Is Just Stop Oil actually over – or is something more extreme on the horizon?

The leaders are in prison, hundreds face trial, and they’re about as disliked as Prince Harry, Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage – but Just Stop Oil is claiming victory.

After three years of blocked roads, a souped Van Gogh and Stonehenge sprayed with orange powder, the bogeyman of British motorists is calling it quits on direct action.

They do so as ‘one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history’, they claim.

But just how true is that? Why are they really ‘hanging up the hi vis’? And is this actually the end of Just Stop Oil – or is there something more extreme on the horizon?

Born from frustration

‘Three years ago today, we were blocking oil terminals’, charity worker Stephanie, 37, told Metro.

‘That’s how we started, and then we moved into sabotaging petrol stations. That made sense to me.

‘I felt like going to the source, doing that kind of direct action and trying to shut down the oil industry in the UK, making it very difficult for people to buy petrol products – that made sense.’

Covid-19 had taken the steam from Extinction Rebellion’s step. By the time they returned to the streets of London after lockdowns, it seemed the world had stopped paying attention.

Their demands were too scattered, and even thousands of protesters could barely make a dent on newspaper headlines, evening bulletins and the ecosystem of politics chat shows. It left a sense of frustration ripe for recruitment in existing activist circles.

‘Extinction Rebellion seemed a bit lost at the time’, said a mum-of-two in London who joined Just Stop Oil in the summer of 2022. She wants to stay anonymous, so we’ll call her Olivia.

‘Someone from Just Stop Oil walked into a local Extinction Rebellion meeting and I thought, “These guys sound like they’ve got a plan”.’

Three months later, Olivia was sat on a road wearing a hi-vis jacket and holding banners with other JSO activists, facing down angry drivers.

‘It was scary’, she told Metro. ‘But I also felt like this is what I need to be doing.’

They’re not here to be liked

Although JSO founder Roger Hallam once told a room full of left-wing activists that the reason they’re losing is ‘You’re all a bunch of f***ing c***s’, his plan was never to be liked.

He wanted attention on climate change, on Just Stop Oil, and on its key demands – an end to the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.

And he got it, the first part at least – a government ban on new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, a victory shared by several campaign groups, is tainted by the government’s support for airport expansions.

Within months of their first stunt, more than 90% of Brits at least knew they existed – making them more famous than Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.

‘Some mainstream campaigns could never dream of getting that level of awareness that quickly’, Sam Nadel, interim director of the Social Change Lab, which tracks the impact of protest movements on public opinion, told Metro.

With a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin name, JSO struck gold on the airwaves, despite the coverage focusing on angry drivers, blocked ambulances, arrests, charges and jail sentences.

‘Even when you’re getting media coverage that’s incredibly negative, when the media is writing about your group, they also have no choice but to include your demand – I think that’s quite a savvy strategy’, Sam said.

The problem is, keeping the spotlight means changing tactics every time the public gets bored.

‘Often the most illogical protests get the most media coverage’, Sam said. ‘Things like shutting down a sporting event or throwing soup on a Van Gogh painting.’

But increasingly that drew the ire of both the British public – 64% hold an unfavourable view of JSO – and the government, which passed new laws to criminalise protests.

A crackdown on democracy

The Conservative government increased the penalty for willful obstruction of a highway from a £200 fine to a maximum of 51 weeks in prison, with a potential 10-year sentence for causing ‘public nuisance’.

It then handed the police sweeping powers to define and restrict ‘seriously disruptive’ protests, banning tactics like attaching yourself to another person or object, obstructing major transport works and key national infrastructure, and causing ‘serious annoyance’.

Under this law, police arrested dozens of people planning to disrupt airports like Manchester and Gatwick last summer.

Then Hallam and four other JSO activists were handed four-year prison sentences after blocking the M25 motorway for four days in 2022.

Two months later, two activists were jailed for throwing tin of Heinz tomato soup on the glass cover of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1888 Sunflower painting at the National Gallery.

Convicted of criminal damage, Phoebe Plummer, 22, was handed a two-year sentence while Anna Holland, also 22, was jailed for 20 months.

They are among the 173 climate activists sent to prison for non-violent offences in the UK since 2021, according to Rebels In Prison Support.

Prisons are running out of space, Just Stop Oil is running out of people

It has chilled the movement. Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer turned climate activist, told Metro: ‘There are only so many people who are going to be in a position to go, you know, yes, I’m okay with a four-year prison sentence.

‘And once those people are in prison, there are not so many left.’

Olivia had already been arrested four times, resulting in two convictions, two acquittals and luckily no prison time. She sat out the airport campaign.

So did Stephanie, who had been arrested eight times, with a suspended sentence and 200 hours of community service for smashing petrol pumps in 2022.

‘It’d been different years before when we were blocking oil terminals’, Stephanie said.

‘You knew that you’d get arrested, and you’d get in trouble, but you wouldn’t necessarily go to prison for that. There wasn’t that fear at all. I didn’t think about that.

‘Whereas with the airports, it was very likely, and I think that put a stop to more people signing up. Yeah, I think they really did struggle with recruitment for that.’

That may be ‘the real reason’ JSO has announced an end to its campaign, according to Dr Oscar Berglund, an expert on climate change activism at the University of Bristol.

He told Metro: ‘They just don’t have enough people to do the kind of actions that they have been doing.

‘People are put off, people are in prison, we’ve seen the criminalisation of protest – with a combination of repression and unpopularity, it’s difficult to renew as a movement.’

Is the future more moderate or extreme?

Many may have found Just Stop Oil’s activism aggravating, but it actually increased support for more mainstream groups like Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace. That more moderate direction is where a large chunk of JSO activists may go.

Olivia has turned to ‘much lower risk demonstrations’, like disrupting Shell’s annual general meeting and protesting outside the Department for Transport to oppose airport expansions.

Stephanie says her activism will be more local from now on, focusing on ‘extortionate housing costs’, rising bills and inequality.

‘I personally don’t think we have gained any wins’, she said. ‘As much as JSO will say that there has been a big win with Labour stopping new oil and gas licenses, I don’t actually think that’s true at all. I think they finally realized that what they’ve done isn’t working.’

But there are those who – when faced with the question of ‘go hard or go home’ in the face of police crackdowns, like JSO was – choose to go hard, picking sabotage over disruption.

Already groups like Shut The System have cut fibre-optic cables to try and force insurance companies to stop funding fossil fuel companies by cutting off their internet access.

Tim said: ‘The real danger when you treat peaceful protest as being equivalent to serious crime is, it doesn’t go away – it takes other potentially more extreme forms.’

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