Sky gets Ratcliffe climate protest wrong

Typically, the media (I’ve just been watching Sky news) has got in a muddle about the latest direct action protests.

At this point, not much is known about how a policeman sustained head injuries during this afternoon’s protests at E.ON’s coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.

Sky’s presenter asked its man at the scene where right and wrong lay in this dispute. The reporter went into a rap about the how clean or not the power station was, etc.

But the question should have been whether it is legitimate for protestors to seek – by force – to breach a power station perimeter as a precursor to an attempt to shut the station down, by force.

The protestors could be wholly right in their argument and wholly wrong in the way they pursue it. Equally, of course, the police may be wrong in the way they handle the protest. Famously, the police got plenty wrong during the G20 protests in The City earlier in the year.