Environmental campaign group Just Stop Oil announced it will cease disruptive action, following a final protest in Parliament Square on 26 April.
The campaign group revealed it would be “the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets” as the group plans to “hang up the hi vis” and stop direct action.
Just Stop Oil’s initial demand was to end new oil and gas, which is now a government policy. The campaign group claimed it has kept more 4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground, and the courts have ruled new oil and gas licences unlawful.
Although it will no longer be taking direct action, it will continue to speak in court for what it calls its “political prisoners” and call out anti-protest laws in the UK.
The announcement comes after new laws have made it increasingly difficult to carry out disruptive protests.
In particular, new offences of interfering with key national infrastructure, including “locking on” and a revision of the law around causing a public nuisance, have seen climate activists given long jail terms.
Just Stop Oil said in a statement: “This is not the end of civil resistance. Governments everywhere are retreating from doing what is needed to protect us from the consequences of unchecked fossil fuel burning.
“As we head towards 2C of global heating by the 2030s, the science is clear: billions of people will have to move or die – and the global economy is going to collapse. This is unavoidable. We have been betrayed by a morally bankrupt political class.”
The environmentalists said they need to take a different approach and are creating a new strategy that does not involve direct action.
The group added: “As corporations and billionaires corrupt political systems across the world, we need a different approach. We are creating a new strategy to face this reality and to carry our responsibilities at this time. Nothing short of a revolution is going to protect us from the coming storms.”
In the past three years, Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested for numerous direct action protests, including disrupting a West End performance of The Tempest, blocking roads, pouring paint on a robot at a Tesla shop and spraying orange powder on Stonehenge.
Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Just Stop Oil paid a heavy price for raising their voices at a time when politicians and corporations are trying to silence peaceful protesters – in the streets and in the courts.
“We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away because it is the right that all other rights depend upon. Greenpeace and many others will continue to defend this proud tradition of taking action on issues that matter to make change possible.”
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