Just Stop Oil—a left-wing environmental activist group behind a series of illegal actions such as blocking access to petrol stations and parts of England’s M25 motorway, breaching High Court injunctions, and throwing soup at Van Gogh paintings—has returned after a hiatus to block the UK Parliament, resulting in dozens being arrested.
This time it sought to block new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first Prime Ministers’ Questions (PMQs) in Westminster on Sept. 2. Just Stop Oil (JSO) said 60 people were blocking the road on London’s Parliament Square, with a significant number “glued on.” Additionally, JSO said, 40 or more people were demonstrating in support “from the pavement.”
The disruption marked the group’s first major return since pausing its public disruption campaigns in 2025.
JSO said in a Sept. 2 statement that it was demanding that Burnham sign “a Fossil Fuel Treaty” and stop approving “all future oil and gas projects.”
When contacted, a Met Police spokeswoman forwarded The Epoch Times to a Sept. 2 post on X, which said the protest is “now concluded” with 59 people arrested for a range of offences which include disrupting key national infrastructure, “locking on” to cause serious disruption, and conspiring to cause a public nuisance.
The Met confirmed that protesters glued themselves to the road and specialist officers had to remove them.
Trish Fitzmaurice, a mother from Norfolk, one of the activists arrested on the road, said in a statement, “Andy Burnham, we are crying out for leadership! The climate crisis is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. We are destroying our only home by burning fossil fuels. Oil and gas mean death.”
Conservative Member of Parliament and Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Andrew Bowie, who was observing at Parliament Square, said that the group was “ironically campaigning for less British oil and gas which means more imports and a higher carbon footprint.”
The United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party has stated it is committed to a phased transition in the North Sea and will not issue any new oil and gas or coal licenses.
This follows from the previous Conservative administration’s Climate Change Act 2008, which legally commits the UK to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
In an interview with the Financial Times on July 19 in the run-up to the Autumn Budget, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Lucy Powell said that Burnham would not overturn Labour’s manifesto pledge to end new exploration licenses in the North Sea.
The UK’s own North Sea offshore oil production began in the UK during the 1970s and peaked in 1999 at 137 million tonnes, according to official UK government energy statistics.
A Scottish court ruled in January 2025 that previous consents for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields were unlawful because they did not consider emissions produced from burning the fuels.
In 2023, the Met Police said that JSO cost taxpayers nearly £20 million (about $27 million) since its first campaign in October 2022.
According to the Metropolitan Police, hundreds of activists have been arrested since police were granted powers under Section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023, which allows the Met to arrest those who commit an act “which interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure in England and Wales.”
JSO says it gets most of its funding, which it claims is “for recruitment, training, capacity building, and education,” from the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF).
CEF said JSO raised and spent approximately $6.3 million between its launch in April 2022 and July 2024.
The CEF is, in turn, partly funded by Aileen Getty, a U.S. billionaire whose grandfather was the petroleum tycoon J. Paul Getty.
Aileen Getty co-founded the group with wealthy donors, including renewable fuels businessman Trevor Neilson and Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
CEF donor and Hollywood film director Adam McKay once pledged to triple donations to JSO made in a 48-hour window in 2023.
Former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together organization also in 2023 donated $300,000 to CEF, according to tax documents.
JSO uses funding tools from countries abroad such as the U.S.-based Action Network. The Action Network online tool for “left-of-center outlets to organize, fundraise, and circulate petitions for liberal causes” was born out of the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to Influence Watch.
Action Network says on its website: “We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action.”
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