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An interview with Just Stop Oil about protest, playfulness and invading EGX"A central part of the nonviolence training are these kind of roleplaying games."
“A central part of the nonviolence training are these kind of roleplaying games.”
Image credit:Just Stop Oil
Image credit:Just Stop Oil
RPS: Can you tell me a little about yourself? How did you get involved with Just Stop Oil?
Oliver Clegg (OC):I became involved with Just Stop Oil in, I guess, December of 2021. Feels like a while ago now! When I started at university, I became involved withExtinctionRebellion, before Covid. But I suppose being under lockdown gave me more time to think, reflect, look these things up. And most of all, it showed that even when a government has the most scientific advice available, when it’s trying to make the best possible decisions, it still manages to fuck things up.
And so my faith in the government to deal with the climate crisis just kind of evaporated. I mean, I’d been thinking, ‘Oh, it’s such a big crisis. It’s so significant. All the scientists are talking about it, they’re talking about in the UN - obviously, the government is taking this seriously, and doing things at a realistic pace.’ And Covid taught me that oh no, even even when they have the best scientific advice, they still managed to arse things up.
So yeah, coming out of that, starting uni, I was thinking, I want to get involved in the climate movement, and that was initially through Extinction Rebellion. I was at a protest at COP 26 in Glasgow. And it was on one of those protests that I was told about this new Just Stop Oil thing starting. And at that point I just started thinking that I needed to step up from - I mean, it’s powerful, going on protests, and it’s important that everybody does. But I think at that point, I was fed up with just going along and holding a placard and standing in a town centre.
And I thought, if I’m not willing to be arrested for this, maybe that means I’m not taking it seriously enough. It is mine and everybody else’s lives that are at stake here. And so I was involved in a lot of the protests that happened at oil terminals. That’ll be in April 2022, where we were blocking the distribution of petrol from these terminals. And yeah, and that’s when my Just Stop Oil experience started.
RPS: You’ve been much more engaged than I have! I joined a Just Stop Oil march back in 2022, and I kind of blundered into it at the last minute, and then I ended up at the front of the march, but that’s just because somebody gave me a big banner. The number one rule at protests seems to be that if somebody asks you to hold one of the big banners, you’ve got to be careful, because you’re probably going to end up at the front.
With regard to the EGX protests - in your statement you talk about EGX’s connection to Barclays, which invests in fossil fuels, and about Shell using Fortnite to market itself to younger players. But still, why protest at a gaming event rather than going after Barclays directly? And why Tekken?
RPS: I get the impression that with Just Stop Oil protests, like the football match you disrupted, people often see it as aimed at them, whereas you’re actually trying to reach the policymakers.
OC:Well, they would - I mean, if it’s a thing that you love and it’s been disrupted, then you’ll be annoyed about that. But obviously, we’re always trying to make the wider point that it’s kind of coming from within those communities. It was mostly gamers that targeted EGX for that protest. I did a protest wherewe blocked the Coca Cola float at Pride, and everybody doing that was queer. It’s not a kind of outside attack on queer people, or on football fans, or on gamers. It’s people from within those communities, saying ‘It’s not on, something needs to be done about the climate crisis, about fossil fuel licensing’.
RPS: Have you ever thought about doing any kind of protest actionwithingames like Fortnite?
OC:That’s an interesting thought. I personally haven’t - I’m sure other people at Just Stop Oil have. When we were talking about this interview, mention was made of protest games, and it’s an interesting thing to think about. But I struggle to imagine that that would be particularly effective, given that all I guess it could be is a lot of people symbolically showing that they care, in the same way as signing a petition.
RPS: Obviously, the stakes are much, much lower in a virtual environment. But equally, I think there’s an opportunity there - if you’re thinking about blocking the means of production, there are equivalents for that in games, in terms of how you can just gang up and stop them functioning. And when it’s a big game like Fortnite, if you go into a match, and set up a protest that appears on the right streams, because you have streamers playing those games who might have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, there’s an opportunity to spread the message further. Though as you say, at the end of the day, not much is risked. But maybe there’s room in your work for that more mundane kind of subversion.
Image credit:BBC
And the thinking would be that if people see a protest they perceived as radical or has that kind of higher degree of sacrifice to it, then people might not necessarily support that, but it does make them think, ‘Well, I guess I should be doing something, playing my part’. And if that means that people are pushed from being sort of passive and disempowered into taking small steps, then actually it can be the case that these sorts of protests, even though they’re seen as offputting, actually lead to the public having much, much greater support for climate action.
RPS: I can see that, for sure. How much does Just Stop Oil gather data about how much change is taking place? Are you able to join the dots between particular protests and, say, government policy?
OC:There’s certainly been been polling, and there have been reports commissioned. And the amount of media that’s generated about Just Stop Oil gets tracked and monitored. In a lot of cases, you can see really immediate sort of visible [reactions] when a protest happens, you’ll get a response from the organisers of the event that’s been targeted, or from politicians talking about it.
RPS: Have you been tracking how gamers reacted to the EGX protest?
OC:I personally haven’t, but I’m sure somebody has!
RPS: Another thing I’m interested in is whether you think about being playful as a way of protesting. At EGX, for instance, the protestors cosplayed as the Ghostbusters, which on the one hand presumably allows you to hide the fact that you’ve got Super Soakers full of orange paint. But on the other hand, it’s just kind of fun! I’m probably pushing it too far, but I’m interested in whether you think about protest itself as having game-like qualities, or about playfulness in general as a rebellious activity.
OC:It’s interesting, and it’s true. Similarly, the protests at Pride - we all dressed absolutely outrageously, which in part sort of blended in because of the nature of the parade, but it also made for wonderful visuals. And when you look at past social movements, thinking about how we can learn from ones that have been successful? Oftentimes, they’ve been really kind of zany protests! I think looking too kind of austere and serious can be off-putting.
Image credit:The History Project
There’s a value to things being serious and austere, especially when the situation is so serious, but it can certainly capture attention and be more inviting of participation when there’s an element of fun to it. Some of the most memorable protests that Just Stop Oil has done, likesoup being thrown at the Van Gogh, or whenLouis McKechnie tied himself onto the goalposts- that lives on in thousands of ways because it just looks so weird.
RPS: It’s interesting, because my impression of Just Stop Oil protests is that there’s a balance of absurdity and seriousness. Like Louis, who tied himself to the goalposts - he played it very straight, but obviously what he’s doing is fundamentally silly. I’m sure this sounds like a very frivolous thing to focus on - I’m just thinking about the staging of it.
OC:Yeah, I mean the world is absurd and ridiculous. There’s something funny about about all of the world’s governments knowing that continuing to licence fossil fuels is causing climate breakdown, that it is, in the end, going to kill their own citizens. And them saying, ‘Oh, you know what? Let’s license more’. In the case of [UK prime minister] Rishi Sunak, saying that he’s going tomax out fossil fuel reserves, that’s absurd. That’s ridiculous, and maybe a more kind of absurd protest can point that out.
OC:I suppose so. The playful elements, the call and response chants are powerful for sort of holding people together as a community. And actually, did you go to any nonviolent direct action training for the Just Stop Oil march you went on?
RPS: I think I should have! We were at the front of the march, and there was the whole question as to whether we’d go onto London Bridge, and the police had said, ‘If you come on here, you’re all getting arrested’. And the organisers were deciding whether or not to go for it, because we were going to join up with another march coming the other way. I think we were told that if we were going to do that, we should have had that training, and I just managed to miss it.
RPS: Yeah, I can really see that. I can see how having a persona to play simplifies your interactions a bit. And obviously, it can do that in a bad way. You can have a persona that makes you more likely to be violent. But roleplaying as a character that has certain set behaviours means that there’s less ambiguity when you’re in a high pressure situation, whether it be with members of the public or with the police.
OC:Yeah, yeah. It’s very important even if you’re thinking, why are these police arresting ordinary members of the public, who are standing up for something important. Or if you’re thinking thatthe Met police are institutionally racist and sexist and homophobic, you don’t let that cloud the way you interact with them. And that sort of allows things to be smooth and crucially, to be nonviolent. Because on a practical and on a philosophical level, what Just Stop Oil is about is preventing the violence of the climate crisis and not using violence in any way ourselves.
OC:I haven’t heard that before, about the Hong Kong protests with Pokemon Go. This is a lot more old school, but I remember just before a march in London, there were a group of us waiting in a park next to Paddington Station, and some cops, I guess, knew we were going to be there in advance. And they were stopping and searching people. And this guy, this vicar was one of the protesters. There was a huge outdoor chess set in the park. He started playing chess with the cops. It was quite a sight.
RPS: Who won?
OC:The protestor!
