Dr Caroline Vincent [Vladimir Morozov]

A SCIENTIST who was acquitted this week after gluing herself to a government building in protest against dangerous environment policies has called for better understanding of climate change activism taking place across the capital.

Dr Caroline Vincent, who has lived in West Hampstead for 30 years, said the non-violent protests were a “cry for help” from a younger generation facing a desolate future.

She slammed the Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s criticism of roadblock demonstrations by the Just Stop Oil group.

In a radio interview on Monday Sir Keir had said the environment activists were “wrong” and “absolutely arrogant” and should face tougher sentences.

Dr Vincent, 60, said: “It made me really cross to hear him say that, because if you look at those young people what they are doing is a real deep cry for help.

“It must be incredibly frightening to be a 20-year-old. We don’t yet have a solution and so we should support them. He should not be talking about giving them longer sentences.

“So I was furious. I was thinking my message to him is that if you get elected, why don’t you remove the statues of [suffragist] Millicent Fawcett and Gandhi from Parliament Square? They both belong to the same kind of social movements that changed the world.”

Dr Vincent, who is in the Labour Party, is a former Cambridge research scientist who has quit her job as a consultant to the pharma­ceutical industry to campaign full time to save the planet.

“She was one of a group of Extinction Rebellion activists facing criminal damage charges at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday after spraying paint and gluing themselves to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) last year.

“The group was acquitted partially thanks to a landmark ruling in favour of the ‘Colston 4’ in Bristol, reached after a legal appeal masterminded by Hodge Jones and Allen solicitor and former Camden Council leader Raj Chada.

Recalling her political awakening after an international report came out in 2019, Dr Vincent said: “I felt so guilty because I was a scientist and I felt I should have been aware of the extent of the problem. I’m also from a generation that is totally responsible for all of this.”

She added: “I thought if people like me don’t step up we don’t have a hope in hell. Now I dedicate all my time to raising awareness and working with scientists on environmental causes.”

Asked what people could do who were inspired to help the cause, she said: “More and more people are realising that taking to the streets is not that scary. “I find one of the scariest things is actually starting conversations with my friends, because most of the time we are frightened to be disappointed. It hurts to see people you love not get it.

“But I am comfortable having this conversation with people on the street when I am protesting. People say why don’t you write to your MP instead? I say look how that is going. If you know a better way, please tell me because I think we have tried everything else.”

Dr Vincent said she did believe that there was a “political solution” to the crisis but that parties needed to stop measuring the nation’s success in crude terms of GDP, adding: “It should be measured by the levels of happiness and employment and education and how we treat each other. ‘Does everyone have enough to eat and heat their own homes?'”

She said it was not too late to make meaningful changes and there was a political solution to the problem.

Mr Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, criticised Just Stop Oil’s campaigners use of roadblock protests, adding: “I think it’s absolutely arrogant of those gluing themselves to the road to think they’re the only people who have got the answer – they haven’t got that answer.”

He has said that if elected Labour would ensure Britain had clean power by 2030 and that there would be no new oil and gas licences passed.