What is Just Stop Oil? Two protesters arrested after spraying Stonehenge orange
Two Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested after spraying the historic Stonehenge monument in orange paint on Wednesday.
In video footage posted on social media, protestors can be seen wearing white T-shirts running up to the monoliths with spray paint canisters at around 11am.
Members of the public were seen dragging the protestors away in an attempt to stop them.
Several stones were covered in the substance before one protester stopped and sat cross-legged on the grass while another was dragged away by a woman.
The Prime Minister said: “This is a disgraceful act of vandalism to one of the UK’s and the world’s oldest and most important monuments.
“Just Stop Oil should be ashamed of their activists, and they and anyone associated with them, including a certain Labour Party donor, should issue a condemnation of this shameful act immediately.”
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said the group is demanding that the next government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.
“Failure to commit to defending our communities will mean Just Stop Oil supporters, along with citizens from Austria, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland, will join in resistance this summer, if their own governments do not take meaningful action,” they said.
“Stone circles can be found in every part of Europe showing how we’ve always co-operated across vast distances – we’re building on that legacy.”
It is just the latest stunt pulled by Just Stop Oil.
On Thursday, Just Stop Oil protesters sprayed jets at a London airfield where the group claimed Taylor Swift’s private plane landed hours before.
Two protesters entered a private airfield at Stansted Airport at around 5am, painting two jets with fire extinguishers filled with orange paint.
Essex Police later said two women, aged 22 and 28, were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with the use of national infrastructure.
A statement said: "Officers were on the scene within minutes and detained two people.
"The airport and flights are operating as normal.
"A 22-year-old woman from Brighton and a 28-year-old woman from Dumbarton have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with the use or operation of national infrastructure."
Cole Macdonald, 22, and Jennifer Kowalski, 28, demanded that the incoming UK government works to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
From what they’re hoping to achieve to when the group was founded, here’s everything you need to know about them.
What is Just Stop Oil?
Just Stop Oil was founded in April 2022, and the group has staged several protests since.
The climate-activist organisation is formed of several groups, with organisers from Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain at the helm.
Its website states: “Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure the Government commits to halting new fossil-fuel licensing and production.
What are Just Stop Oil’s goals?
While the name is a key giveaway, Just Stop Oil has a number of objectives to put an end to new licensing and “consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”.
The group is also demanding that the Government stop all new oil and gas projects.
The website says: “Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene and genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion. It just has to stop.
“If we continue down our current path, it will destroy families and communities. We will face the starvation and the slaughter of billions of the poor — and the utter betrayal of our children and their future.
“Does our government get this? They are actively enabling the fossil-fuel industry through obscene subsidies and tax breaks for new fossil-fuel extraction.
“They are wasting billions supporting unicorn technologies, such as carbon capture and storage projects, which provide a fig leaf for business-as-usual to continue. There has been no rapid and sweeping social change, no widespread adoption of low-carbon technology, no war-style mobilisation.
“The choice: rapid transition to a low-energy and low-carbon world, or social collapse. We can do it now, in an orderly manner — creating millions of proper skilled jobs and protecting the rights of workers in sunset industries — or we wait for the unavoidable collapse.”
Why are Just Stop Oil members being arrested?
Just Stop Oil has organised a number of protests, including storming the British Grand Prix track in July 2022, where a protestor cable-tied himself to a goalpost.
Later that year, Just Stop Oil activists blocked Park Lane, the four-lane road alongside Hyde Park. Police said 11 people were arrested for obstruction of the highway and one on suspicion of criminal damage.
Days later, activists from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at the National Gallery in London.
The two activists, who then glued themselves to a wall in the gallery, were placed under arrest for the attack on the painting, which is covered by glass and worth about £72.5m.
In October 2023, the activist group staged a demonstration during a performance of Les Miserables in the West End, at the Sondheim theatre.
The climate activists took to the stage and raised a flag, prompting the performance to end early. The audience had to be evacuated.
Five people were reportedly arrested for the protest.
In a statement, Just Stop Oil said it was “calling for the Government to commit to immediately halt new oil and gas licences in the UK and for the directors, employees, and members of art institutions to join the Just Stop Oil coalition in peaceful civil resistance”.
May 2024 saw reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, an 85-year-old retired biology teacher target the Magna Carta in the British Library. They broke the glass container around the document with a hammer and chisel. They then held up a sign stating, "The government is breaking the law."
In June 2024, two women protestors from the group sprayed orange powder paint into the air from within the crowd gathered outside of Chester Cathedral for the wedding of Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster and Olivia Henson.
A 69-year-old woman from Manchester and a 73-year-old woman from Suffolk were arrested for using devices to project the powder paint near the entrance of the cathedral as the couple made their way to the car.
