The path from spring to summer has a beautiful way of revealing what has been gaining strength invisibly.

Roots grow underground long before anything breaks the surface. Networks form quietly beneath hard ground. By the time the first shoots appear, the real work has already been happening for months.

Something similar can be felt across Britain’s protest movements now.

At RAF Lakenheath in April, peace campaigners gathered for a week-long camp opposing the return of US nuclear weapons to British soil and the use of British bases in illegal wars in Palestine, Iran, Lebanon and beyond. There were workshops, overnight vigils, legal briefings, songs around camp and shared meals and stories. Older peace campaigners stood alongside younger climate and anti-war activists inheriting a world increasingly organised around militarisation, surveillance and permanent emergency.

The direct actions, organised by Lakenheath Alliance for Peace, began in earnest as it became clearer that the base is being used extensively for the US/Israeli wars in WANA (West Asia and North Africa). There were a total of 23 arrests – A group of 7 Christians, Muslims, Jews, Quakers and people of no faith group, together calling themselves Unity Against Genocide were arrested under the Terrorism Act while wearing tabards with individual words on them. When combined, their tabards read  ‘WE OPPOSE GENOCIDE. WE SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION” – with only one word on each. Incredibly, the group carried out the same action at the Supreme Court in February this year without arrest.

There were 2 arrests at the Saturday police-liaised blockade. 13 were arrested at the ‘surprise’ Monday blockade at the main gate. The lock-on to the CND symbol on the trailer, car lock-on and two road lock-ons happened at the main gate and at the same time 1 more person was arrested at the Lakenheath village gate where around 60 people did a stand up blockade.

A peace camp. A blockade. Arrests for nonviolent protest. These are recognisable acts within the long history of civil resistance in Britain.

And yet something can be felt, shifting.

Across climate movements, Palestine solidarity organising, peace campaigns and protest rights groups, people are recognising the same pattern unfolding around them.

Not of isolated incidents, but a political trajectory.

Defend Our Juries’ Timeline of Corruption shows our interwoven tapestry. Fossil fuel corporations knowing for decades about climate collapse; lobbying networks and think tanks shaping anti-protest policy; Lord Walney acting as an “independent adviser” while connected to oil and arms interests; escalating restrictions on protest and legal defence; peaceful campaigners imprisoned while the industries driving destruction continue almost untouched.

In 2019 Extinction Rebellion emerged to tell the truth about systems placing profit above life itself and to pressure the government to act. It is clear that those systems do not only extract from ecosystems. They extract from communities, from democracy and from our collective ability to act together. The same concentrations of wealth and power driving climate collapse are also driving militarisation, border violence and attacks on civil liberties. The deepest scars of this system are borne by the Global South; they endure the most devastating impacts of a collapse fueled by others, the injustice of the relentless extraction of their resources and the theft of their autonomy. 

When movements begin naming those connections clearly while reminding people of their agency, repression tends to follow; the same power that redacts the truth about our collapsing ecosystems in secret reports is the power that sends nuclear bombs to our soil and attempts to silence the juries that might hold them accountable.

Then came the arrests for mere written words. In 2023, Trudi Warner stood quietly outside a courthouse holding a sign reminding jurors of their legal rights. She was arrested for it.

No obstruction, no threat, no violence: just a sentence on a card. Just the truth.

Trudi’s sign, which read “Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience”, reflected a 300-year-old legal principle also written on a plaque on the Old Bailey. Her arrest shocked many people precisely because it exposed something larger than a single case. If even reminding jurors of their conscience could provoke arrest, then the boundary of acceptable dissent was moving rapidly. Defend Our Juries emerged from that moment of recognition, catalysed by outrage at Trudi’s arrest.

And now that recognition is spreading further. We stand against the same machinery of suppression: hostile media narratives, politicised policing, corporate influence over public policy and expanding restrictions on protest.

They are building a wall of secrecy and fear between the government and the governed.

One of the most dangerous aspects of this moment has been the increasing weaponisation of antisemitism against movements opposing mass violence.

Antisemitism is real, deadly and rising along with wider fascism. Jewish communities deserve safety and protection everywhere, as do all people of any faith or none; but conflating opposition to the actions of the Israeli government with hatred of Jewish people does not challenge antisemitism, it begets it. It risks deepening division while allowing governments to criminalise protest, expand policing powers and suppress dissent under the language of public safety.

Movements for climate justice and global justice are not separate moral causes competing for attention. They are a response to the same underlying crisis: a political and economic system that concentrates power upwards while demanding silence from everyone living with the consequences.

We know a liveable future cannot be built through fear, secrecy and permanent war. It has to be rooted instead in mutual aid, democratic participation, public accountability and care. That threatens those who profit from extraction, militarisation and division because solidarity interrupts the cycles they depend upon.

And solidarity is exactly what is growing.

At places like Lakenheath, around shared food and stories, people are recognising one another properly. Not as isolated campaigns orbiting separate issues, but as communities defending the conditions that make collective life possible at all: truth, conscience, participation and the right to resist systems that place profit and power above human and ecological survival.

Spring works slowly. But once roots intertwine underground, it becomes much harder to build a wall over what eventually emerges.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Keep an eye on independent news sources, the story grows all the time:

On 23rd April, Trudi was one of nine people arrested for breaching a Section 14 order while again holding signs communicating the principle of jury equity outside a court. The same sign as in 2023 but this time Section 14 conditions forbidding protest within 1 mile of the court was used. The interesting legal argument to watch for will be whether silently holding a sign amounts to protest.

On 12th May, came further evidence of the movement of boundaries within our judicial system. Four Palestine Action activists could be sentenced as terrorists. They were found guilty of criminal damage by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court in a retrial. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, ruled before the first trial that there appeared to be a “terrorist connection” to the offences – even though they took place before Palestine Action was proscribed. The judge’s ruling was not disclosed to jurors in two trials so they convicted the four based on criminal damage, not knowing they could then be sentenced for terrorism. We now know that reporting restrictions prevented the whole truth being known.
This has never happened before in a criminal damage case.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Join Jury Support Day. NEXT MONDAY 18th May 2026 at a court near you.

If these topics leave you feeling despair, find communities in your accessible space, in person or online who are discussing how they feel about them and we they can do, together. 

Movements like ours can not achieve our demands without a democratic media, free from the control of the billionaire elite. Sign and share this Parliamentary Petition demanding that the government pass the Media Sovereignty Act.

Join the telegram chat for the Love & Rage weekender we have planned. 12-13 September. A long hot weekend of workshops and discussions with a creative finale, join and stay as long as you’re able.

At the core of Extinction Rebellion’s philosophy is Nonviolent Direct Action. It is built on a long history of successful civil disobedience campaigns, from Indian Independence to the British Suffragettes and the American Civil Rights Movement, and evidence of how nonviolent social movements can create change.

Extinction Rebellion’s actions and campaigns focus on disrupting the seats of power because we are living in a time of Climate and Nature Emergency with our eco-system and society at risk of collapse in the sixth mass extinction.

Working with care, within our Principles & Values, we always have the same 3 demands which guide our focus:

TELL THE TRUTH
ACT NOW
DECIDE TOGETHER

FURTHER READING:

Jury Equity, the Filton 6 and the arrest of Trudi Warner by Jewish Voice for Liberation www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/jury-equity-the-filton-6-and-the-arrest-of-trudi-warner/ 

Plane spotters camped outside Lakenheath air base witnessed how a British RAF base is being used by the US military to wage war on Iran:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/03/raf-lakenheath-plane-spotters-fighter-jets-iran-us-suffolk/   

LAKENHEATH VIDEO

This film follows the people behind the protest. Scientists, veterans, teachers, and ordinary citizens — asking a simple question: what does real security look like?

Film by Zoe Broughton and Vlad Morozov

Photo credits Lakenheath Alliance for Peace and Emily Pennink/PA