Just Stop Oil protesters defend disrupting roads and targeting terminals

Just Stop Oil is a controversial group.

For weeks now, they’ve been tying themselves to goalposts at football matches, locking themselves to pipes in oil terminals – gluing themselves to tankers and roads, and pushing for headlines.

We spent a day following them as they disrupted roads and targeted oil terminals on the banks of the Thames in Essex.

For good reason they are being watched very carefully by the police, so most communications involve burner phones and encrypted messaging apps.

It all starts in Purfleet, where we wait at the agreed location – a busy petrol and service station popular with trucks – for activists to arrive.

Suddenly about 15 of them appear through the garage forecourt. They walk in a line across the A road that runs alongside the service station and sit down calmly.

Some start to glue their hands to the tarmac. Others lie down.

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Chaos ensues almost immediately, as furious truck drivers screech to a halt, beeping and swearing, and a small group of protesters sprint towards them to try and climb on top of their tankers.

The next few minutes are very hairy – two drivers, shouting out of their windows, drive away to escape the trap as the protesters dodge out of the way.

But one driver slows down to talk and as a polite but determined protester chats to him, two others scale the side of his vehicle. He is stuck.

“I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in this”, the protester said, “when the police get here you will be free in two hours or so”.

“Two hours!” the driver explodes, winds his window up, and calls his boss.

The protester, who wouldn’t give his name, told Sky News that Just Stop Oil has a single demand – that the UK government agrees to immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.

“We have tried with marches, we have tried with petitions, they have not listened to us.

“This has to be the next step and we need to take the opportunity of the very small window we have.”

He agrees that the public are unlikely to support Just Stop Oil’s endeavours, but hope they’ll “understand eventually”.

About 100 metres away, the police have arrived. They are arresting and carting off the road blockers who aren’t glued down.

Others set to work with a solvent solution and wooden spatulas, painstakingly ungluing skin from road.

Drivers at the roundabout beep, swear and remonstrate. One protester, who would only give her name as Becky, responded to my questions about the impact of her group’s actions on ordinary people trying to live their lives.

She acknowledged that she would much rather not be causing so much disruption, but is so disillusioned with the UK government’s ongoing commitment to oil and gas in the coming decades, that she doesn’t feel she has a choice.

“If I was in my car, stuck in traffic for this I’d be cross too. But I have five children and I need to know there’s a future for them.

“I have listened to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report, I know that we have got a good eight years of oil that we can use while we’re transitioning (to clean energy).

“I know that if we leave it any longer, if we go above 2C, there will be no crops, there will be no food.

“I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this. What choice do I have? Without doing this, I don’t have hope, just desperation.”

Truck drivers nearby are not impressed.

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HGV driver Danny Nash said: “I know we’re going electric and all of that stuff, but this isn’t the way to do it.

“Because you’re holding up and creating more of a problem, more pollution, more traffic, more everything. I think it’s crazy, absolutely bonkers.”

Derek Ratford went further: “It’s pathetic what they’re doing.

“If that was me, I would just drive down the M25 with them. They’re mental, holding the country to ransom. Get them off and put them in prison.”

An hour later we are on the banks of the Thames following 25 young activists along a rough path – they are heading for an oil terminal and they want to break in and stop operations, as they have done elsewhere.

Xanthe is 17 years old. She is here with the support of her mum and dad, she says, and is prepared to be arrested, no matter the consequence.

She says: “(The government) can start this now – they had a massive emergency response during the coronavirus pandemic and I think they do know how to react to emergency situations.

“The recent IPCC report said that solar and wind power were the cheapest and most effective so I think they just need to stop oil, specifically oil and fossil fuel investments.”

After a 30-minute walk, the group gets near the perimeter fence of the terminal.

They are spotted by a security guard and rush forward together, holding ladders and mats to get over the sharp spikes at the top.

Two get over – straight into the arms of some very irritated security guards and a barking guard dog. Another group breaks off and finds a way in, scattering the security team and police who have turned up quickly.

Those left on the outside search for another route in, but are herded into a space by a bridge by the police.

A number are arrested, but not before two manage to glue themselves to a wall. Baffled and irritated terminal workers look on, the police look and sound annoyed.

Dillon, who is 20 years old and a student, listens as I ask him about the danger he has put himself in, and the police resources he is occupying.

He said: “Unfortunately this is the only way that the government can listen, the disruption that this is causing. This is the only way that the government can hear that we are all terrified.”

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Home Secretary Priti Patel has called these activists selfish, fanatical and frankly dangerous, while the Labour party has said there should be an immediate nationwide ban on their protests.

But it was my sense that this is a very focused, very determined and pretty well organised group of people with a very clearly defined aim and increasingly clear targets in mind.

They will also not get what they want from the British government, and so the stage is set for a long and drawn out battle that will test the patience of many.

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