Extinction Rebellion protests – live: Activists strip naked outside Barclays after police remove people glued to plants

It’s a peaceful scene outside Canary Wharf’s DLR station, as XR doctors, nurses and other medical staff continue to occupy an area outside J P Morgan, writes our reporter Sam Hancock, who is at the protest in east London.

Dozens of medical staff, who have all taken a day off work to be here, are holding signs which read “this is a medical emergency” and “code red”. 

Some are continuing to hand out leaflets to commuters who walk by. 

“This is an act of communication,” Dr Lynne Jones OBE FRCPsych told The Independent. “I want to talk to people and help them understand why we are here - that’s why I’ve been approaching them and simply saying, ‘Do you want to know why we’re here’?

“And more often than not the response is yes, and they get it.”

Nearly 2,000 officers have been involved in policing Extinction Rebellion protests each day in London, a police chief has said.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist, of the Metropolitan Police, told Times Radio: “It’s been extremely busy over the last 10 days, we’ve had nearly 2,000 police officers every day just looking at trying to manage these protests.

“This is because it’s not the numbers of protesters but it’s the level of serious disruption that they’re looking to cause, which is impacting on other Londoners.

“We’ve said right from the start, we know that Extinction Rebellion have the right to protest and the right to assemble.

“But what we also made clear is these are qualified rights and they have got to be balanced against the rights of the rest of London and Londoners, the people, the businesses, the communities who want to lawfully go about their business.

“Where we’ve seen cases of both very serious and totally unreasonable disruption looking to be caused, we have to take action and move in and make arrests.”

Video footage shows the moment Extinction Rebellion protesters are removed by police at JP Morgan demonstration.

Here is the clip:

Dr Robin Stott, a 79-year-old retired consultant who XR refer to as the granddaddy of medicine, told The Independent:“I’ve been aware of the climate and ecological emergency for 30 years and we doctors have tried all the conventional routes to make a difference - and as you know, it’s not made much of a difference. 

“So we need to do more, which makes movements like Extinction Rebellion very important.”He added that Doctors for XR, the group everyone here today is a part of, is “a vital ingredient to achieving change”.

After calling J P Morgan “monsters”, Dr Stott said he hoped if today could achieve one thing it would be for “these big corporations to stop investing in fossil fuels and start investing in the climate crisis and socially just causes”.

Asked what he hoped anyone skeptical of the movement would take away from today’s action, Dr Stott said: “Just go home, look your children in the eye and say to them, ‘In 50 years time, if I’d done nothing, this place would’ve been inhabitable’.” 

Police and Canary Wharf security have erected two makeshift ‘boxes’, shielding those XR members still glued to the path outside J P Morgan’s building.  There are three Doctors for XR members in the bigger fenced-in box, and two in the other, a spokesperson for the group confirmed. 

Security personnel are working to remove them. 

When asked to comment by The Independent, one guard declined. 

Amid two weeks of demonstrations demanding greater action to tackle the climate crisis, XR’s goals and their tactics are in the spotlight.

Here, the organisation’s Clare Farrell answered questions from The Independent’s readers:

Dozens more police officers have now arrived at the JP Morgan building, as officers attempt to remove the doctors and medical students glued to the path. 

One of the fences has been removed, which revealed officers searching the bag of a medical student whose hand remains glued to a large flower pot outside the bank’s building. 

Those glued have also defaced the various flower pots with black graffiti, reading “code red”.

Police are asking all passers-by to move on as quickly as possible. 

Metropolitan Police officers could also be seen taking the details of those XR members still attached to the structures.  

The second temporary fence has now been removed, showing the rest of the doctors who are glued to planters outside J P Morgan. 

A heavy police presence remains, with most officers standing by as their colleagues attempt to remove the XR protestors. 

The rest of the group remain down the road, sitting outside the DLR station, where leaflets are being distributed and occasional chants of “extinction” and “rebellion” can be heard.  

Away from the XR protests, briefly, but still on the issue of the heating planet, Glasgow has recorded its hottest summer on record, just weeks ahead of hosting the critical UN Cop26 summit on tackling the worsening climate crisis.

The record-breaking heat in Scotland came during a summer defined by extreme weather events around the world, leading to catastrophic flooding and devastating wildfires in America and Canada, Europe and Russia and the Middle East and China.

Here is the story: