Just stop… alienating your allies

First they came for the paintings. Then it was the roads, rugby and cricket matches, and now, Pride.

When it comes to disrupting our daily lives, Just Stop Oil has taken aim at plenty of targets, generating headlines and arrests of its activists in the last nine months. The selection of these targets, however, does raise questions about the organisation’s strategy and its ability to achieve its stated aims.

JSO’s mission statement says that it is “a nonviolent civil resistance group demanding the UK Government stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects”. If you have any understanding of just how serious climate crisis is at this point in history, it’s hard to disagree with them. The expansion plans of oil and gas companiescould result in the release of 115bn tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to more than 24 years of US emissions. This would lay waste to the aim of restricting global warming to the 1.5C target of the Paris accord.

But while JSO’s aims are righteous, its tactics are those of self-righteous activism. Back in the day, when protesting against Apartheid in the 80s, I remember debating our tactics, when seen through the lens of the outsiders we were trying to convince. One form of protest was to go to supermarkets, fill a basket with South African goods and produce, go through the checkout, but walk away when payment was requested, explaining why to the cashier. Many of us saw this as counter-productive, though: delaying shoppers at the checkout and having to make staff put all the produce back on the shelves wouldn’t win us any friends, or further the case of a boycott of anything from the Apartheid state.

This, however, is clearly not a consideration for JSO. For the organisation and its activists, it’s all about the headlines and allies be damned.

Take the vandalism of paintings in art museums. Yes, oil companies have been greenwashing their reputations by sponsoring the arts for years, just as the pill-pushing Sacklers did. And yes, those institutions should divest themselves of oil money. But is throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers really going to stop the licencing of new fossil fuel exploration? Would the art institutions returning sponsorship money make BP executives think to themselves: “Hmm. Our reputation is far more important than the billions of pounds we make from extracting oil, so we’d better stop.”

But quite apart from the hopelessly unrealistic expectations of the protest, the actions also left a nasty taste in the mouth. Throwing soup over works of art is a kind of wanton destruction that has far too many similarities with book burning for my liking. The climate crisis is real and we are asleep at humanity’s wheel, but is damaging a beautiful painting a valid way of waking us all up? What are we attempting to save humanity from if the cost is violence against the things that lift us up as a species?

Fast forward to Saturday and JSO’s attempt to block the Pride march through London. Again, we can criticise the organisers’ decision to take money from a fossil fuel-burning airline, but is a celebration of a group of people, who already have enough barriers to deal with, a valid target? On a day like Saturday, anyone who considers themselves to be progressive should be doing all they can to support the LGBTQ+ community, not disrupting it. That is not the action of a true ally.

Building alliances is the only way we can effect change in a democratic society. Those of us who want to stop further oil exploration – but who also want fully equal human rights, including the right to create whatever art you wish to and love whoever you want – have a clear idea who the problem is. The organisations drilling into the planet and extracting fossil fuels should be the target for protests, not the ones who are forced to take money from oil companies because we live in a country governed by Philistines who don’t fund the arts, or who dismiss identity politics.

Headlines are great for raising awareness, but not all publicity is good publicity. Alienating the general public – whether drivers, fans of art, rugby or cricket or member of the LGBTQ+ community – is not the way to build a popular movement against multinational fossil fuel corporations. These corporations already have financial power and access to political power, so anything that undermines the support of the general public is not the cleverest campaigning strategy.

So here’s a quick tip for Just Stop Oil. Forget throwing paint over sports grounds, artworks or celebrations of oppressed minorities and start aiming at the people who are responsible for making decisions about exploration. I’m pretty sure that there won’t be many people upset if oil company executives get shot with orange paintballs.