‘We Are Not Heroes’: Insulate Britain Admits Failure After Months of Roadblocks

Green direct-action group Insulate Britain has conceded defeat in its campaign to bring Britain's roads to a standstill.

The spin-off campaign from Extinction Rebellion, which drew public ire by staging a series of disruptive sit-ins on motorways, busy bridges and city centres last autumn issued a statement on Monday morning admitting it had "failed".

"During our campaign we have repeatedly said, 'We will get off the roads as soon as we have a meaningful statement we can trust from the government that they will Insulate Britain’s homes, starting with social housing'," the statement read.

In fact the government has funded a series of schemes over the last few years to make homes more energy-efficient, some of them ongoing.

The group lamented Prime Minister Boris Johnson's response to its ceasefire in October — after four weeks of mayhem — that its members would be better off "insulated snuggly in prison."

Police made hundreds of arrests during the blockades, while courts issued several members with injunctions against taking part in further actins — for which a handful were jailed briefly for breaking.

While Insulate Britain claims it aim is to ease fuel poverty amid rising household gas and electricity bills, its members have repeatedly said their real concerns are global warming and phasing out the fossil fuels used to heat homes.

But the eco-activists did not drop their alarmist rhetoric on environmental issues, insisting that the the public must either be with them or against them.

"We will continue our campaign of civil resistance because we only have the next two to three years to sort it out and prevent us completely failing our children and hitting climate tipping points we cannot control," they said.

"More of us must take a stand. More of you need to join us. We don’t get to be bystanders. We either act against evil or we participate in it."

Opinion polls taken at the height of the roadblock protests found around 60 per cent of Britons — many of whom were prevented from going to work or picking up children from school due to the protests — were opposed to them.