After three years, Just Stop Oil is ending its campaign of non-violent civil disruption: we are hanging up the high-vis. But this does not mean the resistance is over. Sitting here in a prison cell in HMP Styal, I am still demanding an end to oil and gas. Every prison key that rattles, every door that is bolted shut, every letter that is read by the prison staff – it all reminds me that 15 Just Stop Oil supporters are currently locked up for refusing to obey governments whose climate inaction is frankly murderous.
There has been some progress. The Labour government was elected last year on a manifesto including the pledge that they will “not issue new licences to explore new [oil and gas] fields”. This is a victory for civil resistance and the climate movement. To everyone who donned an orange high-vis, who leafleted on the streets, who got arrested for their actions, ran a social media page, gave a talk in a community centre, or answered a phone call from someone in custody, I say: you are part of this change.
But the new government is falling far short of what needs to be done in order to avert catastrophic climate change. In order to fulfil their legally binding commitments to limit warming, Labour needs to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030 and push for international action. In fact, in response to Just Stop Oil’s victory announcement this week, a government spokesperson said: “We have been very clear when it comes to oil and gas that it has a future for decades to come in our energy mix.”
Continuing with oil and gas for decades is an act of violence that will unfold over the coming years; it is the ultimate betrayal of the people. They are telling us they do not care.
The government spokesperson went on, saying: “When it comes to Just Stop Oil, they succeeded in creating a significant amount of disruption and public nuisance … I’m sure there will be plenty of members of the public happy to hear that they will be causing less disruption in the future.”
When we look back to past civil resistance movements, the truth is that we do not think about protestors as a public nuisance, but as a public service. We do not remember the shopkeepers who could not open their stores on Oxford Street after the suffragettes had smashed their windows, or the people who could not watch rugby matches as anti-apartheid demonstrators stormed the pitch. Instead we remember and value the disruptive message and the change those actions spurred on.
Our message, “Just Stop Oil”, was truly disruptive. It means an end to the fossil fuel era, it means an end to profiteering from death and destruction. It means rearranging wealth and power, and transforming global politics.
In a world where it is legal – and profitable – to extract and burn oil, gas and coal, it is unsurprising that attempts to disrupt this system have led to imprisonment. Supporters of Just Stop Oil have court trials listed well into 2027. The state continues to put in the dock the students, doctors, vicars, scientists, teachers, the ordinary people who support Just Stop Oil, while letting the fossil fuel bosses off the hook; it must abandon these show trials and invest these resources into investigating the real criminals.
We are living in a different world from the one in which we founded the Just Stop Oil campaign. We have passed through 1.5C of warming. Fascism and authoritarianism sweep across the globe and the threat of war has obscured our view of impending climate collapse. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries recently reported that the global economy could see a “50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090” unless immediate policy action on the climate crisis is taken.
It does feel bittersweet that this chapter of the climate movement is closing while I am sitting in prison. But it is our duty to adapt our resistance to this new reality, and to follow Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha – “noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good”. It is time to consider a new design for a mass movement capable of confronting the many intersecting crises that we face. As we head to the drawing board, I invite you to join us.
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