Two eco-activists are arrested after 40-HOUR fuel protest: ‘John Lennon lookalike’ and RE student are finally cut free from oil terminal pipes – as ministers draw-up injuctions to stop protesters causing Easter travel chaos
- Louis McKechnie, 21 and Nathan McGovern, 22, chained to Grays oil depot pipes until around 9pm last night
- The men had disrupted the depot since Sunday and agreed to trade their superglue for some water yesterday
- Labour had called on Home Secretary to seek nationwide injunctions to stop ‘guerrilla tactics’ being used
- Measures would mirror those used last year to ban Insulate Britain fanatics from blocking roads
- Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion activists have targeted 11 fuel depots in as many days
- Do you know any of the people behind the Just Stop Oil campaign? Email [email protected]
The final two eco-oafs who chained themselves inside one of the UK’s largest oil refineries have finally been arrested after 40 hours having agreed to give police their superglue in return for some water.
Louis McKechnie, 21, said he and fellow student Nathan McGovern, 22, were ‘treated well’ as they were cut down from inside the rafters of a terminal in Grays, Essex, last night.
Ministers are preparing to serve injunctions on the eco-mob ringleaders as Priti Patel is again under pressure to take severe action against eco-activists disrupting fuel supplies amid claims the authorities have been too slow to punish them.
Since protests began on Friday April 1, Essex Police has made 356 arrests. Apart from the 13 held yesterday, none are believed to be in custody.
The Home Secretary is being told to seek nationwide injunctions to stop ‘guerrilla tactics’ being used by the group of largely privileged students and professional protesters shutting down oil terminals by chaining themselves to pipes, digging tunnels or blocking tankers.
MailOnline revealed yesterday that the Just Stop Oil activists, many of them veterans from the Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion and Insulate Britain movements, include ‘John Lennon lookalike’ McKechnie, who became a poster boy after he tied himself to a goalpost to disrupt a Premier League game at Everton last month.
Also among their group are Cressida Gethin, the privately-educated daughter of an orchestral agent and a former cellist for the London Symphony Orchestra and Miranda Whelehan, 21, a pharmaceuticals expert’s daughter who grew up in a £1million, five-bedroom house in Weybridge, Surrey.
And ‘rebel reverend’ Tim Hewes is in tunnels disrupting a refinery in Warwickshire. He was jailed last year after repeatedly blocking the M25 with the Insulate Britain mob.
Injunctions against them would mirror those used last year to ban IB fanatics from blocking roads, allowing police to make arrests more easily – but critics have accused Ms Patel of not being quick enough to act to neuter them.
But history appears to be repeating itself amid a revolving door of activists being arrested and then released to cause more havoc – despite the group crippling critical UK infrastructure and leaving petrol stations without fuel.
Attorney General Suella Braverman met with cabinet members last night to draw up plans with local councils so they can target specific protesters. Injunctions will be served against them ‘within days’, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Nathan McGovern, 22, and Louis McKechnie, 21, disrupted operations at Grays oil depot, in Essex, for approximately 40 hours after chaining themselves to pipes high up at the site on Sunday afternoon. They are now in custody
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion activists – many of them young, middle-class students – have targeted 11 fuel depots in as many days, blocking trucks from making petrol and diesel deliveries to forecourts. Pictured: McKechnie at Goodison Park and his activist accomplice Nathan McGovern, 22, (right)
Extinction Rebellion at the Esso West oil facility near Heathrow Airport in London (pictured)
Ringleader McKechnie, 21, said in a video that the men were being cut down at the Grays oil depot in Essex last night and were the ‘last standing’. MailOnline has learned he and Nathan McGovern, 22, were arrested at 9pm last night after 40 hours in the rafters.
In a previous video, McKechnie and McGovern said that they had chained themselves to pipes high up at the site on Sunday afternoon.
McGovern, who studies religion, has previously attempted to tie himself to a goalpost during a match between West Ham and Tottenham and also glued his hand to a microphone during a heated exchange on LBC last weekend.
Engineering student McKechnie has also disrupted a football game – between Everton and Newcastle last month.
McKechnie was one of the ‘Highway Nine’ Insulate Britain protesters jailed for blocking the M25 last year and served a three month prison sentence.
Figures compiled by the Business Department show that average fuel stock levels at forecourts in England dropped by 5.4 per cent to 36 per cent in the week the Just Stop Oil protests began on March 28.
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion activists – many of them young, middle-class students – have targeted 11 fuel depots in as many days, blocking trucks from making petrol and diesel deliveries to forecourts.
Three terminals were targeted over the weekend and trucks had been unable to access the Exolum storage facility in Grays, Essex, after protesters glued themselves to pipes above loading bays.
It came after Downing Street accused the eco-activists of using ‘guerilla tactics that obstruct people going about their day-to-day business’ and promised a crackdown.
In the strongest statement yet on the eco-mob ‘Just Stop Oil’, Number 10 yesterday pledged that it would ‘not tolerate’ those obstructing people ‘going about their day-to-day business’.
Responding to Just Stop Oil’s tactics, a No 10 spokeswoman said: ‘We recognise the strength of feeling and the right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, but we won’t tolerate guerrilla tactics that obstruct people going about their day-to-day business.’
The spokeswoman added: ‘We fully support the police who are putting significant resource into their response to the demonstrations.’
Labour had called on the Home Secretary to seek nationwide injunctions to stop ‘guerrilla tactics’ being used to shut down oil terminals. Pictured: Two of the protesters
Activists from the Just Stop Oil group, (left to right) Louis McKechnie, Miranda Whelehan, Nathan McGovern, Claudia Penna Rojas and Cressida Gethin, during their press conference in central London yesterday
Three terminals were targeted over the weekend and trucks had been unable to access the Exolum storage facility in Grays, Essex, after protesters glued themselves to pipes above loading bays. Pictured: Protesters march from Hyde Park to the Science Museum on April 11
Pictured: Just Stop Oil activists during one of their blockades at Kingsbury early on Friday April 1
It came as a furious motorist yesterday revealed how they had to drive 46 miles to fill up because of the disruption to the UK’s petrol supplies, while others said they did not have enough fuel to go to work.
One driver, recounting their nightmare journey, told MailOnline: ‘Every petrol station we tried was shut – we drove 11 miles to Aylesbury first and then 17 miles to Bicester before giving up and driving the ten miles back home.
‘The next day we drove to Winslow which is another eight miles away before finding fuel there. It is total pot luck’.
Britain was left in the grips of another fuel crisis, with petrol stations forced to close due to the disruption caused at oil terminals.
Around 1,200 pumps south of the midlands were forced to turn away motorists, the Campaign for Fair Fuel claimed on Sunday, in the wake of the action by Just Stop Oil.
The eco protestors have been targeting oil terminals across the south of the country, including in Hertfordshire, Essex and Warwickshire by locking themselves to pipes.
The action has been blamed for shortages of both petrol and diesel at stations compounding misery for drivers already facing record prices at the pump, reported at over £2 a litre in some areas.
Priti Patel has called the protesters ‘selfish, fanatical and frankly dangerous’ while George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, criticised their ‘extreme’ tactics.
Campaign group Fair Fuel said up to a third of petrol stations were closed, while pictures showed some remained shut yesterday.
Fair Fuel founder Howard Cox told MailOnline supplies remained ‘patchy’ – with diesel particularly affected – but overall the situation was better than on the weekend.
The AA said that shortages had been ‘isolated’ and none of its 2,700 patrols had experienced difficulties getting fuel.
Meanwhile, the Petrol Retailers Association, which represents around 65% of independently owned forecourts, said: ‘We are aware of protests at several fuel supply sites; however, the majority are unaffected.’
Supply issues tend to hit motorists in London and the South East worse than elsewhere.
Campaign group Just Stop Oil was on its eleventh day of disruptive protests. Pictured: Activists from Just Stop Oil take part in a blockade at the Kingsbury Oil Terminal, Warwickshire on Sunday April 3
The mayhem comes ahead of a record 21.5million motorists preparing to take to the roads this coming Easter weekend. Pictured: Activists from Extinction Rebellion demonstrate in central London on April 11
This is most likely due to the regions’ higher population densities, Gordon Balmer, executive director of the Petrol Retailers Association, has previously said.
Campaign group Just Stop Oil was on its eleventh day of disruptive protests.
A video posted at 3.30am yesterday morning showed one activist at Grays oil depot filming a selfie video from inside a pipe.
‘We’re still in the pipes, still stopping oil, still stopping whatever we non-violently can to resist the collapse of our liveable future,’ he said.
‘We really hope to make it to 24 hours and beyond because that’s the only way this government will listen.
‘This corrupt government that is pushing us towards not just a climate catastrophe but a social crisis.
‘We’re in the depths of a cost of living emergency… we’re in the depths of a legitimacy crisis and unless Boris Johnson gets on with the job and stops oil and legitimacy crisis will extend to the entire global system’.
Yesterday, Environment Secretary George Eustice said: ‘A right to protest is important but not if it’s causing havoc with other people’s lives. That’s wrong and not acceptable.
‘We all recognise that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels… this is a mainstream agenda, people really don’t need to do these extreme protests to get their point heard.’
Essex Police made nine more arrests yesterday, following 26 on Sunday. Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Nolan blasted the ‘totally unacceptable’ activists who have trespassed into areas holding flammable chemicals. Pictured: Activists from Extinction Rebellion demonstrate at The Albert memorial in Kensington Gardens, central London on April 11
Mass protests have resulted in more than 800 arrests across the country and have put a ‘real strain’ on local police services.
The protests are exacerbating existing supply issues due to increased demand after Covid lockdowns and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The Insulate Britain injunctions, applied for at the High Court by roads agency National Highways, effectively banned protests on major roads.
It meant activists could be arrested for contempt of court for breaking the injunctions.
Labour said ministers should work with local authorities covering the country’s 60-odd oil terminals to bring in similar measures. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman yesterday insisted the Government will not tolerate continued disruption.
The mayhem comes ahead of a record 21.5million motorists preparing to take to the roads this coming Easter weekend. Steve Reed, Labour’s justice spokesman, said: ‘The Conservatives need to stop standing idly by and put an end to this disruption that is causing misery for motorists.’
Pictured: A closed petrol station in Kent on April 11. Many petrol stations are facing some fuel shortages caused by climate protesters blocking the major fuel depots
He said: ‘We recognise the strength of feeling and that the right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, but we won’t tolerate guerrilla tactics that obstruct people going about their day-to-day business.’
Essex Police made nine more arrests yesterday, following 26 on Sunday.
Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Nolan blasted the ‘totally unacceptable’ activists who have trespassed into areas holding flammable chemicals.
She said: ‘Their risky behaviour cannot be allowed to take place in such critical locations which could be catastrophic if there were accidental or deliberate actions causing leakage or fire.’ Just Stop Oil is an off-shoot of Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion and contains many of the same members.
Ministers had planned to introduce new powers to help police tackle eco-protesters but the measures were blocked in the House of Lords in January.
At the time, Miss Patel accused Labour of siding with ‘vandals and thugs’.
Proposed measures had included an offence of ‘locking on’ in a bid to stop protesters resorting to the common tactic of chaining themselves to buildings and vehicles.
New stop and search powers were also proposed to allow police to detain protesters arriving carrying bike locks and other equipment designed to make themselves difficult to remove.
Ministers are expected to try to revive the measures in the next Queen’s Speech.
Police on the scene as Just Stop Oil protesters block a road leading to the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire (pictured)
A spokesman for the UK Petroleum Industry Association, whose members include Shell, BP and ExxonMobil, said disruptions are ‘localised and short-term only’. Pictured: A police officer talks to Just Stop Oil activists taking part in a protest outside the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham on April 1
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion fanatics claimed to have dug a tunnel under a tankerroute in a bid to block deliveries to forecourts.
The West Midlands and East of England were the worst affected regions, with average stocks finishing the week ending April 3 on 25 per cent.
A spokesman for the UK Petroleum Industry Association, whose members include Shell, BP and ExxonMobil, said disruptions are ‘localised and short-term only’.
A government spokesman said: ‘We are working closely with industry to ensure that supplies are maintained.’
The eco zealots causing havoc at petrol pumps: Just Stop Oil activists include jet-setting yachtswoman, 23, who travelled to Bali, ‘John Lennon lookalike’ who has been arrested 16 times, and rollerskater who turned her back on watchmaking
The green zealots trying to make Britain run out of fuel are a bunch of privileged students and professional protesters, MailOnline can reveal today.
Activists from Just Stop Oil have been hampering access to petrol and diesel for days, demanding that the Government stops new fossil fuel projects by digging tunnels below refineries, vandalising tankers or storming the terminals to climb on to the pipes.
Essex Police has arrested more than 350 protesters since the disruption started on April 1 – while queues have formed at petrol stations across the country and some have even shut down due to a shortage of fuel.
One of the ringleaders is ‘John Lennon lookalike’ Louis McKechnie, a Bournemouth University graduate who became a poster boy for JSO after he tied himself to a goalpost to disrupt a Premier League game at Everton last month.
Around 12 students remain within the pipes at Grays Inter Terminal today, including former boarding school choir girl and now Cambridge University student Cressie Gethin. With her in the rafters is student Nathan McGovern, another golden boy of the movement.
Also manning the barricades are Brighton-based activist Hannah Hunt, 23, another student with a taste for expensive hobbies and travel, and Eben Lazarus, who describes himself as a ‘musician and activist’.
And in the tunnels below the BP Kingsbury Oil Terminal in Warwickshire is retired vicar Tim Hewes, a veteran of the Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain movement who also sewed his lips together in protest against Rupert Murdoch.
Other members of the Just Stop Oil group, which is closely linked to the Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion and Insulate Britain groups, is a rollerskating watchmaker and JSO’s official ‘de-escalator’, XR’s ‘arts co-ordinator’ and a Welsh organic farmer whose family business failed and he blamed climate change.
These are the protesters at the heart of the current chaos that is leaving millions of Britons short on fuel:
The Lennon-lookalike posterboy: Louis McKechnie
Louis McKechnie, 21, stormed the pitch and zip-tied himself to the goalpost at Goodison Park during the game between Everton and Newcastle United last month
From left: Louis McKechnie, Miranda Whelehan, Nathan McGovern, Claudia Penna Rojas and Cressida Gethin, during their Just Stop Oil press conference in central London today
Louis McKechnie, 21, an engineering student, was charged with pitch encroachment and aggravated trespass after the incident at Goodison Park during the game between Everton and Newcastle United last month.
He stormed the pitch halfway through the match and zip-tied himself to the goalpost wearing a bright orange t-shirt saying: ‘Just stop oil.’ Louis has said he has received ‘hundreds’ of death threats since running on to the pitch.
McKechnie is a Bournemouth University student whose activism began with Extinction Rebellion (XR) in 2020 before he joined vegan group Animal Rebellion.
The 21-year-old, whose experience of work appears to be only stints with a local fish-and-chip shop and supermarket, was one of the ‘Highway Nine’ Insulate Britain protesters jailed for blocking the M25 last year.
After serving half of a three-month prison sentence, he warned: ‘What comes next will make Insulate Britain look like child’s play.’
Pharmaceuticals expert’s daughter who grew up in £1million house: Miranda Whelehan
Activist from the Just Stop Oil group, Miranda Whelehan, during their press conference in central London last week
Miranda Whelehan was among around 20 activists from Just Stop Oil who blocked tankers arriving at Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire.
An undergraduate in International Development with French at the University of Sussex, she is the daughter of a cyber-security expert at multinational pharmaceuticals firm GSK and grew up in a £1million five-bedroom house in Weybridge, Surrey.
Miss Whelehan appeared on Good Morning Britain yesterday attempting to justify the protests.
Quizzed by presenter Richard Madeley, she insisted that ‘I don’t think any of us want to be disrupting people’s lives’.
But she said that ‘given the science’, it was ‘the level of action that needs to be taken when our Government is failing on their energy policies and their climate pledges’.
The interview threatened to descend into farce when Madeley suggested the group’s name was ‘very Vicky Pollard’ and ‘childish’.
In response, she argued that its demand was simple – for ministers to say ‘no to new oil’.
However some viewers complained his questioning had become ‘bullying’ after he began pointing out that the clothes she was wearing would probably have been delivered to the shops in vans or lorries.
Later, while accepting that civil disobedience were ‘not popular’, she insisting that future generations would regard them as ‘heroic’.
‘What we must do now is block and disable the cogs of the fossil-fuel machine,’ she wrote in the Independent.
Rebel reverend: Tim Hewes
Reverend Hewes, who once sewed up his lips in protest at the influence of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was also repeatedly part of the mob blocking the M25 despite already being arrested numerous times.
The activist has ‘permission to officiate’ in the Diocese of Oxford although he does not have a parish, and is today in tunnels under an oil tanker route.
Asked about Rev Hewes last year, a spokesman for the diocese said: ‘The actions of Rev Hewes and others, while arguably well-intentioned, have frustrated many people and we’re unclear how the actions have been productive in encouraging the urgent change required.’
Rev Hewes, a retired dentist, previously said the Bishop of Dorchester, Gavin Collins, who comes under the Diocese of Oxford, had told him ‘he does support issues regarding climate change and the environment but not about breaking the law’.
Reverend Hewes was repeatedly part of the mob blocking the M25 despite already being arrested numerous times and is now helping Just Stop Oil by entering tunnels
Reverend Hewes blockading the M25 with Insulate Britain and sewing his lips together in a bizarre attack on Rupert Murdoch
Today he is in a tunnel under a key tanker route to the BP Kingsbury Terminal in Warwickshire.
He said: ‘I’m here because our government is useless, they make a lot of noise but they are doing nothing.
‘As a priest I have a duty of care for people, and also for creation. What I’m doing here, with everyone in this caravan, is what our government should be doing – that is trying to protect our families and our loved ones from the appalling future that stands before us.
‘I hope we can continue what we’re doing and stop the flow of oil, if the government won’t.’
The jetsetting yachtswoman: Hannah Hunt
Pictured: Louis McKechnie and Hannah Hunt outside Downing Street in February
Ms Hunt’s Instagram shows her holidaying in locations including Australia, Greece, Gran Canaria and Bali (pictured)
She is currently in the rafters of the Grays refinery, with Eben Lazarus (pictured together)
Hannah seen today at the Grays oil depot
The JSO protester is from Brighton, a common home town for Green zealots.
Miss Hunt is a former XR supporter who broke into an ExxonMobil Oil refinery in Hampshire. She also posed with Mr McKechnie outside Downing Street with a letter for Boris Johnson.
She also glued herself to the red carpet at the Bafta awards and admits to experiencing severe anxiety before a protest. But describing her state after starting she said she enjoys ‘a weird, dreamy, calm mindset’ she finds empowering.
The Brighton-based activist studied at Sussex University, where she joined the sailing team. Her Instagram shows her holidaying in locations including Australia, Greece, Gran Canaria and Bali.
She is currently in the rafters of the Grays refinery, with Eben Lazarus, a musician and activist also from Brighton. Sharing a video she said they were ‘cold and uncomfortable’ 17 hours into their protest, but added: ‘But that suffering is minute compared to those in the frontline of the climate crisis’.
Eben then encourages people to ‘step up’ and join protests because ‘nobody can be a bystander if we want any chance of a future’.
XR’s ‘arts-co-ordinator’: Indigo Rumbelow
Eco-fanatic Indigo Rumbelow, 27, from Gower, South-West Wales, has been arrested at least five times. In a Zoom call watched by The Mail on Sunday last week, she told activists: ‘We want to create sustained disruption for two weeks.’
Describing her motivations, Miss Rumbelow said: ‘My generation is being forced into action because our Government is destroying our future. We will immediately end all actions when it makes a statement that it will stop all new oil and gas.’
Indigo was first arrested at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival in 2019 for gate-crashing a Facebook conference and has been held by police on at least six occasions since then.
In 2020 she began digging up the lawn in front of the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government and was arrested again in Parliament Square later that year when she blocked the road.
Justifying her behaviour recently she said: ‘The only thing to do in a system that is driving itself to extinction is to rebel. If we look at the history books, we can see that the only way of creating the nonlinear change we need is for people to commit civil disobedience and force that change.
‘Currently too few people are taking the necessary action. I urge anyone reading this article to realise that they too can rebel. In order to prevent ecosystem and societal collapse, at this pivotal moment in history, ordinary people need to take extra-ordinary action’.
The rollerskating watchmaker: Amy Rugg-Easey
One of the abseilers was serial protester Amy Rugg-Easey (pictured after being arrested), a Labour voting watchmaker and rollerskater from Newcastle upon Tyne
People are questioning how protesters were able to shut down central London again. Miss Rugg-Easey (picture), describes herself as a ‘rebel for life’
Miss Rugg-Easey was involved in shutting down Tower Bridge last Friday.
She and an unnamed man threw themselves off the bridge using abseil ropes and tiers a giant ‘End fossil fuels now’ banner.
The Labour-voting voting watchmaker and rollerskater from Newcastle upon Tyne describes herself as a ‘rebel for life’.
Describing her descent into eco-activism she said: ‘I quit my career in watchmaking to study environmental science after listening to science podcasts while working at my bench. I remember thinking at the time ‘it can’t be that bad’. Climate change was something that you heard about every now again in the news as if it was the weather. When I really started to look at the facts, I started to panic. I felt a need to do something about it.
When I began my degree, I had already been to a few Extinction Rebellion meetings and their famous ‘heading for extinction’ talk. ‘It can’t be that bad’ I thought. I’d hoped that when I started studying, the things I would learn would show that that talk had been a huge exaggeration. Unfortunately, that was not the case’.
Describing the abseiling stunt she said: ‘I was terrified stepping off that bridge. I decided to put my name out and wear my signature blue jacket hoping that people I’ve met would recognise me and realise that climate activists are just normal people too. I also know that it creates a target on my back. Certain people will wish that I’d died on that bridge today. I know that it makes my mum worry.
‘I’m hoping my actions inspires others to be brave and take their first steps in fighting for our future. Not everyone has to hang off a bridge and get arrested, but everyone has to take meaningful action for things to change’.
The Cambridge music student: Cressie Gethin
Cressida Gethin during the latest Just Stop Oil protest
Miss Gethin, a former student of the prestigious Hereford Cathedral School, is currently among the group holding up the Grays refinery. She appears to be one of the five main founders of Just Stop Oil.
Cressie, a music student from Murray Edwards at Cambridge University, has been campaigning on climate issues at her college.
She told The Tab: ‘I was very very surprised that Murray Edwards came out bottom of the league tables for their climate policies because I had imagined it was something they would have cared about and been active on’.
The talented chorister has performed with her brother, also a singer.
The LBC mic gluer: Nathan McGovern
Nathan McGovern is currently holding up an oil refinery with his comrades
Mr McGovern invaded the Tottenham v West Ham match and was dragged off the pitch after he failed
Mr McGovern, from Just Stop Oil, said that presenter Tom Swarbrick was not using his ‘massive platform’ to tell people about the climate ‘situation’
22-year-old King’s College London student Nathan McGovern, who studies religion. The Coventry activist has flirted with XR and Animal Rebellion and disrupted a game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Eight days ago he was speaking to Tom Swarbrick in LBC’s Westminster studio when he glued his hand to the microphone at around 11.40am.
Mr McGovern said that the station was ‘not using’ its ‘massive platform’ to inform listeners of the dangers of the climate crisis
Speaking live, Mr McGovern said to Mr Swarbrick: ‘You have a massive platform, a microphone that you can use to tell people about the situation we’re in and you’re not using it.
‘An ordinary person like me is having to take the microphone and tell your viewers the situation we are in.’
The LBC presenter said: ‘For those of you listening wondering what the banging on the microphone is, Mr McGovern seems to have, you’ve glued yourself to the microphone? That’s fantastic.’
After the incident, LBC presenter and Daily Mail columnist Andrew Pierce took over the live programme from Global’s Leicester Square, before handing back to Mr Swarbrick when arrived there.
During this time, Mc McGovern was left in the studio in the dark while waiting for police to arrive.
He appeared as a spokesperson for Animal Rebellion advocating a ‘plant-based food system’ on Nigel Farage’s GB News show in October 2021.
After the disruption, the group tweeted: ‘Every new oil and gas facility tightens the noose around the necks of our young people. If the media will not communicate their predicament they will have no choice but to take the microphone.’
Just Stop Oil’s official ‘de-escalator’: Pavel Ivanov
Mr Ivanov is billed as an expert in diffusing rows that break out at the protests when JSO’s members shut down roads, for example.
Speaking to The Guardian he described the ‘astonishing’ abuse they suffer, in a tacit admission that they are struggling to win over many of their critics.
In one incident linked to the blockading of oil refineries, one driver who had protesters on his roof said: ‘If the police weren’t here, I’d come up and f**king throw you off myself.’
Another activist with a ladder was told: ‘You put that up there, mate, and I’m going to ram it down your f**king throat’.
Mr Ivanov claims n one occasion someone got him by the throat as friends were heckled: ‘You look like you’re just out of nappies. Go and get a f**king job’.
JSO’s graphic designer who won’t have a baby until she tries to ‘fix the world’: Gabriella Ditton
Gabriella Ditton, 27, blocks a tanker in East Anglia last week
Another JSO activist is graphic designer Gabriella Ditton, 27, from Norfolk, who was arrested for blocking oil trucks on Friday.
In a newspaper interview, Ms Ditton – who attended Wymondham College in Norfolk, where annual boarding fees are more than £12,000 – bragged: ‘I’ve been arrested 16 times and it’s honestly fine.’ She has stripped naked and covered her body in oil at protests.
The group said last week: ‘Gabriella would love nothing more than to have a family and continue her career as a graphic designer, but feels those things aren’t an option for her anymore because of the state of the world’.
The 27-year-old, who works as an animator, became hooked after going to an Extinction Rebellion talk. She said: ‘I was getting my life in order to have a baby and went to the Heading for Extinction talk. I realised I couldn’t bring a baby into the world before trying to fix it first.
‘I started the way everyone does, with petitions, emailing my MP, going on marches. But I realised it doesn’t work. In the future, I want to be able to say with total sincerity that I did everything I could and really mean it. I’m so frightened about society falling apart – I’m so deadly terrified that I will do literally anything to prevent it from happening’.
Organic farmer and XR co-founder who branded the Holocaust ‘just another f**kery in human history’: Roger Hallam
Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, being arrested while setting up a toy drone inside London Heathrow airport’s exclusion zone during a protest in September 2019
Roger Hallam is the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion who believes paralysing traffic will eventually cause food shortages and trigger uprisings.
He once stood unsuccessfully in the 2019 European Parliament election in the London constituency as an independent, winning 924 of the 2,241,681 votes cast, which was around 0.04 per cent of the vote.
He became interested in climate change in his 40s when an organic farm he ran in south Wales went bankrupt because of extreme weather conditions.
Hallam went on hunger strike in 2017 to demand King’s College London stop investing in fossil fuels. His stated ambition for the group is to ‘bring down all the regimes in the world and replace them’, starting with Britain.
He encouraged his followers to get arrested at demonstrations en-masse as a way of raising awareness of climate change.
In a recent video on YouTube, he said protesters should be ready to cause disruption through personal ‘sacrifice’. If necessary, they ‘should be willing to die’.
In 2019 he apologised for comments he made describing the Holocaust as ‘just another f**kery in human history’.
Hallam, 55, sparked outrage in Germany yesterday by comparing the murder of six million Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis to other historical massacres and claiming that the memory of the Shoah – or Holocaust – was holding Germany back.
The former organic farmer was quickly condemned by Extinction Rebellion groups in Germany, as well as the German government after his comments to a newspaper in the country.
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