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Cyclist disperses Just Stop Oil protest (Twitter)“Go and protest properly!”: Cyclist pushes Just Stop Oil protestors off the road to make way for traffic
As the climate change and environment activist group Just Stop Oil started their tenth week of protests in the country’s capital, things came to a head when a cyclist decided to take matters into his own hands and started pushing and pulling the protestors, telling them to “f****** move” and “go and protest properly”.
Dressed in blue shirt and blue shorts with a bike in hand, the cyclist appeared to aggressively shove the activists blocking the Holloway Road in Islington, London this morning to draw attention to the group’s demand for the government to stop licencing all new oil, coal, and gas projects.
“All of you, get out of the f****** way! Move!” screamed the cyclist, as he was joined by another man wearing a blue shirt. The two of them managed to clear off a section of the road to let drivers by.
As the cyclist was leaving the site, he said: “Go and protest properly, you s*** a*** c****!”
*Warning: clip contains strong language*
🌡 What are we supposed to do in a crisis caused by our government? Sit tight and wait until they decide to call an election? pic.twitter.com/VQPCtB4OmM
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) June 26, 2023
However, Just Stop Oil asked: “What are we supposed to do in a crisis caused by our government? Sit tight and wait until they decide to call an election?”
Meanwhile, some people suggested if the cyclist was guilty of assault, and questioned if the police would take action against the cyclist.
After today's incident, Just Stop Oil has replied to road.cc regarding the cyclists’ involvement and him asking the activists to “protest properly”.
A spokesperson said: “We understand that it is frustrating when individuals like this cyclist get caught up in disruption, but history shows that only disruptive protest works. We’re not prepared to stand on the pavement and be ignored, the stakes are too high.
“We face increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods which threaten transport, homes, health and livelihoods. Our crops will not survive and we will face mass starvation and the collapse of ordered civil society unless we stop new oil and gas.
“We need everyone, including cyclists, to join us on the streets.”
> Just Stop Oil begin slow cycling protests
The Metropolitan Police confirmed enforcement actions had been taken after today's slow march, which saw four groups march in different locations on the capital. Officers, issuing the Section 12 used against unlawful assemblies, including blocking roads, cleared the Islington road later and informed that traffic was back to moving now.
Those assaults are intentional and deliberate; if he wanted to ride his bike through he could very obviously have done so.
— Drew Law (@Drew129Law) June 26, 2023
The incident has once again heightened the violent rhetoric against activists, with another incident showing a motorcyclist driving through two protestors holding a banner. Figures like Howard Cox have declared on live television that he is “tempted to run the protestors over”.
After today’s video went viral, reactions were mixed. Some people pointed out that the drivers for whom the cyclist was clearing the way would “happily run him off the road”, while others claimed that the man had done more than anyone “to amend cyclist-driver relations”.
Irony being most drivers would happily run him off the road.
— Samanta's Wildlife (@SamantaWildlife) June 26, 2023
Man done more for for the promotion of good cyclist/motorist relations than anyone bar none. https://t.co/aiPRtGNx2Q
— Richard (@DickyTrickle) June 26, 2023
It’s not the first time that a cyclist has found himself in opposition to the environment activist group.
Previously in May, a cyclist on the pavement of the same road as the incident today approached the Just Stop Oil protestors and accused them of “harming the cause” and “f***ing it up for all of us”.
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.”
He added: “I’m a liberal, and a cyclist, and I live in north London – and I hate you.”
The incident, as expected, divided cyclists’ opinions on social media, with people questioning how can you be a cyclist and oppose Just Stop Oil, while others claimed that despite being a cyclist they didn’t agree with the methods used by the group.
Three weeks ago, Just Stop Oil, which usually takes to the roads on foot and organises slow marches to cause disruption and draw attention to their cause, staged its first ‘slow cycle’ demonstration, as activists rode their bikes slowly in London’s West End.
A spokesperson from Just Stop Oil told road.cc that the change was 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”.
“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.”
What do you think? Should cyclists be in support of Just Stop Oil’s environment activism or is their disruption too much of an inconvenience in the face of climate change?
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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125 comments
*Alexei Sayle enters the chat*
So, can anyone think of some funny right-wing comedians?
I've had enough of this. So:
Hitler.
Germany was having trouble, what a sad, sad story
Needed a new leader to restore its former glory
Where, oh where was he?
Where could that man be?
We looked around and then we found
The man for you and me and now it's
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race
Isn't Jacob Rees Mogg a Borat style invention of some comedian?
If only
Pseudo-science, like a man identifying as a woman, is a woman?
From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/27/we-could-lose-our-status-as-a-state-what-happens-to-a-people-when-their-land-disappears
I personally find the reliance on economic arguments to continue destroying our planet to be offensive.
I note that this morning JSO have daubed orange paint on Total Energies offices. This still appears, according to the Daily Heil, to be doing it the wrong way. I'm not sure how they can actually protest without attracting the acrimony of the climate change deniers or ignorers (the same thing in my book).
news flash - Middle class white kids enforce their political views on others, claim Facism when stopped from doing so.
I see you are still using the "Stupid Comment 2000 generator." I think its time to update your software.
He's never a cyclist. The language. The lard. The shiny head.
Assaulting protesters. He'll only encourage more JSOP's to turn up next time.
If Triple H was donning the orange vest, and next in line for some "rough justice", he'd have shat himself.
I bet he drives a 2013 x5. With a union jack sticker somewhere.
Extinguishers are you ready?
Oi! Foul mouthed lardarses with bald heads can be cyclists too you know (being defensive of, ahem, a friend).
Erm. Apologies. That thug boils my blood.
Shiny heads can have fun too.
Rant over.
The shiny head is why some of us wear helmets.
Union Jack sticker? How dare he have national pride.
He needs the crushing white guilt you lot seem to all have.
Most of us don't need to fetishise a bit of cloth to take pride in some aspects of our British history and traditions whilst deploring others! "Butcher's Apron" is a nickname that flag earned with much truth.
Come on. That thug is a terwaat.
Not even a real cyclist - not a stitch of lycra or helmet in sight. Agent Provocateur if you ask me.
Agreed.
He may also be on day release. I couldn't see an ankle tag but perhaps off his meds too? If so. Hope his case handler is watching. He does have a case handler. Doesn't he?
Oh, I don't know! Man of a certain age, carrying a bit of weight, attitude, cap, looks like he's got cycling shoes, shiny bike albeit it's a flat bar...
Plenty enought stereotypes.
Come off it! He "found"* that bike on the Lea Valley path.
*Found = Robbed.
Sounds like me on a Sunday afternoon ride....
Cross dresser then.
Was he going to the rocky horror show ?
He's not wearing a helmet so he ought to create a real dilemma for the cycle haters.
"Just go and protest properly"?
Such as?
Poll tax riots?
Waving placards around at the side of the road?
Doesn't seem to be doing the junior doctors much good with their pay-rise demands.
Personally, I don't think JSO, XR, or whoever else are anywhere near radical, or direct enough.
The time for being uncontroversial are over, we'll be facing oblivion within the next decade, if we continue as we are.
This.
If we are genuinely facing oblivion within the next decade then the time to act has already passed.
Historic emissions have already baked in almost all of the climate change we're going to see in the next decade.
2024 is predicted to be the hottest year since the industrial revolution, not because of emissions in 2024 but because of emissions in the decades leading up to it.
There is a scientific consensus that our CO2 emissions are warming the planet and changing the climate, there is no such consensus for what form that change will take. Outlandish claims about oblivion within a decade will only fuel nihilism.
There is consensus that it will be harmful and extremely disruptive for human existence across the whole planet. Mass migration, heatwaves, devastating floods, crop failures, food shortages will all have huge impacts on all our lives, even if those things are initiated on other continents.
Meanwhile climate change sceptics and deniers continue to question the scientists' knowledge and statements about temperature change, sea level rise etc as if the scientists are scaremongering amateurs and these things are unlikely to happen when in fact the sceptics know less than most of us about the facts. They don't want to engage with the facts.
We have a government that has fought tooth and nail to protect the interests of fossil fuel companies and the very wealthy and trodden over the rights and interests of everyone else; has fought against measures to reduce CO2 emissions in so may ways; has sucked vast amounts of public money into private hands (and not just cash-for-peerage or -questions / PPE scandals and the other rotten shit that has been going on); it has done more than any UK government in living memory to undermine democracy and even passed laws to prevent people from protesting. It's knowingly allowed the country's rivers to be so polluted because profit is more important than people or planet. And we have a media that has colluded with that government to demonise the poor, refugees, environmental protestors, striking public sector workers, LGBT people and anyone else that questions their right to do exactly as they want.
Perhaps, instead of arguing in favour of more roads (which inevitably means more traffic) and questioning climate scientists, you could try do something more helpful before it's too late. Not voting Tory would be a step in the right direction.
Nice diatribe. Ironically you seem to ignore multiple facts yourself.
If the government has 'fought against measures to reduce CO2' can you explain how they have managed to reduce CO2' emissions from electricity generation by nearly 3/4? A happy accident or the result of government policy? Why are ICE vehicles set for a ban? Surely not government policy? Why are there large grants to replace fossil fuel heating? Not government policy again?
Why have we reduced our CO2 emissions at a faster rate than any other major advanced economy?
There is no scientific consensus as to what form climate change will take.That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid it but the catastrophe merchants need to accept that their apocalyptic predictions are not certainties but merely possibilities.
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