Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders released a detailed ‘Position Paper’ yesterday which called growing repression of environmental protest and activism a “major threat to democracy and human rights”. He remarked:
“The repression that environmental activists who use peaceful civil disobedience are currently facing in Europe is a major threat to democracy and human rights. The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing, and that scientists have been documenting for decades, cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalizedfor it. The only legitimate response to peaceful environmental activism and civil disobedience at this point is that the authorities, the media, and the public realize how essential it is for us all to listen to what environmental defenders have to say.”
The report names numerous actions and comments made by the UK Government over recent years as cause for concern for the state of democracy and civil rights. It lists an overview of “Harsh and disproportionate sentences and removal of defenses” that have been occurring in the judicial system.
A Just Stop Oil participant getting arrested at Kingsbury oil terminal. A JSO / Vladamir Morozov image.
Recent legislations from the UK Government are described as “being used to stifle environmental protest”, such as the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and 2023 Public Order Act – the factsheet of which mentions “Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil” as leading factors.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said today:
“The main concern of policymakers should be on addressing this crisis and assisting the frontline victims of climate collapse – that’s the farmers in Wales whose crops are failing, or families in Ireland having to evacuate from their homes to escape flooding, or people in Bangladesh suffering under the threat of lethal wet-bulb temperatures.”
Image of an Insulate Britain roadblock September 2021
“However, the fact is that Western Governments are resorting to increasing authoritarianism to try to stop citizens from standing up to their leaders’ corrupt efforts to line their own pockets with oil money. It’s important to highlight this fact, and to note that this repression is failing as the people’s demand for real decarbonisation becomes too loud to ignore”.
As the world passes tipping points that threaten the breakdown of ordered civilization, world leaders, captured by the interests of oil lobbyists and big business, are failing to protect our communities. British citizens are sick of being led by liars and crooks. Until we stop Tory oil, supporters of Just Stop Oil will continue taking proportionate action to demand necessary change. Sign up for action at juststopoil.org.
‘The Uk Government’s Hypocritical Stance on Protest’ by Mair Bain. Part of Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself…
02 JUNE 2023 – 23 JUNE 2023 auction.
A long article discussing the Rochdale by-election that has only one candidate – Mark Coleman – promoting green policies and many opposed.
[12.50 correction.] A long article discussing the Rochdale by-election. Independent Mark Coleman and Lib-Dem Iain Donaldson are the only candidates promoting green policies with many opposed. Monster Raving Loony Party appears absent prom this list of candidates.
Fomer Labour MPs Simon Danczuk and George Galloway are standing in the Rochdale by-election on February 29. Credit: PA images / Alamy stock photos
From attacks on “eco-madness” and accusations of a “Net Zero Hoax”, here’s our climate guide to the MPs contesting Labour’s seat.
Amid February’s record-breaking temperatures, climate is emerging as a battleground – and faultline – between the UK’s two biggest political parties in the run up to the next general election.
In the past weeks, the Labour Party has dramatically scaled back its £28 billion green investment plans, while the Conservative government has committed to annual licensing rounds in the North Sea in a new oil and gas bill.
This legislation saw former green Conservative Chris Skidmore MP resign in protest in January, triggering last week’s by-election in Kingswood, which Labour won.
Wrangling between the Tories and Labour has also opened the door for fringe political activists. Parties such as Reform UK have exploited mixed messaging over climate policy, which the UN authority on climate science, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says is essential to secure “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.
Next Thursday (February 29), voters in the Greater Manchester seat of Rochdale will go to the polls in a by-election triggered by the death of Labour MP Tony Lloyd.
The campaign has been overshadowed by the sacking of the frontrunner candidate, Azhar Ali, who was dropped by Labour over his controversial comments about the October 7 Hamas attacks. It is too late for Labour to field another candidate, and Ali will now run as an independent.
Green Party candidate Guy Otten was also dropped over past statements on Islam and Palestinians. Otten will appear on the ballot paper, but has abstained from campaigning.
The rows have given more airtime to several fringe parties fielding candidates strongly opposed to climate action.
Simon Danczuk, who is standing for Reform UK, and George Galloway, the candidate for the Workers Party of Britain, have both repeatedly attacked the UK’s legally binding net zero targets, while Galloway has spread climate misinformation and backed new fossil fuel extraction.
Read on to find out all you need to know on where the candidates stand on net zero and climate policy.
Simon Danczuk – Reform UK
This month Danczuk announced he had joined Reform UK. Danczuk was the MP for Rochdale between 2010 and 2017. He is seeking a return to the constituency following his expulsion from the Labour Party in 2015 after sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old (he served as an independent until 2017).
As an MP, Danczuk voted for measures to prevent climate change, and in 2015 shared an article on Twitter criticising climate denial in the Daily Mail. However, Danczuk’s views appear to have changed.
Last June he wrote an article attacking the “eco-madness” of Labour’s (now scaled back) green investment plans and its pledge not to approve new oil and gas projects. He wrote that Labour “see implementing a green ideology as more important than jobs, security and sustaining the economy”.
The article was published in Spiked, an online “libertarian” outlet which has a record of climate science denial and fossil fuel-linked funding. Between 2015 and 2018, Spiked received $300,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation, an arm of oil giant Koch Industries and a major funder of climate denial.
Danczuk repeated the “green ideology” argument in an interview with the fringe right-wing outlet Epoch Times, stating: “The idea of banning gas and oil exploration in the North Sea, before we’ve got alternatives in place, is just absolute madness.”
In September 2023, Danczuk publicly voiced support for the Conservative government’s net zero U-turns, telling TalkTV that voters “are very despondent about these targets” and that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had “called it right”. TalkTV has its own record of spreading climate denial, and until last year employed Reform leader Richard Tice as a presenter.
Reform is campaigning to “scrap all of net zero” and received £135,000 in donations from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests in 2023. Tice has said “CO2 isn’t poison, it’s plant food”, while the party’s London mayoral candidate Howard Cox has said “man is not responsible for global warming”.
George Galloway – Workers Party of Britain
Another ex-Labour Party MP, George Galloway, is standing for the Workers Party of Britain, a party he founded after the 2019 general election. Galloway was expelled from Labour in 2003 for “bringing the party into disrepute” after a party tribunal found he had “incited Arabs to fight British troops” and “incited British troops to defy orders”. He has since been elected to parliament twice – in 2005 for his Respect party and 2012 as an independent – each time serving one term.
The Workers Party of Britain, calls itself a socialist party that “defend[s] the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba etc”.
The party is hostile to climate policies. Its website calls for “a much clearer debate on Net Zero” and argues that “a halt must also be made to the attempt to make working people pay for subsidies for large-scale green industrialisation”.
Last July the party called for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero, a policy originally pushed by the right-wing Reform UK and led by its honorary president Nigel Farage. (Galloway and Farage have worked together in the past as part of the Aaron Banks-funded ‘Grassroots Out’ campaign for Brexit.)
Galloway has attacked net zero targets, advocated for clean coal extraction and spread misinformation about climate change.
In December, Galloway called for a net zero referendum in a post on the social media platform X. On his YouTube talk show in August 2022, Galloway spread the false claim that people would be forced to “eat insects” to tackle climate change, adding, “I think this net zero is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.” He then took a swipe at climate activist Greta Thunberg, a regular target for climate deniers, calling net zero “a 14-year old schoolgirl leading grown men and women up the garden path.”
The following month, he again dismissed climate warnings from activists like Thunberg, arguing that the main climate risk came from NATO and the “military industrial complex”. He said: “We are facing climate catastrophe; not man made the likes of Greta Thunberg talks about, but through our own governments.”
Galloway has also called for more fossil fuel extraction. In an X post in March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Galloway wrote: “Britain needs to ice its [Net] Zero fantasy, step up its oil exploitation [and] invest in peaceful nuclear energy and seek to re-harvest the 1,000 years of coal under our feet employing clean-coal technology. Our Energy policy is hopelessly unbalanced.”
From 2008 to 2013, Galloway worked as a presenter for Press TV, the English-language channel run by the Iranian government. From 2013 to 2015 Galloway was paid £100,000 to present a show on RT (Russia Today), Russia’s equivalent. Both countries are major oil and gas producers. The channels have since had their broadcasting licences revoked by Ofcom for breaking its rules (Galloway’s broadcasts were not referenced in the ruling).
Paul Ellison – Conservative Party
Little is known about the climate views of Conservative candidate Paul Ellison, who has been dubbed “Mr Rochdale” in the local press.
According to a favourable profile in Rochdale Online, Ellison has been active in the local community protecting green spaces, and is credited with winning Rochdale recognition by the Royal Horticultural Society In Bloom awards.
He does not appear to have commented publicly about climate change.
Azhar Ali – Independent (formerly Labour Party)
Newly independent candidate Azhar Ali criticised the government’s U-turns on net zero in September, accusing the Prime Minister of “playing to the climate change deniers in his own party”.
He doesn’t appear to have commented publicly about Labour’s weakening of its own net zero plans. Earlier this month, the party dropped its pledge to invest £28 billion per year in green measures, cutting its spending plans by 75 percent to £23.7 billion in total. Labour says it will still keep to its target to decarbonise the UK’s power grid by 2030.
The party opposes new North Sea exploration, but supports unproven carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology on existing rigs. Earlier this month, Labour leader Keir Starmer said current pipelines would “continue for decades”.
In October 2016, Ali attacked plans to introduce fracking for shale gas in Lancashire, saying on Twitter (now X): “Conservative government gives green light to the ‘rape’ of our environment.”
Iain Donaldson – Liberal Democrats
Lib Dem candidate Iain Donaldson has said he wants to hold the government to account on “water companies polluting the rivers with filthy sewage”, among other issues. In a 2017 tweet he criticised the then U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Donaldson was one of eleven of the party’s 15 MPs who voted against the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill this week, while four abstained. The Liberal Democrats propose moving the net zero target forward five years to 2045 and support large investments in renewable energy.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said Donaldson had opposed the oil and gas bill, which “fails to take vital steps to grow the UK renewable energy sector and reduce energy bills, and fails to form a coherent path to net zero”.
“Iain wants to see the de facto moratorium on onshore wind farms lifted,” they added, “and allow the expansion of the cheapest form of energy to drive down bills in this cost of living crisis, and reduce our emissions helping to slow climate change.”
Mark Coleman – Independent
After dropping its own candidate, the Green Party has urged its members to back Reverend Mark Coleman, who has put climate at the forefront of his campaign.
Twice arrested for climate protest, Coleman was sentenced in April 2023 to five and half weeks in prison for blocking the M25 and other roads with campaign group Insulate Britain.
Just Stop Oil has also asked its supporters to back Coleman. In a statement, the climate protest group said he is “the only candidate in the Rochdale by-election worth voting for”.
In a campaign blurb for local news outlet Rochdale Online, Coleman calls for “radical action on climate right now to stand any chance of a safe and stable future”.
All candidates named in this article were contacted for comment.
George Monbiot: “Leave fossil fuels in the ground”
TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham testified at the crown court trial of Just Stop Oil supporter, Cressie Gethin. 14th February was the eighth day of Cressie’s trial for Public Nuisance. She is appearing at Isleworth Crown Court, appearing before Judge Duncan. Cressie, 22, a music student from Hereford, faces up to ten years in prison if found guilty.
Cressie climbed a motorway gantry above the M25 on the 20th July 2022, two days after the governments’ net zero strategy was declared unlawful, and one day after the UK recorded it’s highest ever temperature of 40.3 degrees celsius, a milestone that scientists previously thought was impossible.
Cressie Gethin testified: On 20th July 2022, I climbed up onto a gantry over the M25. I hung up two banners – one said ‘Just Stop Oil’ (the campaign in whose name I was taking action) and the other said ‘40 Degrees”’ (this was a day after the 40C heatwave scorched the UK, burnt down houses and left people dead).
The prosecution have said that my intention was clearly to stop the traffic. However, it is under oath that I say I was not expecting the police to close the entire motorway. I thought it was possible they may decide to close one or two lanes, or perhaps slow the speed of the traffic, but I was very surprised when they closed the whole thing. I was surprised because I was conducting a nonviolent, peaceful protest, the intention of which was to gain media attention and create public pressure on the government to stop new oil and gas.
When the police did close the motorway, I did not immediately come down – you saw that in the footage. As I said, my intention was to get media attention and I realised that the road closure would be attracting more press coverage and therefore more pressure on the government to take steps to protect its own citizens.
I will also address the matter of delays at Heathrow. Whilst this may sound unbelievable, I did not realise that the stretch of motorway I was on led to Heathrow – as I say, this may sound ridiculous, but I am telling the truth under oath.
Because I am bound to the truth, I will also say that, despite not being aware of the location at the time, I do not think that near Heathrow was an inappropriate place to conduct this protest, given that it was there that 40.2C was first recorded the day before, and because of the relevance of air travel to the message I was trying to get heard.
The 20th July was deliberately chosen to be when the temperature was less dangerous and the Met Office’s extreme heat warnings had been lifted. This was in order to remove any risks linked to heat and dehydration for myself and for any members of the public who were in their cars for longer than anticipated.
I also took safety precautions that minimised any risk to myself or to drivers on the motorway. I ensured that there was at least one point of attachment between the gantry structure and the banners at all times. I also wore a safety harness so that I was attached to the gantry at all times. This gantry was enclosed and felt safe (it is designed for human access and is essentially a footbridge with enclosed sides) – but I took this precaution to make sure I was being as safe and conscientious as possible.
I want to make it clear that in no way did I feel a sense of glee or “yes, I’ve won” when the police closed the road. I understood that by closing the road the police would be having to manage traffic that would have otherwise come down that stretch of the motorway, and that didn’t and doesn’t sit easy with me. The reason I didn’t come down goes back to my original intention to get the attention of the media and public, and ultimately, to address rather than ignore injustice and suffering.
There was a moral dilemma involved in taking this action. I knew there was a possibility that the action would impact some people – that is the nature of visible and attention-grabbing protest. I had to weigh this, which doesn’t sit easy with me, against my sincere desire to protect lives. As I said at the beginning, my overall intentions were and still are to create pressure on the government to writing [righting?] policies that are killing people around the world.
Chris Packham and Cressie Gethin at Iselworth Crown Court. Image: Just Stop Oil
Part of Chris Packham’s testimony:
Prosecution: 26 flights were cancelled.
Chris Packham: As I recall Heathrow was under stress and it had already capped the amount of flights that could leave.
Prosecution: There were over 3000 people impacted, 26 flights delayed and 19 flights cancelled. Do you agree that these people were seriously inconvenienced and seriously annoyed?
Chris Packham: I don’t. It would be difficult for you to apply all of this to Cressie Gethin.
Prosecution: [something about “her” cause]
Chris Packham: It’s not “her” cause – it’s the cause.
Chris Packham: I support the need to raise the alarm on the most serious issue that threatens life and threatens us.
Insulate Britain activists block a road during a protest Photo: Insulate Britain
TRIALS of 18 climate activists who participated in non-violent action are set to begin next week as the government enforces authoritarian laws curbing the right to protest.
Five Extinction Rebellion activists are accused of causing criminal damage to the European headquarters of the half-a trillion-dollar financial firm JP Morgan, during a protest in September 2021 against its funding of fossil fuel firms.
Eight Insulate Britain supporters are accused of causing public nuisance by peacefully stopping traffic on the M25 motorway in the same month to press the government to insulate Britain’s homes to end fuel poverty and cut carbon emissions.
And five Just Stop Oil supporters face trial for alleged conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after they they occupied tunnels close to Grays oil terminal in August 2022 in pursuit for their demand for a halt to all new oil, coal and gas projects.
The trials coincide with fresh government attempts to undermine trials by jury.
