04-04-2025
Just Stop Oil 2.0 is already here – and frothing at the mouth to destroy our summer
Then they make a few impossible demands for the 'rigged political system' to 'stop all trade with Israel…[and] raise £1 trillion by 2030 from the super-rich and the fossil-fuel elite'. The beauty of these loony demands being that as there is no conceivable chance of them being met (although when you next encounter a member of the fossil-fuel elite, by all means put it to them) they can feasibly demonstrate into eternity.
For, let's face it, nothing riles the unwashed, pipe-playing activist more than being told their demands have been met. They'd have to pack up their nuts and retreat to their eco-shelters. Or rather, return to their cosy middle-class homes for a bath and nice TV supper with Mum and Dad.
So, when the hardcore members heard that JSO was winding up, they were having none of it. It's not a proper English summer without some juicy non-violent resistance and so plans are afoot. There are meetings and Zoom calls scheduled – and they've already secured an early PR hit.
In March, six female members of Youth Demand were arrested by police inside a Quaker House in Westminster. It was fabulously heavy-handed, with more than 20 uniformed police storming in, breaking down doors and brandishing tasers.
Apparently there was a life-drawing class ensuing in an adjoining room, goose-pimples, perhaps, sprouting on the naked model at the unwelcome gust of fresh air. An elderly lady, we're told, was in a lavatory at the time.
The story was spun as an authoritarian attack on free speech. Colum Hayward, a member of a non-Quaker spiritual group who often attends the building, likened the raid to a burglary. The place's 'personal space,' he wrote, 'has been invaded'. He added: 'places of real quiet and sanctuary are deeply needed in our society.'
Indeed they are, but what is Youth Demand plotting in such buildings and online? Daily co-ordinated actions, with plans to 'shut down London with swarming road-blocks day after day.' And, doubtless, a lot more. Think the usual soft targets of art galleries and sports venues. Yes, the very same places that offer 'real quiet and sanctuary'.
For some, that sanctuary lies in the snooker hall, a diverting contest between two artists of the cue and cloth. For others, it's a quiet road in London on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Yet this mob, with its fetish for protest and banging drums, frothing at the mouth and countenancing no reasoned argument; no nod, even, to actual reality (the sovereignty of a democratic country, the right to a warm home and hot water, for example), plan to disrupt and harass. And all the while not touching the, albeit phantom, 'fossil-fuel elite'. But they will, for sure, annoy the living hell out of everyday folk going about their lives.
So, I say, raid the Quaker Houses, infiltrate, shut down their phones, harangue and harass these pests and give Youth Demand a nice dose of what I like to call 'grown-up protest'.
