Did England’s most hated protest group really stop throwing soup?

Climate Action Group announced that oil will be dispersed at the end of April. The activists were mocked as Zealots and vandals, which attracted attention, and hated many people because of their destructive direct action tactics. He says he wins because the request for no new oil and gas licenses should no longer demand government policy. So, they really won and does this end the chaos caused by these climate protests?

Hayley Walsh’s heart competed on January 27 this year while sitting on the audience at the theater Royal Drury Lane. The 42 -year -old lecturer and three of them tried to calm the breathing. Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver was the stage in Shakespeare’s first production of The Tempest’s West End. But only Hayley, a stopping oil activist, had his own drama planning.

Weaver’s prospero “Come, I say,” he jumped out of his chair and rushed to the stage with a 60 -year -old mechanical engineer Richard Weir. They started a confetti ball and a poster that says “is a global ship wreckage of more than 1.5 degrees” 2024 was the first year of the symbolic 1.5c threshold A head of the global average temperature increase and the theme of shipwreck in the game.

It was a classic Just stop oil (JSO) action. The target is high profile and guarantee promotion. The message was simple and presented in the group’s signed fluorescent orange.

The reaction of the affected was a classic response to JSO. In the middle of boos and whistles, you can shout “fools”.

“Drag them off the stage”, an audience member can be heard while yelling, “I hope you [expletive] Be arrest, “the other says.

JSO is a UK -based group activist group that aims to end fossil fuel extraction and uses direct action to draw attention to the cause. He was called “crime cult” and called the activists as “eco-loons of the sun. Daily Mail described it as “unstable” and says that its members “released misery over thousands of ordinary people despite their selfish mascara.”

The group threw soup into a Van Gogh in the National Gallery, exploded a chalk dust bomb during the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, shredded a cabin in the British Library, sprayed a cabin on Stonehenge stones and sprayed temporary paint on the stones of Charles Darwin’s tomb.

However, it is probably the road protests of the group that causes the most deterioration and public anger. In November 2022, 45 JSO members climbed Gantryes, which has been seriously disrupting traffic around the M25 for more than four days. Since thousands of drivers were postponed for hours, people missed flights, medical appointments and exams. The cost of the Metropolitan Police was placed at £ 1.1 million.

Just stop Oil was born from the rebellion of extinction (XR). Founded in 2018, the XR brought thousands of people called “resistance festivals” to the streets. In April 2019, the protesters brought a part of the capital to stop for more than a week and when the Oxford wore a large pink boat in the middle of the circus.

The indicator and deterioration XR attracted the attention of a large media, but the police was angry. Hundreds of civil servants were directed from the front duties and at the end of 2019, the policing bill of the protests reached 37 million pounds.

And behind the scene, the XR faced angry discussions about tactics. Many people in the movement argued that this should be less conflict and destructive, but a hard core of activists would be more effective in doubled in action.

Sarah Lunnon, one of the founders of Just stop Oil, was found to be a place because he called it a “more radical wing”. Suffragettes decided that Gandhi had a need for a new, more oriented operation, which was modeled on previous civil disobedience movements such as civil disobedience campaigns and the US Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

The group was officially launched on 2022 Valentine’s Day. It was a very different animal for XR. Instead of thousands of people participating in street carnivals, JSO’s actions included several stable activists. A small strategy group supervised the campaign and meticulously planned its activities. A mobilization team worked to get new members and another team focused on supporting activists after being arrested.

Dozens of action by the group made a lot of publicity, and at the same time created a great public opposition. There was conflicts between public members and protesters and a scream of politicians in all main political parties.

Police said they needed more power to deal with this new way of protest and they took them. New crimes such as intervening in the national infrastructure, “locking” – chain or bond yourself into something – and underground tunnels have been created. It has become a potential crime to cause the boredom of the people – the police provide a strong new tool to be used against protesters that block roads.

The supporter of the group has been imprisoned in four years since dozens of establishment. Five activists were given multi -year sentences for their roles in the M25 actions in 2022. These were reduced at the beginning of this month, but the longest imprisonment for non -violent civil disobedience.

Senior JSO members deny that the pressure has to do with the group’s decision to “hang Hi-vis” in a statement that the end of the campaign this week.

JSO’s public opinion has won the war. “The demand for terminating the new oil and gas of oil is now a government policy and makes us one of the most successful civilian resistance campaigns in recent history.”

The government said it did not plan to give any new licenses for oil and gas production, but strongly rejected that its policies have a connection with JSO. Moreover, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman told journalists: “When it comes to oil and gas, we have been very clear that it has come to our energy mixture for decades.”

And the wider goal of the group – to terminate oil and gas production – has not been clearly achieved. The members of the group I talked about for this article agree that the climate crisis deepens.

In the face of harder sentences, some climate campaigns said they would apply to more secret activities. A new group says it plans a sabotage campaign against the key infrastructure. In a manifesto, which is published online, says that “a new stage of the climate activist movement aims to initiate a new stage and to close the key actors of the fossil fuel economy.”

This is not a direction that the JSO members I talked about say they want to go. Sarah Lunnon said that the basic principle of JSO and the civil disobedience movement is generally responsible for the actions of activists. One of the first questions asked by new merger is whether they are willing to lock.

“We need a different approach as companies and billionaires disrupt political systems around the world.

“We are creating a new strategy, to confront this reality and to carry our responsibilities right now.”

Roger Hallam, JSO’s highest profile figure, is one of the five convicted activists for his role in the M25 protests. In a message from the prison cell, he acknowledged that JSO was just a “marginal effect”.

This “is not due to lack of trial,” he said. Hallam claimed that the failure was far from the responsibility of cope with the climate crisis with the “elite and leaders” of England. Perhaps a clue that the group’s new focus can be the political system itself.

JSO said that his last protest at the end of April will “end the soup in Van Goghs, the corn starch in Stonehenge and a slow walk in the streets.” But don’t believe it. When it was published, the members of the JSO I talked about, destructive tactics, under a new name and under a new and not yet specified target said they could return.