In late March, environmental campaign group Just Stop Oil announced it would be winding down its operations, after a sustained three-year campaign of civil disruption. They are, in their own words, ‘hanging up the high-vis’ [1]. 

More specifically, the group has stated that it will no longer be engaging in direct action: the divisive tactics that made them famous - road blocking, soup throwing, paint chucking - which at various points have attracted praise, condemnation, and rage, as well as leading to thousands of activists’ arrests [2]. 

What comes next, nobody is sure - although voices from within suggest that action will continue in some form, albeit with a new strategy and under a new banner. 

A statement issued by the group read, ‘Just Stop Oil was intended to be a campaign to prove the effectiveness of disruptive tactics in bringing about necessary change, and we have been incredibly successful in that aim, but it’s now time to change’ [3]. Hannah Hunt, one of JSO’s leading activists, reaffirmed the campaign’s need for a new direction - but told the Guardian that ‘nothing short of a revolution is going to protect us from the coming storms’ [3]. 

The reason for this wrapping-up is also not definitive. On the one hand, JSO’s trajectory is fairly typical of organisations of this kind: burn bright and die quickly, as public hostility grows and collective enthusiasm wains. Indeed, the experience is similar to that of Extinction Rebellion - an immediate predecessor of JSO - who likewise announced a shift away from direct action in December 2022 [4] [5] . 

On another, more positive, read, JSO is winding up simply because its main goal - to end the issuance of new oil and gas licences - has been achieved. A moratorium on new licenses is now official government policy, in what JSO calls ‘a historic victory’ for direct action, and the movement at large [6] (unsurprisingly, the government assigns no responsibility to Just Stop Oil for effecting these changes [7]). 

But this is unlikely to be the full picture. For starters, the end of new oil and gas licences does nothing to prevent the continued expansion of drilling under licences already issued [5]. And as JSO itself emphasises, the climate crisis is not going anywhere - global fossil fuel use continues to climb, and the ‘safe’ 1.5 degree temperature threshold was surpassed for the first time in 2024 [6]. There is, then, much to do. So why stop now? 

Almost undeniably, a contributing factor has been the enormity of the state crackdown that JSO has suffered since its conception in 2022. The onslaught has been relentless - over the past three years, its activists have been arrested over 3,300 times. Seven, including many of its core members, are now behind bars serving sentences of up to four years. This includes the group’s co-founder Roger Hallam, originally sentenced to five years for his role in advising on the M25 blockades - although this has recently been reduced to four years on appeal. Eight more activists are awaiting trial, with court dates stretching into 2026 [2]. 

Richard Hames for Novara Media, who spoke to a number of sources from within JSO, reports that this legal pummelling has had a noticeable impact on recruitment. Retention has apparently suffered as prison sentences have become a more serious and immediate possibility [5]. 

The legal crackdown - protest law today:

The context is one in which - at least partially in response to the activities of JSO themselves - protest law is becoming increasingly repressive, with stricter conditions governing acceptable protest action, and significantly more punitive sentences for protest-related offences. 

This owes largely to the passage of two pieces of legislation - the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (or the Policing Act), and the 2023 Public Order Act, as well as a series of regulations passed more recently to bolster these laws. 

In terms of how protests are policed, the Policing Act allows conditions to be imposed on any protest expected to cause ‘serious disruption to the life of the community’. Noise, too, can trigger the imposition of police conditions. Crucially, the Act grants ministers the power to amend or alter the definition of ‘serious disruption’ on a discretionary basis, via the passage of regulations which do not require Parliamentary assent. Indeed, regulation introduced in June 2023 lowered the threshold for 'serious disruption’ to include any acts which ‘prevent, or hinder in a way that is more than minor, day-to-day activities (including journeys)’ [8]. This threshold now covers things like slow marches, leaving them subject to restrictions on location, number of participants, and time. Strict enough conditions may, in some instances, have the same effect as an outright ban [9].

The same 2023 regulations allow officers to assess protests based on their ‘cumulative impact […] on the community over time’ [10], as opposed to judging each as a standalone event. What this means in practice is that protests associated with prominent or historically disruptive movements - like Palestine Action or JSO - are now liable to be targeted with punitive conditions, regardless of whether a particular demonstration meets the disruption threshold or not. 

Arguably the most significant development in this sphere, however, is the formalisation of a new ‘public nuisance’ charge. Previously a common law offence, public nuisance - if tried and found guilty in a Crown court - carries sentences of up to 10 years in prison, and/or an unlimited fine [9].

Its definition is exceptionally broad. Any action which ‘creates a risk of, or causes serious harm to the public’ may be considered a public nuisance. The definition of ‘serious harm’ includes, among other things, actions thought to cause ‘serious inconvenience’ [9]. 

Again, the vagueness of this term leaves sweeping room for interpretation. It is open for police to decide whether a given action falls under the umbrella of ‘serious inconvenience’ or not. It is worth noting that several members of activist group Youth Demand were arrested just days ago on public nuisance charges for partaking in roadblocks lasting just 10 minutes [11]. 

The UK is now among the harshest countries in the world in its treatment of climate protestors. Activists in Britain are arrested at three times the global average. The sentences handed out to Roger Hallam and others at JSO were more than twice the national average for all offences committed in England and Wales, rivalling the maximum sentence for aggravated assault. They were also the first cases in which non-violent activists’ ‘conscientious motivations’ - a common protest defence - were not considered in the initial court judgement [12].

Other groups have been falling victim to the crackdown. Youth Demand - a JSO splinter founded in January 2024, campaigning on the dual ticket of a trade embargo on Israel and reparations for climate damages from major polluters - have seen dozens of their activists arrested this year alone [13] [11]. In March, six were arrested while giving a welcome talk at a Quaker meeting house. The charges: ‘conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ [14] [15]. 

Conspiracy charges allow activists to be arrested and charged prior to taking part in any offence. With the codification of ‘public nuisance’, conspiracy has been increasingly used to target key organisers and remove them from the streets before protests even occur [15]. Conspiracy generally carries the same sentence as the offence its tied to - given the hefty sentences associated with public nuisance, activists could now be risking significant prison time without ever having taken action [15].

How the law is reshaping activism: 

These laws in combination make it massively more difficult to engage in protest legally. The threat of arrest and possible prison time is serious and tangible, especially for those engaging in direct action. The response of JSO, and XR before them, has been the eventual resignation that moderation is necessary. 

But not everyone agrees. Youth Demand, whose reliance on direct action closely resembles JSO’s - are only just getting started. Their campaign ‘to shut down London’ via a series of temporary roadblocks is happening this month. Palestine Action have been committed to direct action since their conception in 2020, and show no signs of stopping despite many of their activists facing significant prison sentences. 

But others no longer believe that these kinds of tactics are sustainable. 

In some cases, the response has been to move direct action underground. Shut the System are a small group of climate activists primarily committed to covert sabotage. They strive to maintain anonymity, have a limited public presence and do not aim to get their activists arrested. Recently, the group severed internet cables to a number of City of London insurance firms with ties to fossil fuels [16]. 

In defence of their clandestine approach, a Shut The System activist told the Guardian, ‘If you want to do anything that is disruptive, the penalty is pretty massive now. […] People will be arrested and put away for a long time […] You can’t just keep doing that […] The actual number of people who are committed to risk jail time to do this are pretty small in number’ [17].

The moderate camp:

Many others are shifting away from direct action entirely. Dr Rupert Read, one of the founding members of Extinction Rebellion, has recently established a significantly more moderate movement called the Climate Majority Project. Its ethos could not be much further removed from the early days of XR - on the website, the movement’s stated intentions are to ‘help a majority of people who care about climate change to understand that they are powerful together, and take meaningful action.’ Notably, ‘we’re not talking about a few thousand protesters. We’re talking about a majority of the population. Millions of people in the UK. Billions worldwide’ [18].

In practice, this has involved funding a handful of other projects, from small-scale community initiatives promoting greener jobs and urban re-wilding, to lawyers guiding large corporations through the energy transition [19]. The movement also runs several of its own campaigns: for climate education in schools, and for business regulations designed to aid the transition to net-zero, among others [20]. The progress on either of these campaigns is not clear - although the Project as a whole remains in its relative infancy. 

Others pursuing a similar programme of moderate, incremental constituency-building are Assemble, a movement whose ultimate goal is to establish an ‘alternative democratic mandate’ to rival the House of Commons. The group are aiming to facilitate numerous community assemblies across the UK, collate citizens’ demands, and present them before a representative ‘House of the People’ in October 2025 [21].

These are noble aspirations. But these movements are likely to be slow growing, and at the moment anyway, their likelihood of contributing to radical change in either policy or public attitudes is far from certain. The Climate Majority Project’s sponsees, for example, are generally small-scale, and while doubtless not without impact, are far from revolutionary. And neither the movement itself or its sponsorship projects have anything like the name recognition as, say, Just Stop Oil. 

It will be interesting to see what Assemble can achieve over the next year - although again, growing a movement on this scale is likely to be slow and painstaking. Establishing name recognition, let alone active participation, is difficult and time consuming - especially without recourse to the inherently media-grabbing tactics of civil disobedience. And on issues like the climate crisis, or Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it doesn’t always feel like there is time to spare.

It is also hard to describe Assemble as having a politics per se. This, of course, is by design - the group’s very purpose is to facilitate the distillation of citizens’ demands, which may then provide the platform on which to campaign. 

However, there is a degree to which such approaches do seem to signify the inherent tension between the construction of broad churches, and commitment to clearly defined political principles. 

The end of effective activism? 

None of this is to say that more radical forms of activism are the only, or even best, way of creating genuine change. Movements like JSO are extremely controversial; their tactics, along with those of other groups like Insulate Britain and XR, have attracted widespread criticism from across the political spectrum, gaining them what has often felt like few friends, and making them many enemies. A particularly common criticism is that groups like JSO ultimately do more harm to their causes than good, as the public turn against activists and the disruption they cause. 

However, there are good reasons for believing that movements like JSO are valuable. A 2024 study conducted by Social Change Lab found compelling evidence of the so-called ‘radical flank effect’, specifically in the case of Just Stop Oil. The ‘radical flank effect’ is an idea frequently espoused by activists, that radical groups can serve to bolster public support for more moderate factions. In the study in question, awareness of a Just Stop Oil protest was found to make people more likely to support Friends of the Earth. It was also associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in other pro-climate actions, like volunteering or donating to environmental charities [22] [23]. 

The literature is populated with a slew of similar findings. A recent review by researchers at the University of Oslo found considerable evidence of positive radical flank effects. Meanwhile, negative effects (where radical factions reduced support for more moderate groups) were rare. When they did occur, they were generally associated with violent tactics on behalf of the radical flank - although even violence was found to produce positive effects in some instances [24]. Experimental studies reveal similar trends [25].

The majority of evidence also suggests that, contrary to what is often claimed, radical protest groups do not negatively impact public attitudes towards wider social movements, regardless of whether the groups themselves are popular [24]. Several studies agree that neither JSO nor Extinction Rebellion have been detrimental to support for climate issues [26] [27] [23]. A series of experiments conducted at the University of Bristol back up these findings: reducing popular support for radical groups appears to have no impact on support for their demands [28].

In fact, radical factions often appear to increase support for the causes they champion [29] [30]. A YouGov poll found that the percentage of people who named climate change as the most important issue facing the UK shot up from 18 to 28% in the weeks following XR’s protest actions in London in April 2019 [31]. Researchers at Oxford Brooks and the University of Amsterdam discovered very similar results [26]. Crucially, this effect may also be greater than that which is achieved by more moderate methods. Several studies believe this to be the case [32] [33] [34]. 

If true, this effect may have something to do with radical activists’ unparalleled ability to attract media attention, which may then contribute to shifts in the news agenda more broadly [35]. For example, in the months after Insulate Britain began their notorious streak of protest actions, instances of the word ‘insulation’ in UK print media doubled [36]. Direct action is undeniably media-friendly: tomato soup over a Van Gogh makes headlines in a way that less disruptive actions generally do not.

What all of this means:

This field of research is, however, nascent. And while some studies do identify a distinctly positive impact for radical action, other research finds no impact at all [36]. 

There is still, though, enough reason to be concerned about a legal framework which threatens to put an end to direct action. A large enough body of evidence suggests that direct action is, or can be, effective - if not on its own, then at least as part of a wider ecosystem. 

In a future where state repression makes it all but impossible to engage sustainably in civil disobedience, forcing more groups to abandon it in favour of more moderate tactics, chances are - we will have lost something. 

And then there is the principle itself. Political expression is sacrosanct. It is what makes democracy meaningful. We should all - whether activists or not - be deeply troubled by repeated encroachments on what should be a cherished and fundamental right. 

The threat of legal creep is real and palpable: the sphere of what constitutes acceptable protest has shrunk enormously in the last several years alone. Again, these are worrying developments which should concern every single one of us. 

In this context, the end of JSO feels highly significant. It remains to be seen what the future holds - how movements will adapt to this new, more repressive legal landscape, and what this may mean for politics at large. The battle for the future of protest is not just about tactics - but whether dissent itself can survive in a context increasingly hostile to its expression.