Just Stop Oil: who are the eco-protesters and what do they want?

The London Marathon is braced for disruption from Just Stop Oil after an activist from the protest group covered one of the tables at the World Snooker Championship with orange powder earlier this week.

The planned protest, just days after 118 animal rights activists were arrested for disrupting the Grand National, will “raise concerns across sport of copycat incidents in the weeks ahead”, said The Guardian.

Organisers of the London Marathon have been placed on high alert as nearly 30,000 “eco-zealots from more than 200 organisations will descend on the capital”, said the Daily Mail, for a four-day protest named “The Big One”.

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Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil’s ancestor group, has agreed to guard the marathon from protesters in a “unique” deal revealed by event director Hugh Brasher, to protect one of “the crown jewels” of sport, according to BBC News.

Just Stop Oil has confirmed to The Independent that it is one of the organisations attending, and remains “committed to disrupting sporting and cultural events”.

Group origins

Just Stop Oil is a youth-led offshoot of Extinction Rebellion and other climate protest organisations. It emerged in February 2022, and calls for the UK government to halt all new fossil fuel projects to combat climate change.

One activist described the group to The Observer as “a non-hierarchical coalition of organisers, scientists, lawyers and former workers in the oil industry who collaborate on both demands and tactics”.

Members operate in “autonomous blocs with shared resources” but there is no formal leadership, with the majority of the group’s funding coming from donations. Their goal is to raise awareness of the effects the oil industry has on climate change “on a massive scale”.

They believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels will “help cut energy bills and help us meet our international climate obligations”, said the Evening Standard. “Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene, genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion.”

Their aims broadly fit with the International Energy Agency’s call for “no new investments in oil, gas and coal”, said the Financial Times. But its “non-violent stunts rely on a committed, coordinated hardcore”, with donors including the Climate Emergency Fund, “a non-profit backed by oil heiress Aileen Getty”.

More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested since the group started taking action in April last year, with police making 755 arrests in October and November alone.

Aims

Their goal is to raise awareness of the effects the oil industry has on climate change “on a massive scale”. One activist told The Guardian the group is able to mobilise “upwards of 1,000 people” and is employing tactics that are a “fusion of other large-scale blockade-style actions you have seen in the past”.

As the name suggests, the group demands an immediate end to all new fossil fuel supply projects, and is urging the government to “make a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”.

They believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels will “help cut energy bills and help us meet our international climate obligations”, said the Evening Standard.

“Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene, genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion. It just has to stop.”

Group tactics

Their tactics include “glueing themselves to the road and attaching themselves to fuel tankers with bike locks”, said Sky News. Activists have begun targeting art galleries, throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and glueing themselves to a John Constable painting in London’s National Gallery last year.

Supporters of the group began blocking roads and bridges across London last autumn, causing severe disruption by blocking the M25, the country’s busiest motorway, in November.

Another “popular method of protest” has been to tie themselves to goalposts at Premier League football matches, said the Daily Mail, with one protester tying himself to a post by his neck.

They caused “chaos” at last summer’s British Grand Prix, said The Telegraph’s chief sports writer, Oliver Brown, invading the Silverstone track on the opening lap, “risking death both to themselves and the drivers”.

“What’s striking”, said the FT, is that protesters’ tactics are “milder than those used by the suffragettes”. But like the suffragettes in their time, “climate protesters are not loved” by the British public.

YouGov survey results published on Tuesday indicated that 36% of UK adults had a “very unfavourable view” of Just Stop Oil, compared with 12% somewhat favourable and only 4% very favourable.

Last April, the group released the results of a YouGov survey commissioned by Social Change Lab saying that more than half (58%) of UK adults supported a ban on new oil and gas projects. But polling this February showed nearly three-quarters of the public thought protests rarely, if ever, made a difference.

Response

A myriad of legal measures have been introduced in the past year with the aim of curbing public protest. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which came into effect in April, gives police the right to restrict protests if they believe one could cause public disorder.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman urged peers to back “proper penalties” for disruptive protesters in proposed amendments to the Public Order Bill, which would allow officers to shut down protests before they became “highly disruptive”.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that at this weekend’s protest “people can expect a visible, engaging but firm policing presence to tackle any criminal or anti-social behaviour and disorder”.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has called for protesters to be given longer prison sentences, saying that Just Stop Oil activists were “wrong” and “arrogant”. The Labour Party has accepted more than £350,000 donations from Dale Vince, a key backer of Just Stop Oil, since the last election.

Next moves

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was drawing up powers for police to stop “go-slow” actions, such as walking protests, adopted by Just Stop Oil after government laws were introduced to block “pop-up” demonstrations.

The proposals would prevent “a small minority” from disrupting the lives of the “hard-working majority”, he said. Sunak wrote on the ConservativeHome website that disruptive protests were “not right and we’re going to put a stop to it”.

The protesters have said they will continue taking action until a ban on all new fossil fuel projects is agreed by the government.