According to a press release from the anonymous group Shut The System, activists visited the London office of the Policy Exchange right-wing think-tank this morning, spraying it with blood-red paint and smashing several windows. The action appears to be a continuation of the group’s Summer of Sabotage, which they declared earlier this month.
The activists are protesting Policy Exchange’s malign influence of government policy, pushing for greater undermining of human rights, and in particular their connection to new laws designed to disrupt the climate movement as well as the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation (despite no one in their five-year campaign being convicted for a violent offence).
A Shut The System spokesperson said that Policy Exchange had been targeted because of “the role they have played in making the UK the less tolerant, more unequal, increasingly authoritarian and poorly governed nation it is today”. With reference to new legislation influenced by the think-tank they said “Protest and direct action are not extremist activities, they are an essential aspect of any functioning democracy”.
Real Media first exposed the undemocratic influence and dark money funding of groups like Policy Exchange in an article by Kam Sandhu back in 2017 – the interview with Till Bruckner from Transparify included data on a range of think-tanks, in which Policy Exchange was given a zero rating and characterised as ‘highly opaque’.
Our 2022 article Hidden Forces analysed the connections to Downing Street’s policy unit, the influence over major changes in law directed at climate movements, and its secret financial support from fossil fuel interests. It was the Policy Exchange report Extremist Rebellion which first raised the possibility of labelling peaceful protesters as a new form of terrorism. The group, registered as a ‘charity’, receives around £3,000,000 annually from undisclosed sources, as well as regular ‘sponsorship’ funding from an array of energy companies for arranging meetings with ministers.
Last year, Policy Exchange published yet another report called Might Is Right? urging the government to restrict protest further, with recommendations that organisers should give a month’s notice (!), that London businesses should be represented on a Protest Commission with the power to apply to the Home Secretary for bans. Among a whole array of other recommendations are that the definition of “Key National Infrastructure” (places where any disruptive protest would be illegal) should be widely extended, and that the government should legislate away established legal case law such as DPP v Ziegler, which at the moment still provides ‘lawful excuse’ for certain minor crimes, in line with Human Rights Law. They also want to bring back the ridiculed and repealed 2005 SOCPA legislation which restricted protest within 1km of Parliament.
Read our full Hidden Forces article for more on Policy Exchange and its sinister influence on our democracy.
Shut The System describe their campaign as acting in self-defence against the vested interests of social elites who own, fund and operate fossil fuels. They say that increasingly repressive laws have forced them underground.
