Are Just Stop Oil Jeopardising the Climate Movement?

CW: Police Violence

Willow was six feet below ground during a protest for Just Stop Oil in August 2022 when six buckets worth of soil fell on her head. 

Willow said she was told by an organiser that if they couldn’t get her out of the tunnel, she would be left behind. “All I had in my head was my kids and I was like nobody even knows I'm here, if I die now where the fuck are my kids meant to think I am for the rest of their life,” she told me.

The knock to the head gave her what she says was a concussion and damaged a shunt placed in her neck to drain fluid from her brain and is now waiting for an operation to get it replaced. 

Willow, whose name has been changed at her request to protect her identity, is one of six young activists I spoke to who accused Just Stop Oil (JSO) of negligent, dangerous actions. 

JSO has made headlines across the world for its audacious protests and direct action, including chucking soup over valuable art works, scaling bridges or glueing themselves to roads. The group launched in early 2022 demanding the UK government end all new oil and gas licences. Since then, it has made a name for itself for controversial protests that the group itself says has led to around 3,272 arrests and 130 people imprisoned, with 20 activists still inside. Away from the cameras, however, activists have been voicing concerns about JSO’s strategy. Former supporters of JSO said the group’s senior leadership disregards young people’s welfare and safety and enables manipulators.

All the names of the activists we spoke to have been changed for their safety and security. Some are still part of protest movements – including JSO – and fear reprisals from members of the public and within the activist community.

That same August Willow was in the tunnel, an anonymous open letter written by 12 former supporters voiced criticisms of JSO. It detailed concerns about the wellbeing of its activists, glorifying arrest and imprisonment, racism against its activists, lack of care and informed consent, and problematic power dynamics. This, the letter says, has been amplified by a culture of urgency – the sense there isn’t time to stop and think because the world is ending.

Lucy worked as a paid staffer for JSO for six months at the start of JSO’s campaign. Lucy said she was upset after reading the whole letter because she felt the allegations around racism and a culture of urgency were true. She recalled JSO had a meeting about the letter the same month it was written, but was disappointed by what she called a “weak response”. 

She said higher ups in the meeting at JSO were confused at why they were being criticised when they were doing their best to stop the end of the world and saw the letter as a personal attack. JSO’s senior leadership did eventually meet with the authors 6 months later in February 2023, however much of the strategy behind their stunts remains the same.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) co-founder Roger Hallam launched JSO and has been described as the group’s “spiritual leader”, largely responsible for their overall strategy although JSO say he has stepped back from the group and day-to-day strategy is decided by the strategy team. This strategy JSO uses is similar to XR’s before Hallam was removed from XR in July 2020 following a string of controversies: JSO believes if people engage in civil disobedience they’ll get arrested and imprisoned which, in theory, should galvanise more to join. In this framework, arrest works as a sort of public self-sacrifice for the cause that inspires more to do the same. Eventually after enough arrests have been made and prison sentences handed out, a tipping point will be reached where enough people are protesting to force the government’s hand. 

Last summer the new Labour Government met JSO’s demands of no new oil and gas licences. It seems this strategy has been vindicated, but critics question the longevity of such a strategy, argue it can traumatise people and puts those from marginalised communities at risk.

Tom is a transgender person of South Asian descent and grew up hearing stories of monsoon season and extreme heat waves from family in Punjab. He joined JSO in 2022 and was arrested three times before also publishing his own open letter in November of that year, signed under a pseudonym, explaining his dismay at JSO. Tom said he found JSO’s focus on arrest disturbing, “there was a social hierarchy where the more times you got arrested, the more you were in the know… there was sort of an expectation to get arrested that did feel quite alienating,” he said. “Emphasis on arrest as an end goal essentially alienates anyone who's not getting arrested, even though they're equally as important.”

While individuals appreciated the letter, he got an uninspiring response from higher-ups in JSO and was frustrated at their reaction. “There's no point in talking about how people in the Global South are most affected by climate change if you're not listening to people of colour within your own movement,” he said.

Harry, 26, worked in a team of 15 recruiters for Just Stop Oil in London and says he was told to target young people and university students. Recruiters used an in-person talk on climate change called “our responsibilities at this time” designed to scare potential recruits into action. A version uploaded to Hallam’s YouTube channel makes frequent references to genocide and the Holocaust – saying those who don’t join in civil resistance are like those who didn’t hide Jewish people from the Nazis – and argues there will be a catastrophic tipping point in climate breakdown triggering migration and mass rape and slaughter caused by war. Activists I spoke to believe it was designed to make potential recruits emotionally vulnerable before asking them to sign up to an action, suggesting if they don’t, they’re complicit in the coming genocide. Tom, who was also in the London recruitment team, said JSO were, “trying to create a very emotional state without letting people think rationally about the impacts of getting arrested.” 

Whilst JSO doesn't use that talk anymore, opting for what are now called ‘Welcome Talks’, much of the same rhetoric remained at one talk I went to, even if toned down. Meanwhile, at The World Transformed Festival in 2023 Hallam called everyone on the left “fucking cunts” and compared the festival to “Hitler’s bunker” because he felt they weren’t doing enough or engaging in civil resistance.

Young people have always represented a big portion of JSO’s activists. Growing climate anxiety means a lot of frustrated young people new to activism are prepared to get themselves arrested because JSO can seem like the only real solution. This is especially true when JSO supporters talk about how other campaigns like XR have failed and present their strategy as a silver bullet for climate activism, ignoring important work of other climate activist groups.

For many worried about climate change, JSO offer a clear route to help fight it. Ash, a 20-year-old squatter, said: “[Young people] have that passion and that drive and that want to be in activism and [JSO] prey on that, they use people who are older to get younger people to do what they want… I was a perfect target; I was young and I hadn't really done much activism previously.”

Ash hadn’t heard of JSO until one of their older supporters, who we’ve called John, visited a protest camp where Ash was living. Being a squatter, Ash is often homeless and describes themselves as a vulnerable person who was manipulated into joining JSO by John, who Ash claims exaggerated the group's effectiveness in a one-on-one meeting to persuade them to join. Ash subsequently helped with a series of actions in August 2022 with JSO which involved tunnelling under roads by oil refineries in a bid to shut off traffic and make it too dangerous for police to reopen the road above them, thereby preventing any trucks from transporting oil. To take part, they were told they had to attend three training weekends. At the first and only one they attended, Ash found people mostly aged from their late teens to early 20s and said they were told they would be learning from the “best of the best”. 

Ash recalled how instructors couldn’t hook up a power drill to a car battery because they weren’t sure where the wires should go, but despite their reservations, Ash still took part in the tunnelling action. They received a text from JSO weeks later, desperate for more volunteers, asking if they were still up for it. Ash agreed to go and help in a support role helping out at the safehouse, instead they were driven straight to the tunnels and quickly found themselves roped into an action they felt they couldn't leave.

Amid the shortage of volunteers, John also proposed inviting an 11-year-old girl he knew, who was the child of a family friend and apparently keen to get involved, to join them in a tunnel. “Every person in the meeting just went ‘what the fuck?’” said Sam, another activist who was in the meeting. “He seemed a bit surprised we reacted in that way… he was taken aback by how vehement we were about it.” John remained in his role in JSO leading on the action and Sam said it went ahead without enough volunteers to be “sufficiently effective”. Sam explained, “it was this sense of, ‘well, we've put this much effort into it now. We don't wanna waste all that. Let's go ahead with it anyway.’”

Ash said they worked in a small team tunnelling through the night for two weeks, sleeping during the day in cheap tents which flooded. A couple of days in, they were pulling out wet, heavy sludge from the tunnel, which made it unstable. As heavy lorries drove past overhead, the tunnel started collapsing around them. 

One night someone was sleeping in the tunnel when it fell on them, luckily Ash said their head was poking out at the entrance to the tunnel and they escaped unharmed. “We were saying, ‘we don't think we should continue because there's stuff falling in and at some point, [the tunnel is] going to fall on somebody,’ and of course it did,” recalled Ash.

About eight days into the action, the six buckets of soil fell on Willow’s head, the activist who sustained a concussion as a result. Shaken up by this, the group refused to go any further but Ash says they felt like they couldn’t leave or say no. Each time someone tried, they would be manipulated into staying by John telling them how disappointed he was in their decision, using similar talking points to the recruitment talk. “They're guilt tripping you so you feel like you've just got to keep pushing yourself… I didn't want to disappoint [John], I didn't want to disappoint JSO… so I definitely felt pressured into what I was doing,” Ash said. Mosquito-bitten, exhausted and traumatised, the group left the tunnel. It became clear the tunnel wasn’t viable to occupy like JSO had planned so they called it off and Willow went home, while Ash moved to a tunnel at another refinery where they were arrested. Willow believes she was being used by the movement because of her involvement with Black Lives Matter. The whole episode made her realise how disposable she was to JSO. “That’s not demonstrating to me that black lives matter,” she said. Willow also claimed that she was meant to be paid £1,800 monthly by JSO, which they were slow to pay, and that she is still owed £800 in wages and £700 in expenses.

Legal training preparing activists for arrest and briefing them on consequences of their actions didn't happen for everyone – one of the refineries targeted had a court injunction preventing protests and Ash only found out they’d broken it after being arrested. Breaking these types of injunctions has previously led to prison sentences for activists that breached them.

Max, 17, is another transgender ex-supporter of JSO who was arrested with JSO three times over two weeks in April 2022. Max said they also received no training to prepare for arrest and the first time they were arrested, the adult required to be present when arrested minors are interviewed that JSO had assigned to them never showed up. Max’s dad had to drive four hours for the police interview. 

Two days later, Max was sent out on another action, “we were told basically just… wander around this oil terminal, find somewhere to hide,” they said. When the team was arrested they were all strip-searched. Because they were a minor, Max needed an appropriate adult present unless the police had reason to believe they may self harm. The police claimed they were looking for superglue Max may try to self harm with. “I hated every second of [the strip search]… I kept telling them, ‘I do not consent to this’ then they said to me, ‘if you don't cooperate, we will use force.’” On reflection, Max believes the action wasn’t thought through by JSO and feels angry at how they were treated. “They sent us out as sacrificial lambs,” Max said. 

Harry, the 25-year-old who worked in a team of 15 recruiters for Just Stop Oil in London, said the trainers from JSO often seemed unprepared before actions. “There wasn't enough time or thought that went into planning the actions… It's a real mess. It's scary,” he said. 

But nevertheless, he said the urgency to keep churning out actions and getting arrested means welfare is swept aside and actions are often poorly planned. “It's not thought out in a way which supports care and safety,” he said.

Instead of risking arrest again, Max helped around the safehouse activists were based out of and helped with chores like cooking and cleaning. But this work wasn’t valued by JSO. “There was this real feeling of ‘what are you doing?’ It doesn't matter as much as going out and getting arrested,” said Max. The social pressures created by JSO valuing ‘arrestable’ actions over roles like police station support or things like cooking for those preparing for actions meant Max felt pressured to get arrested again before they finally left JSO after their third arrest in April. 

Max said this pressure and being told if you aren’t getting arrested then you’re complicit in the coming genocide is what pushed them to keep doing actions, “it's disgusting how they try and predate on guilt,” said Max. “Remaining within JSO would have been really harmful. Because of the culty atmosphere it fostered a combination of really intense guilt tripping and burnout culture,” they said.

One of the first acts of the new Labour government was to announce there would be no new oil and gas licences. As Just Stop Oil claimed victory, the group recommitted itself to civil resistance aiming to to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030. More civil resistance means more people deliberately getting themselves arrested and imprisoned. “We’re chewing up activists and spitting them out for this organisation. We're gonna have no one left because all the young people who are getting into activism are gonna be fucking burnt out and not want to do any of it,” said Ash, the 20-year-old squatter, “they're being thrown in the deep end and they’re drowning. They're ending up in prison and traumatised.”

The activists I spoke to all believe direct action is crucial to fighting climate change and point to campaigns like Stop Cop City, Ende Gelände, indigenous groups like the Mapuche people in Chilé or Reclaim the Power's successful anti-fracking campaign in the UK as examples to learn from. Lucy, the ex-staffer, is grateful for the work JSO is doing, but she says, “it's only one part of the puzzle and our movements need to become much more diverse, inclusive and based in justice... We need to build strong communities at this point in order to have a resilient people power to achieve change and I think that has been missing.” 

Despite their strategy of civil disruption and arrests remaining largely intact, Sam and JSO are adamant that the organisation has changed and learnt lessons over the last three years. Sam pointed out new training sessions, regular check-ins with activists and more work to ensure supporters are looked after have been put in place through the Climate Action Support Pathway, a group set up to provide emotional and legal support to those facing prosecution for climate action in the UK. “There's just a lot more support going on and a lot more care being put into it,” Sam said. “They’re definitely moving in the right direction.”

Just Stop Oil deny they have targeted young people and say their talks “are designed to give people the facts about the climate emergency and the history of civil disobedience and feature breakout discussions to enable exploration of emotional responses to those hard truths.” JSO also deny anyone suffered a concussion, that anyone is owed for expenses and say no one was paid for taking part in actions during 2022. They also said “Just Stop Oil commissioned an independent assessment  on the tunnel and it was confirmed that the shorting and tunnelling were of a high standard.” 

Just Stop Oil also said they are unaware of any complaint made against John and “whilst there was a request by an 11 year old to join the tunnelling, with the express consent of their mother, this was discussed at meetings and the request was rejected.” Although they did concede John probably shouldn't have been leading the tunnel action and said they are no longer working with him but continue to support him whilst he is imprisoned for the tunnel action.