Just Stop Oil founder Roger Hallam is preparing for the group's biggest protest yet at the end of this month, planning to block roads in London on an "unprecedented scale".
Starting on the last Sunday in October, Just Stop Oil are planning three weeks of action in the capital. They are currently signing up and training activists: a survey on their asks volunteers whether they are prepared to get arrested in the cause.
"From October 29th we will slow march in London on an unprecedented scale" reads a message posted recently on the Just Stop Oil website. "People are coming together from all over the UK, standing shoulder to shoulder against this criminal Government." It continues: "We will be marching peacefully to demand no new oil, gas or coal. As the disruptions grows what will the Government do? Concede to our demand, or crack down and arrest us all?”
"This is how civil resistance works: applying nonviolent pressure until we force change to happen" the message goes on, comparing their fight to that against segregated buses in the 1960s and Martin Luther King’s battle for civil rights. "No-one’s going to save us, we need to come together to do that for ourselves" it declares.
The group are currently running a series of online courses, this week focusing on signing up students. One in August featured environmentalist and presenter Chris Packham, who recently discussed how he is conflicted over whether breaking the law in protests is justifiable in the face of the climate crisis.
In Spring, Home Secretary Suella Braverman gave police special powers to ban slow walking in traffic by protesters after a series of protests. In previous years, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, another group inspired by Hallam, have been engaging in various acts of public disorder, including glueing themselves to roads and disrupting sports events. This month, protesters have sprayed University buildings in Manchester and Cambridge, and also disrupted a gaming convention.
Hallam has been on something of a media tour of late, speaking to the BBC's Nick Robinson for his show Political Thinking last week. Hallam attacked Robinson for failing to engage with the climate debate seriously enough as a journalist, and quoted a scientific paper which claimed that “If warming reaches or exceeds two degrees centigrade, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans”.
Hallam also spoke at the left wing festival of ideas The World Transformed in Liverpool last week. But he failed to win over the audience, repeatedly telling the crowd they were “f***ing c***s” if they didn’t help, which frustrated some.
