Just Stop Oil: 27 campaigners arrested by police across England amid plot to disrupt airports this summer

In total 27 campaigners from Just Stop Oil have been arrested across London, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Essex, Manchester, Surrey, Sussex, Norfolk and West Yorkshire. The organisation has described it as co-ordinated police action, which included several activists being arrested at home in dawn raids this morning (June 28).

Six were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on Thursday night during a Just Stop Oil event named “From Roads to Runways – A Just Stop Oil Talk” at Haggerston Community Centre, east London. The force said it took action as “we know Just Stop Oil plan to disrupt airports and thousands of holidaymakers this summer”.

Just Stop Oil is a campaign group pushing for the abandonment of fossil fuel licensing and production in the UK, and has been behind a wave of protests including the recent incident at Stonehenge.

In response to the wave of arrests, a Just Stop Oil spokesman said: “It isn’t a massive surprise. I think it speaks volumes when we’ve got a police force cracking down on non-violent Just Stop Oil supporters in this way.

“The people enacting criminal damage on an unimaginable scale against all of us – oil company executives and the politicians that they’ve bought, basically – when is it that those folks are going to face the full force of the law?”

Asked about the justification for planning to target airports during the key summer holiday period, the spokesman said: “In normal times, that kind of disruption would be entirely unacceptable. But you can’t really disassociate what we’re potentially planning on doing from the reasons why.”

He added that disruption is necessary because people are “dropping dead around the world” from extreme heat, and “tipping points” are being passed.