MPs including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry showed their support for Islington Council’s ‘climate emergency’ in 2019

• TWO years ago I and Extinction Rebellion Islington joined children from our borough, our MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry, councillors and residents to hear the then council leader Richard Watts and Claudia Webbe, then executive member for the environment, declare on behalf of the council, that along with the rest of the world, Islington was in a state of climate emergency.

I did so with misgivings and a heavy heart. The night before I had privately urged XR not to take part in what I feared would be little more than a photo opportunity seeking to exploit the climate catastrophe for political advantage.

And so it turned out. The fact the council continue to invest money in the obscene activities of the Shell oil companies gives the lie to anything else they say or do.

Richard Watts and Claudia Webbe have moved on to pastures new but much of the rest of the cast list of that declaration remains the same.

It is imperative that the council act now and stop funding the destruction of vast swathes of the natural world by investing their pension fund in Shell.

Any councillor who does not speak out in defiance of the party whip on this is not fit for public office.

In love and rage,

SEBASTIAN SANDYS
XR Bunhill