Just Stop Oil Will Cease Disruptive Protests, Claiming UK Victory

(Bloomberg) -- Climate protest group Just Stop Oil said it will no longer carry out disruptive protests as its initial demand to end new licenses for unexplored oil and gas fields is now government policy in the UK. 

Protestors will be “hanging up the high vis” at the end of April, the group said in a press release on Thursday, but will continue to support its members who are currently being prosecuted in the court system. It is “the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets,” the group said in a press release.

The climate-activist organization is planning one final “day of action” in London’s Parliament Square on April 26, but this will not be with the goal of having protesters get arrested, the group said in a statement online. 

Just Stop Oil, which was founded three years ago, has become known for eye-catching protests including throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers painting and deliberately blocking traffic by slow marching on London streets, in an effort to draw attention to the need for stronger climate policy and more decisive action in moving away from fossil fuels. The UK’s Labour Party, which took control of government in July last year, has said it will not issue fresh licenses to explore new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Yet despite the new government’s pledge, the group has continued disruptive protests, including spray-painting departure boards at Heathrow Airport last summer and pouring orange liquid latex over a robot in a London Tesla store earlier this month. The group now demands for the UK to work with other governments to form a legally-binding treaty to end the extraction and burning of all oil, gas and coal by 2030. 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has distanced himself from the group, calling them “pathetic” and refusing to repeal legislation introduced by the previous Conservative government which introduced heavier penalties for disruptive protest. That law was a response to deliberately chaotic interventions by climate protesters from Just Stop Oil and affiliated groups including Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain. Starmer also declined to cancel oil and gas licenses already granted by the Conservative government, another of the group’s demands. 

Just Stop Oil said seven of its supporters were currently in prison serving sentences of up to four years, eight people were on remand and 16 were due to be sentenced in the coming months. Extinction Rebellion announced a move away from disruptive protest at the start of 2023, though it has continued to take part in attention-seeking actions including “occupying” the offices of think tank Policy Exchange last summer. 

The announcement comes after Greenpeace, the climate charity, was last week found liable for a $660 million settlement in a US court after protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017, a ruling that experts said would open the door for other companies to take legal action against similar demonstrations. European climate groups have also been more tightly restricted, with members of Germany’s Letzte Generation subjected to police raids and charged with “forming a criminal organization” and an “eco-vandals” law in Italy which introduces harsher penalties on protesters who target cultural monuments. 

Responding to the Just Stop Oil announcement, Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said in a statement that Just Stop Oil had “paid a heavy price” for protesting. “We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away, because it is the right that all other rights depend upon,” he added. 

(Updates with context and reaction throughout.)

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