OVER the Bank Holiday weekend Tavistock and Okehampton Extinction Rebellion (XR) groups protested government inaction on the climate change crisis across the country.

Starting last Friday (August 28), the Tavistock group held its socially distanced protest at Drake’s Statue on Plymouth Road and at Abbey Bridge with banners and flags asking people to support the climate and ecological emergency bill (www.ceebill.uk).

Tavistock protestors then took to Bedford Square and West Street on Monday (August 31) to symbolically ‘clean up’ banks which invest in fossil fuels. The action saw the group, and group’s around the country, asking the world of banking and finance to clean up its act and take a ‘permanent holiday from destructive dealings and propping-up polluters’.

While Okehampton protestors attended XR Exeter’s protest near the city’s Bedford Square.

One of the activists, Jacky Hudswell, from Tavistock, said: ‘I believe what we are doing is important because the planet, and all life on it, is in serious danger.

‘I’d say the reaction to us being here today has been mostly positive.’