Two-Tier Reporting: When Climate Protesters Slow Ambulances They’re Vilified, So Why Are Wealthy Farmers Given a Free Pass?

“Farmers descended on Westminster in a convoy of tractors to protest the tax changes”, Politico reported on Wednesday afternoon, after owners of multi-million pound land and property-holdings blocked the roads around Parliament. 

The protest, over moves to introduce inheritance tax for the largest estates, saw dozens – perhaps hundreds – of tractors effectively blockading swathes of central London. 

By Thursday, the protest had fallen off the agenda, with only the Financial Times featuring the demonstration against inheritance tax on their front page. 

All of which is odd, because when reports emerged in 2021 of Insulate Britain climate protesters apparently blocking ambulances in central London, it received furious, wall-to-wall coverage and condemnation in the press and on television and radio discussion shows. The same goes for nearly every other climate protest that has slowed traffic in London over the past five years.

A report from GB News that August received widespread write-ups from other outlets, despite there not appearing to be any actual footage of climate protesters blocking an ambulance. One image of apparently-delayed ambulances in October that year got a write-up from the Daily Mirror and others.

This Wednesday however, while trying to get a bus that had been delayed by the farmers’ protest, I walked along Westminster bridge, as tractors slowly crawled over the Thames to the streets surrounding the South Bank – and St Thomas’ Hospital. The HQ of the London Ambulance Service is also nearby.

The roads around Waterloo were carnage, as traffic slowed to a trickle, impeded by dozens of tractors laden with banners and honking horns. And unlike many of the tabloids that railed against Insulate Britain and others, we actually have footage showing what happened. There were more trying to make their way under the tunnel, judging by the sounds of the sirens.  

I watched (and filmed) as ambulances struggled to make their way through. Most tractors did try to move to the side. But London’s roads are not designed for slow-moving, hulking agricultural machinery. It is undeniable that the tractors impeded the ambulances, which were battling to make their way through the road any way they could. 

And of course, many of the tractors could not move – they were wedged in or just too large to let others pass. So at one point an ambulance went up on the pavement on the other side of the road — into the oncoming traffic – to make progress. 

I have no problem with farmers’ right to protest. I say this almost without caveat. Peaceful protest should be defended as a right, whether you agree with their cause or not. It is often disruptive. It is often a nuisance. 

But you can watch the videos and decide for yourself what you think: whether the British press treats wealthy farmers – who are attacking a Labour Government removing a loophole affecting a progressive tax – with the same standards it treats those opposing catastrophic man-made climate change that is already affecting billions worldwide. 

Hundreds of people have responded to the footage – real first-person evidence of ambulances being disrupted by protesters. 

The overwhelming majority of comments focus on the apparent disparity in the light-touch policing of these farming protests, and that of climate demonstrations. Shock-jocks on talk radio would usually be all over Wednesday’s disruption. 

Compare and contrast with this Just Stop Oil demonstration last November: “At 10:36 around 66 Just Stop Oil supporters began marching South down Cromwell Road. Police were on the scene from 10:50, and began making arrests at 11:00. 

“The nonviolent march continued to 11:30 when officers themselves attempted to physically block the march, without success. Shortly afterwards, the remaining 15 marchers sat down in the road. By 11:50 all supporters had been arrested.” 

Too many media outlets rush to condemn those campaigning against fossil fuel chaos as “middle class”. Bizarrely, they do not say the same of millionaire land-owners.

Everyone in positions of influence should ask themselves the question: are you treating those fighting to save the planet more harshly than those fighting for inherited wealth? If so, why? 

In the meantime, Just Stop Oil activists would do well to turn up in tractors and Barbour jackets at their next outing.

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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

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