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Just Stop Oil stage 'slow cycle' through London (Just Stop Oil)Just Stop Oil begin slow cycling protests
Just Stop Oil has staged its first ‘slow cycle’ through London today, as part of the group’s plans to “evolve” its tactics in the face of what it claims is the government’s attempt to “restrict our legitimate rights to protest”.
The environmentalist group has staged slow marches on the streets of London for the last seven weeks in a bid to draw attention to their demand that the British government puts a stop to “all licences and consents for new oil, gas, and coal projects”.
Until now, all of these protests have been on foot, but this morning at 8am, nine Just Stop Oil activists slowly rode their bikes in London’s West End, as two other groups of supporters marched at Chiswick roundabout and Blackheath.
🚲 BREAKING: 9 Slow Cycle for No New Oil and Gas in West End
🦺 At 8am, 9 supporters began slow cycling down Park Lane to demand an end to new fossil fuels. At the same time, another 2 groups of supporters began slow marching on the A2 at Blackheath and at Chiswick roundabout. pic.twitter.com/0E0ERdbsvU
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) June 9, 2023
An hour and a half after the demonstration began on Park Lane, the Metropolitan Police tweeted that they had issued the group with a section 12 order for causing disruption to traffic, and moved the protesting cyclists onto the pavement.
The decision to usher the bike riding activists off the road and onto the footpath, however, provoked a bemused response on Twitter.
“The same pavement where it’s illegal to cycle by any chance?” wrote one user. “Hi Essex Police, remember when you told me I’d be fined if caught cycling on the pavement in Wickford to avoid getting killed by lorries? I’m taking a leaf out of the Met’s book and using the pavement from now on.”
The very same…https://t.co/xxD9RR9oou
— David (@TwoWheelsGoodOK) June 9, 2023
A spokesperson from Just Stop Oil told road.cc today that the move to riding bikes slowly across the road is a response to the government’s attempts to clamp down on the disruption caused by the marching activists in recent weeks.
“This criminal government is quietly signing off on over 100 new oil and gas projects that will hasten climate collapse and destroy the conditions that make human life possible. It is an act of war against the young and millions of people in the global south,” the spokesperson said.
“At the same time, they are enacting laws to ensure that no-one can stop them. They are restricting our legitimate rights to protest and to march in the road as people have done throughout history to express dissent. So, our tactics will continue to evolve.
“We are happy to show solidarity with cyclists everywhere and ask them to join us in civil resistance. Whether marching or cycling we will continue to do whatever is non-violently possible to end new oil and gas.”
The call for cyclists to join Just Stop Oil’s campaign of civil resistance comes just over a week after a man on a bike made headlines for confronting the protesters during a slow march and claiming that they were “harming the green cause”.
The cyclist approached the activists as they slowly walked down Holloway Road in north London, blocking traffic, as part of a series of Bank Holiday demonstrations. The rider – who pointed out to the protesters that he was “a liberal and a cyclist” – told them: “Everyone is just trying to go about their business, go about their day, and you are f***ing it all up for all of them.
“You might feel better about yourselves, but all you are doing is harming the cause because everyone hates you. I’m a liberal, and a cyclist, and I live in north London – and I hate you.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- Pedal those squares 2 sec ago
New one to me "and amber pedal reflectors, if manufactured after 1/10/85"...
- chrisonabike 2 min 15 sec ago
But but but it used to be a ten minute drive?!...
- mdavidford 26 min 52 sec ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
- mdavidford 39 min 4 sec ago
Maybe one and the same thing though. They're not exactly short of populists over there, any more than we are. I'm sure if those people thought they...
- chrisonabike 51 min 33 sec ago
Thanks. I guess the question is "need". If the road is busy, it sounds like it is a desired route between places? In which case (given this an...
- mdavidford 59 min 30 sec ago
Don't know what you mean. I thought my suggestion was entirely practical.
- mdavidford 1 hour 2 min ago
...and a square of faux sheepskin for the back of your saddle.
- Rapha Nadal 1 hour 34 min ago
I'd buy a motorbike fo rthat kind of money!
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99 comments
From: https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/1668047658269790211
Looks like it's going to be a hot one
... and let's have an XKCD for a bit of perspective: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Some discussion of these graphs: https://climatecasino.net/2023/06/wtf-is-happening-an-overview/
He finishes with:
I'd sooner prefer JSO team up with the Extinguishers than further trash cycling opinions among the ignorant.
Let's see if we can dessicate the landscape with flat tyres and red lentils. ACTION!
Wearing orange and riding bikes, you say?
Where were the Dutch at the time of the protests?
Oh wait - helmets. Stand down!
"... the Metropolitan Police tweeted that they had issued the group with a section 12 order for causing disruption to traffic... "
Wait... they can issue orders for causing disruption to traffic like this?
When the speed of the people cycling (or walking) is faster than standstill queues of motor vehicles?
Isn't there some sort of irony here...?
Someone call Alanis...
Seems to me that the Met are missing a trick. Issue section 12 orders to all the traffic holding up other traffic, and they could solve London's congestion problem!
Exactly.
I don't agree with JSO's tactics but it's telling that the police never (as far as I know) have imposed such orders on the numerous "fair fuel" trucker go slow protests of recent years, nor on the mass blocking of central London cab drivers get up to every time they feel they've got a grievance.
In fairness to the police, section 12 did not cover such protests until this time last year, with the introduction of the awful Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
What are you doing that's more efficient than JSO?
Firstly it would be a strange old world, and definitely a quiet old internet, if we could only disagree with or criticise people if we were doing better than them: "I don't think Pogacar's tactics were correct yesterday" "What place did you get on the stage? Shut up then."
Secondly what I'm not doing is needling the people we need on side to make meaningful change, making the issue of climate change seem the province of a handful of zealots and making it easy for the press and politicians to demonise anyone who wants meaningful action as enemies of working people. By all means disagree (I could easily be wrong and their action might spur a great advance in climate change measures; time will tell but I don't believe it will) but "what are you doing better?" isn't really a winning argument in favour of something.
On a personal level I've been a vegan for twenty-five years and vegetarian for fifteen before that (there's some ammunition for the haters on here!), I don't have a car, I've taken two shorthaul flights in the last twenty-five years and will probably never fly again, I try to buy local products whenever possible, I buy all my "toys" (bikes, guitars et cetera) secondhand and I volunteer for an organisation that works with (amongst others) many ecological groups, recruiting volunteers for them and providing them with technical and legal advice. So although I would be the first to admit I don't do enough, I do try and do something.
I should rephrase my question, what is your idea of a better tactic?
At this stage I agree with everyone who is doing anything to "raise awareness" i.e. rub people's noses in their own shit, and forces people, politicians, whoever to respond... Even if it is by forcing them into becoming ever more violent and repressive. Because where we're at, we need a revolution, nothing less.
I would like to see more Greenpeace-style action demonstrating at refineries, car manufacturers, events sponsored by oil companies etc. Randomly disrupting the snooker, people's commutes etc simply reinforces the impression in the public mind, rightly or wrongly, that JSO are a group of misguided egotists more interested in disruption and notoriety than making any positive change. "Rubbing people's noses in their own shit" sounds all very radical but all it actually does is harden attitudes and make change less, not more, likely. Lobbying, campaigning and explaining to people why cleaning up their shit will benefit them (as, for example, with LTNs) is much more likely to produce tangible results. Disruptive action sounds all very dashing when you're young: I was at Greenham Common and Molesworth cutting the wires and playing hide and seek with the MoD police with the best of 'em, did it make a pennorth's of difference? Did it bollocks.
For me the only chance for humanity now would be a fast breakdown of civilisation.
End of civilisation = end of massive CO2 emissions + possibility to come to our senses and rebuild a life within the limits of this planet.
Any positive scenarios are now so totally unlikely we needn't consider them. Other negative scenarios, like drawn-out crises and wars for ressources and habitable territories, with the disappearance of the latter leading to our final demise, are obviously quite possible and certainly more likely.
Don't worry - we've got all sorts of things to look forward to: the next viral pandemic (when bird flu finally jumps to humans); general AI going all Skynet; plastic eating nanotech or bacteria deciding humans taste better (although in consideration, just something escaping from a lab and eating all the plastic would cause enough problems...).
I don't think you got quite the right end of the stick.
Of course, we could stand by and do nothing, then in 10 or 20 years time when there's tens of thousands trying to cross the channel due to the harsh climate many in Africa and soon to be southern Europe have to live in, moan that nobody forewarened us of the fate that awaited us by burying our heads in the sand.
Its weird how the lefties on here want everything to change until it doesn't suit them.
Shame on you.
I tend to agree. Climate change will result in the rich turning up their air conditioning but the poor will not just be happy to die in place. A couple of weeks of 50C temperatures across large areas of sub Saharan Africa might see widescale crop failures and livestock deaths, enough to see a few million desperate people head towards Europe. That will not end well, regardless of how much you can afford to run your A/C.
This seems like a strawman. I don't think anyone here is suggesting we do that.
Again, I don't think that's what people are arguing.
Objections to JSO's tactics (here, not everywhere, of course) seem to be more about their means, not their ends. If something has little, no, or even the opposite effect to its stated objectives, should it be supported?
What is your strategy and how have you implemented it?
All my professional roles of the last 20 years have included a large element of seeking to reduce climate change emissions from transport, energy generation and heating.
What, like the notorious site resident Trotskyite Rich_cb?
I'm definitely one of the "lefties" on here and proud of it, I'm deeply concerned about the environment and try to effect change in whatever small ways I can, whether in my lifestyle, my use of my vote or by participating in such actions and protests as I believe will be effective. I think JSO are a bunch of well-meaning fools who are doing far more to alienate people and make the chances of change happening where it needs to, at governmental level, far lower. Not everyone objects to JSO just because change "doesn't suit them"; some of us object because we think they're retarding the chances of such change taking place.
For once I disagree with you.
What are the chances of change taking place without JSO? It's not as if we were on course to decarbonise transport and the wider economy, then along came the people in orange and ruined it all.
British people use 2.4 times the ecological resource provided by the British Isles.
Don't expect to argue with a rightwinger based on facts.
And how does that figure compare to 10 years ago?
Good question. Ecological footprint is being squeezed from both directions: (1) the ecological resource is declining as our waste builds up, and (2) we are producing more waste (both per capita and more people). Globally, the trend is here. Country data are here. Climate action failure is identified by the WEF as the most severe economic risk over the next decade.
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