Sorry, I didn’t see it in any of the reports.
Which party do the soup-throwers belong to? Where was that information shown?
Oh dear Porridge - your posts do tend to miss the point entirely. Did you not spot the mention of ‘many years’? Climate activism goes back to the 1970s and 80s - when I was active as a young man myself - we built a chain of ‘green’ shops, selling unprocessed, natural foods and other products, and books like The Limits to Growth. Among my co-workers were one of the founders of Friends of the Earth, and another that went to live and work at the pioneering Centre for Alternative Technology. We were active in the Labour Party - young climate activists have always been active in left/green parties everywhere, arguing for environmental policies. Where do you think policy initiatives like the Green New Deal come from? Look at the people leading the UK Labour Party’s Green New Deal movement now (Labour for a Green New Deal—Who We Are) or the age profile of the UK Green Party or the EELG in France.
Many of the young people arguing for green policies in and for political parties are the very same young people that lead protests - just as most protesters in any field are in fact active in lots of ways. But what is true I think is that 50 years after The Limits to Growth, young people are increasingly concluding that traditional politics is not fit for purpose, is incapable of actually grasping either science or rationality, and unfortunately that many older people are so imprisoned in their own bitter self-obsessed regret that they can’t bear to see the hopeful outgoing dynamism and wit of the young.
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Well, if I understand what you say correctly, you don’t think the soup-throwers belong to a political party. That’s the point I was making.
But it’s worse, isn’t it, from what you say? You say they think “traditional politics is not fit for purpose” (not a view exclusive to young people, apparently 
) but they haven’t anything to put in its place, apart from superglue on the M25 and tomato soup in art galleries.
Why do you think it matters whether a particular protester is or isn’t a member of a political party? Some are, some aren’t. Everybody contributes to a movement in their own ways. All political activists know and accept this. The brave young people that pull off actions like the soup incident have put something in place of traditional politics, haven’t they? And the fact that you’re discussing it now proves that it works!
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Absolutely! It is those that do, rather than merely talk, who will I hope rid us of this government that is entirely unfit for purpose. I think the young activists are principled, earnest and brave. Now desperate because it is the environment’s eleventh hour for us to stop damaging the future they, but not us, will be living.
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My daughter is now an activist Susannah - not of the soup-throwing variety, of which I understand there are 57, but an animatrice de la Fresque du Climat.
But there’s a long history of activism and protest working when traditional politics hasn’t, isn’t there? Slave rebellions, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Suffragettes, the American Civil Rights movement - indeed, it often seems that legislators only act when they are forced into it.
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Brava your daughter!
I marched in Hong Kong, long before the 2019-20 mass protests but it was super hot and we were asked to wear black, so I fainted in the street. Didn’t stop me marching the following weekend though. I loved my students.
I also went on a march in London, in my 20s, which was quite an early one for gay rights. (I was in the design business so many of my friends were Friends of Dorothy.) All was going very well and safely going down Piccadilly until they started chanting “2, 4, 6 8! Is your husband really straight!” Some rather burly looking bald chaps were coming towards us from the Circus end and the 200 or so of us legged it. We all ran like girls. Then some of us we went to The Phene pub in Chelsea.
Happy days…
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I once made the front page of The Guardian - I think it was one of the People’s March for Jobs demos. The only reason they took and published the photo was that I was pushing an infant in a pushchair with a dog tied to it (none of them were mine).
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Couldn’t you have managed to be pregnant as well?
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Letzte Generation:
“We are in a climate catastrophe and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting. You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid because science tells us that we won’t be able to feed our families in 2050,” the protester said. “Does it take mashed potatoes on a painting to make you listen? This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food. When will you finally start to listen? When will you finally start to listen and stop business as usual?”
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Or, looking further back in protest history…
"You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs Pankhurst.” These were the words of Mary Richardson who, on 10 March 1914, walked into London’s National Gallery and slashed, with a meat chopper, Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus (1647–51). Smashing through the glass, she scarred several times Velázquez’s idealised nude in protest of the re-arrest of British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.
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Put well here by an active activist, Phoebe Plummer, 21
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Sorry don’t agree. If this was the message she wanted to get across why not just say it? If she knew she wasn’t going to damage the painting why bother?
Yes - a very articulate and thoughtful young woman - a long way from @Porridge’s patronising stereotype - and I was gratified to hear her place herself in the history of fruitful protest - I could have added Stonewall, etc, to my own list showing that it’s protest, rather than traditional politics, that really drives change.
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Read on a train and missed the text sorry
I learned all my being patronising skills from the master, Geof!
As to the point she was making, which would be more powerful: tens of thousands of people being organised to march to support the cause, or a couple of people doing something ridiculous?
The difficulty with the current wave of protests is their essential silliness, whether that’s chucking paint or cakes, or preventing people getting to hospital/school/work, or disrupting public transport. If the effect of a protest is to cause people to roll their eyes, it’s not really a success, is it? It’s more like, “Look at me!”
No actually, it’s “See me!” It is their future that is absolutely on the line.
Jenny Jones (Green) on LBC this morning, responded to a rather hostile what’s his name when he queried the activists extreme methods. Jenny pointed out that it seemed to take such loud acts to get other people to pay attention to the urgent message.
My words are - Let’s have a little less apathy and self-centred NIMBYism from the very general public
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But it keeps why they protest in people’s minds doesn’t it? Maybe a percentage of eye-rollers will stop simply rolling their eyes and change their behaviour?
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I suspect it might encourage some portions of society to deliberately harm the environment as a response, but I’ve no stats to support that.
Hope not. But we can never overestimate the rare efforts some will have for petty one upmanship 
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