It was rush hour on Monday morning as a small group of Just Stop Oil eco-activists slow marched down the middle of Denmark Hill in Camberwell, south London.
Behind them, the blocked traffic snarled up and drivers leaned on their horns. The activists, who mostly looked to be students, ignored them.
A moped coming from behind drove at them at speed. Its tyres screeched as it skidded before bursting through the group and taking out one of its banners. The group of protesters parted in time to allow the moped space to get through. Nobody was hurt.
A little further along Denmark Hill, closer to the junction with Peckham Road, a frustrated cyclist tried a similar drive-through trick. He could easily have rode around the protestors but seemed determined to stand up for the blocked-in motorists around him.
Like the moped, he rode straight into the back of the group and hit one of the group’s banners. Unlike the moped, the cyclist ended up on his backside. He dusted himself down and began trying to drag the protesters off the road one-by one while showering them in Cockney affection: “Move, you s**thead c***s! People are trying to get to work.”
The activists have become a familiar sight on streets around London in recent months. Just Stop Oil, which wants the UK government to ban new oil and gas exploration licences, is now in its 10th week of rush-hour slow marches. It has sparked a lively debate about the right to protest and also the fairness and the effectiveness of actions that disrupt the everyday lives of the ordinary public.
Just Stop Oil’s tactics are simple but remarkably effective in garnering media attention. They have done the same thing each day except Sunday since late April. They usually gather in four groups, each comprising six or seven protesters. At rush hour in the morning, and sometimes in the evening, they go to four locations and slow march with banners until police move them off the road.
[ England bus held up by Just Stop Oil protesters en route to Ireland Test matchOpens in new window ]
[ Just Stop Oil activists throw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s SunflowersOpens in new window ]
Sometimes the four locations are dispersed around the city, but occasionally they are nearer to each other to cause maximum disruption. On Monday they targeted Camberwell, Islington, Archway (near Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium) and a location in west London. Last Friday it was Vauxhall and Waterloo just south of the river Thames, Fleet Street and also Millbank, which is in Westminster.
Most of their actions are focused on disrupting London traffic, but occasionally they form slow-moving roadblocks elsewhere in Britain. Last Saturday, for example, they targeted Northampton, which lies halfway between London and Birmingham; Lancaster in the northwest; and the prosperous market town of Chippenham in Wiltshire, near the Cotswolds.
Just Stop Oil also slow marches around Parliament Square, opposite the Palace of Westminster, every Saturday.
The group’s media strategy is also clever. It issues daily press releases with the precise details and locations of each of its actions, often accompanied by video clips. The statements always include personal testimony from named protesters, outlining why they have chosen to take disruptive action.
Last week we heard from Mella Shaw, a 45-year-old teacher from Edinburgh. “I am here so that I can look my six-year-old son in the eye and tell him I am going to do everything I can to give him a future.”
Days earlier, Arthur Clifton (22), a student and Just Stop Oil protester from Devon, said: “If what I am doing is unreasonable, then 33 million Pakistanis wrenched from their homes by floods must be reasonable.”
The group, which separately this year has also disrupted several sporting events such as the World Snooker Championship and rugby’s Premiership final at Twickenham, is accused by some of having an authoritarian bent.
For example, last week not only did Just Stop Oil demand that the British LGBT Awards end sponsorship by oil companies BP and Shell. It also insisted that the organisers “right this wrong by publishing a statement of regret”. It sounded imperious.
The group is typically lambasted in the British press. Government MPs, too, are scathing. “Hard-working people are fed up of being held hostage by these metropolitan eco loonies,” said Lee Anderson, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
Just Stop Oil says its actions are justified by the scale and urgency of the climate crisis. Disruptive protests gain the most attention, it claims. Yet even some of the group’s backers are now beginning to question if its tactics are productive or simply alienate the public.
“It is just disruption for the sake of disruption,” Trevor Neilson, an American businessman who originally funded Just Stop Oil, told the Sunday Times at the weekend.
“It’s just performative. It’s not accomplishing anything. I absolutely believe that it has now become counterproductive, and I just feel like that has to be said by somebody that was involved in the beginnings.”