiss on his
right cheek.
The witness said she did not see any-
thing else and added that Willmott was
“very touchy-feely” and it was usual for
her to “cuddle” the child.
A disciplinary meeting was held over
Zoom in July 2020 to hear allegations of
gross misconduct, and the kissing alle-
gation against Willmott was dropped
for insufficient evidence. She was still
sacked, however.
In the letter confirming her dismiss-
al, she was told that it was “the responsi-
bility of all staff to ensure that they did
not abuse or appear to abuse their posi-
tion of trust and extend relationships
beyond what was considered to be pro-
fessional and acceptable”.
Bellamy Forde, an employment
judge, ruled that the hugging did not
amount to gross misconduct and that
Willmott had been unfairly dismissed.Council vans in Bradley Stoke were
among 25 vehicles that were set alightBBC/CARYN MANDABACH PRODUCTIONS LTD./ROBERT VIGLASKYPeaky Blinders
BBC
HHHHIBlinders have
a blast with
the gang’s
parting shot
So Aunt Polly’s premonition was
right. There was a war between
Tommy Shelby and Michael Gray and
one of them did die. But with a Peaky
Blinders feature-length film in the
offing, it was never going to be
Tommy, the show’s beating heart,
played with blue-eyed charisma by
Cillian Murphy. With no Tommy
you’d have a pretty pointless movie.
So it was Michael who took a bullet
through the eye after failing to
murder Tommy with a bomb. Poor
Michael. He’s had a lousy series six,
spending most of it stuck in jail with
barely ten lines to his name.
But that was a nice twist which was
needed after a series that has at times
floundered and flabbed-out, putting
filmic style before plot (I’m thinking of
that shonky episode when Tommy
went up into the hills hunting down
gypsy curses). The inoperable
tuberculoma at the base of Tommy’s
skull, which his doctor said gave him
18 months left, was a lie. The doctor
was a gypsy-hating fascist in cahoots
with Oswald Mosley and they were
hoping it would drive Tommy to kill
himself. Which it nearly did, him
loading the gun before he saw a vision
of his dead daughter telling him
“You’ve got to live, Daddy. You’re not
sick.” And the vision was right! This
means Tommy can appear in the film,
if the chain-smoking and whisky
doesn’t get him first.
The feature-length episode marking
the end of the TV series was a return
to form, though it wasn’t perfect. But
there was an outstanding cameo from
Tom Hardy as Alfie Solomons. The
scene with him and Tommy in the bar
was the best of the series, Alfie asking
if Tommy was dying from “the clap”
and adding that if he was about toexpress profound emotion “you might
be better expressing it to someone who
gives a f***”. There were great lines,
such as when Diana Mitford invited
Tommy to amorous congress in the
Commons and he told her: “You’ll have
to cross the floor. I refuse to f*** on
Tory benches.” But at other times it
meandered. The long shootout in the
Birmingham gloom (Peaky Blinders
has always been an urban Western)
was too long. It felt too late to
introduce a new character in the shape
of Duke, Tommy’s long-lost son. But at
least psycho Arthur Shelby came back
into his own, shooting the IRA leaderwho engineered Aunt Polly’s murder
through the heart with a “rest in peace,
Poll”. Classic Peaky Blinders.
And though the last few minutes felt
like the series didn’t quite know how
to say goodbye, it returned the Peaky
Blinders to where we first met them
and when they were (in my view) at
their best. They are now part of the
culture; everyone knows a Peaky
Blinders outfit or a Tommy Shelby
haircut. Tommy, always the cool Clint
Eastwood of Birmingham, blew up
the mansion he thought was cursed
and went back to living in a caravan.
Farewell. It has been a blast.CONTAINS SPOILERS
Cillian Murphy
brings his usual
blue-eyed charisma
to the role of
Tommy Shelby