The Stonehenge Protest - Tim LeRoy and Calum McIntyre
Why are people so angry about the Just Stop Oil Stonehenge protests? I asked two friends, both equally passionate about the climate crisis, to exchange views - here's how it went down.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been completely fascinated by the reaction to the recent Just Stop Oil protest at Stonehenge.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, catch up here.
As I asked in a recent 10 Things dispatch: why are people angrier about this than they are about water companies charging us to repair their own failed systems while issuing record dividends, or by the recent stealthy dismantling of some of our powers of protest at the behest of the fossil fuel industry?
And it isn’t just the usual suspects frothing about ‘wokeism’ (a word I actually heard somebody in the wild use recently), ‘social justice warriors,’ and the like, either.
Many of my SAS-app consulting, Do Lectures-attending, Looking Sideways-subscribing pals were equally outraged.
As were grizzled protesting stalwarts like this commenter on last week’s 10 Things post.
So what exactly is going on here? Why ARE people so upset about this?
My own view can be summed up by this old line, usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Billy Wilder:
“If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you.”
And (to absolutely nobody’s surprise), I’ve got a bit of a theory about it:
Anybody who is remotely paying attention knows that, at some point, significant individual and collective sacrifices will be required if we’re ever going to address something as vast and devastating as the global climate crisis.
It should happen during my lifetime, but probably won’t. But it’ll certainly happen during the lifetimes of the younger generations we’re already sharing the planet with, and who will be around long after fortysomethings like me have shuffled off. Blimey. Sounds a bit heavy when you put it like that, eh?
This is one reason why so many individuals, groups and factions are keen to pretend it isn’t happening.
And why even those of us who DO buy into it are still happy to fiddle while Rome burns, and also basically act as if it isn’t happening.
Sure, we’ll occasionally take our reusable cup to the coffee shop. We’ll do the recycling each week (even if we haven’t got a clue where it actually ends up). We’ll think about Yulex for our next wetsuit - but only if you can guarantee it performs as well as our beloved O’Neill steamer.
But in the main, most of us are not really engaging in any meaningful attempt to grapple with the scale and severity of the problem: other than vaguely hoping that something is going to come along that’ll magically sort this out in a way that causes us all the least possible inconvenience.
And, ideally, means we can all still go on holiday every year.
(Sidenote: I didn’t realise when I started writing it, but this is a key theme of my forthcoming series The Announcement, a three-part podcast documentary about Yvon Chouinard giving away Patagonia and making ‘earth our only shareholder’).
So there’s that.
But there’s another factor at play as well: the rather unwelcome truth that we are all enthusiastic participants in the most voraciously consumerist society to have ever lived on earth.
That sounds like total hyperbole, but it’s a pretty basic statement of fact.
It’s easy to think the way we live is the natural order of things. But there’s nothing historically normal about the rate at which we currently consume and destroy absolutely everything we can get our collective mitts on: minerals, animals, natural habitats, you name it.
Whether you like it or not, that fact makes it impossible to perpetuate the collective sleight-of-hand that could allow us to claim any emotional distance from the issue: as we kinda could when it came to the global movements of change that defined the previous two centuries, such as the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and the civil rights movement.
(Of course, I know that we can’t genuinely claim any emotional distance from the other examples I cited above, either. My point is that enabling us to think that - for example - the British Empire WASN’T complicit in something like slavery is an outcome of us being taught about, say, Arkwright and his Spinning Jenny; rather than - for another - the fact that the cotton that was such a critical feature of the Industrial Revolution came from the slave societies of the West Indies and the American South, earning my hometown of Manchester the proud nickname of ‘Cottonopolis’ at the time. Awks! Anyway…)
As a society, we definitely prefer not to be reminded of this stuff, if that’s OK.
It’s a drag, and might prove a distraction from the serious business of, say, wandering through that sweet middle aisle at Lidl, persuading myself that, Mmmm, yes, I really should buy this knock-off espresso machine I never knew I wanted until about 30 seconds ago.
Why do you think people are so worked up about the National Trust right now? Why do you think the comment section underneath any Protect Our Winters post (above) is full of people yelling ‘hypocrite’, incandescent with rage?
And hence why raising awareness about this stuff while also bringing people along with you is such a fiendishly difficult task, requiring impeccable leadership and masterly communication skills (things all great movements of change have had in common).
And hence why (you knew I’d get to the point eventually) the Stonehenge protesters are essentially making themselves an easy target.
On a basic level, a load of people lobbing cornstarch at our most cherished archeological monument (“what has THAT got to do with climate change?!”) gives people a very welcome outlet for the subconscious guilt engendered by their own apathy.
This is why, personally, I thought it was a deeply clunky action, if only from a comms perspective.
Generally-speaking, tapping into peoples’ collective generational guilt is not really an effective communications tactic.
Why? I refer you back to that quote I posted at the beginning of this article. Here it is again, in case you missed it the first time around:
“If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you.”
Like I say: it’s just a theory.
And perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that said hot take has been received like …well, an extremely ice-cold take when I’ve road-tested it on a couple of mates. (Yep, I’ll see you in the comment section).
But I think we can all agree, it IS an interesting topic of debate.
Which is why I decided to ask Tim LeRoy and Calum Macintrye, two friends who are equally passionate about climate change, but who disagree on the effectiveness of this type of direct action, to exchange views on the Stonehenge protest.
What did it say about the current protest movement, and the wider fight against the climate crisis in general?
Here’s how it went:
1. Tim LeRoy:
Dear Calum
As a friend pointed out to me, “when you’ve even lost the druids, you're probably heading in the wrong direction.”
I’ve been an environmentalist and activist for more than twenty-five years, but I’m afraid that I found myself agreeing with him and ‘King’ Arthur Pendragon who said that Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge action “alienates any sympathy for their cause”.
I know that the stones weren’t harmed, and that none of the art or gardens or snooker tables or football pitches that have also been targeted will suffer any permanent damage. But people now want to shoot the orange messenger before even hearing the urgent message they’re bringing.
As a result, public perception of environmental activists is crashing, at a time when we desperately need our demands to be heard and to be taken seriously.
My increasing worry is that by targeting (mostly harmless) things that people enjoy, Just Stop Oil seems to be pointing the finger of blame at, and demanding solutions from, the people who have least responsibility.
The most successful trick the oil industry pulled was to make us as consumers feel responsible for cleaning up their mess. We’re all made hypocrites by the system we live in. Given that we can’t entirely stop using oil or plastics entirely, it’s unfair and unrealistic to put the onus on consumers.
So it isn’t that Just Stop Oil’s fundamental message isn’t correct. It’s more what it says to the public at large, to my mate, and to the druid king.
My fear is not only that JSO is adding to that false oil industry narrative. More worryingly, they’re making the environmental movement as a whole look like misguided vandals that can be dismissed in the press and the halls of power with one lethal phrase: ‘You are not serious people.’
Who at the snooker, or at Stonehenge, is responsible for international fossil fuel reduction or non proliferation treaties? Who has the power to instigate a move to a radical carbon-free economy? Alas, it ain’t the druids.
I do have very real admiration for your courage and integrity, and I know you had some important conversations after your pitch invasion. But how many were with real power-brokers or law-makers? How many government hearts were won and industrial minds were changed? I fear you’re only preaching to the converted.
With real respect and best wishes.
Tim
2. Calum Macintyre:
Dear Tim,
First of all I just want to say that I have struggled with a lot of these thoughts myself over the years. There are always constant doubts about whether certain actions are the right thing to do.
However, personally, I do think that the protest at Stonehenge was effective. I think disruptive protest is still the right thing for one flank of the climate movement to pursue.
I think that disruptive protests act like a fire alarm to wake people up. June was the twelfth straight month that the world was more than 1.5 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial era. This is not, as King Arthur Pendragon seems to think, some ‘cause’ that you can pick or choose whether to have sympathy for. We're on the precipice of catastrophe and it didn't even get a mention in Keir Starmer's acceptance speech last Friday.
I’m not convinced those in power listen to the ‘serious people’ anyway. After all, in 2021, Sir David King, the former chief scientific advisor to the UK Government, said, “What we do over the next 3 to 4 years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity”.
Evidently, he has not been taken very seriously. Scientists have been presenting the facts and information to people for the last 30 years, but we are still way off track.
I would be interested in whether there is concrete data to suggest that public support for environmental activists is ‘crashing’, as you suggest. In the UK, we just elected five Green MPs and a Labour government with a manifesto that included halting oil and gas licensing. In France, a left/green coalition just defeated the right-wing parties.
We have also tried to bring the message directly to those with power, the first thing most critics of the action suggest. The result? They criminalised us. The Just Stop Oil campaign started in 2022, by blocking oil terminals across the UK. It was highly effective. What did the oil companies do? They brought in injunctions that meant that anyone taking part in this kind of protest at an oil terminal can have their assets seized and even face prison.
The protest at Stonehenge was a global news story and spokespeople from Just Stop Oil were invited to speak on countless TV debates about the need for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. It's not about shaming individuals - it's about creating a conversation in society to change the political weather so that it becomes politically safe to finally regulate the fossil fuel industry.
Cheers,
Calum
3. Tim LeRoy:
Dear Calum,
You make very persuasive points, and the need to continue ringing the fire alarm is valid. However, I do think you underestimate the growing antipathy towards the orange paint protests, and I do think that they are counter-productive.
The fossil fuel lobby are looking for any way to legitimise the status quo. Painting those suggesting possible alternatives as naive idealists or anarchists is one of the few angles of attack they have left. These protests are just add fuel to their fire - especially because JSO’s targets seem so unrelated to the issue. Very few people can make the connection between the climate crisis and Stonehenge, or the Chelsea Flower Show.
I think that the time for trying to scare people into action has passed. Not that we’re out of danger - far from it - but because there are no ‘undecideds’ any more. People either know the climate is collapsing and are looking for real leadership, or they deny it and will fight dirty to hold on to their Range Rovers.
Another part of the problem is JSO’s name, and its implied lack of a credible-sounding solution. Insulate Britain had the advantage of carrying the message in the name. It seemed a reasonable and feasible solution - people could see how that would work and be put it into place, immediately. But even they quickly became pariahs, too, their message blocked by the anger unleashed by all those traffic jams.
Greenpeace has a long history of direct action against oil industry targets, but they have scaled them back in favour of policy making and litigation. Even Extinction Rebellion have understood that they need to stop antagonising and start collaborating in dynamic processes like citizen’s assemblies, that are proven to create effective and consensual policies that can quickly go through parliament.
To stop oil, we need to go and make laws.
As you point out, our political world now looks very different. Starmer has made it clear that he wants to be judged on getting things done, and an urgent clean energy transition is a flagship policy with a 2030 deadline.
So I think we activists now have to focus on the corridors of power and courts of justice. Put on our suits and go and ring the alarms in the places where they can actually put out the fires. We need to keep our MPs focussed and moving fast, and to do that we have to bring ordinary people with us, not spoil their fun.
Cheers,
Tim
4. Calum Macintyre
Dear Tim,
I agree with you that it is getting to the point where there are few undecideds anymore. However I'm not convinced that most people truly understand what climate collapse means. I think that if we did, every single one of us would be in the streets (and probably not that concerned about cornstarch on Stonehenge).
We just passed through 13 months where the world was above 1.5 degrees. That effectively means the Paris agreement has failed. James Hansen, the NASA scientist who alerted the world to climate change in the 1980’s, recently said “We are not moving into a 1.5C world, we are briefly passing through it in 2024”.
Supporters of Just Stop Oil are ordinary people - not political lobbyists. I could spend my time putting on a suit and talking to politicians. However, my voice would soon be drowned out by the queue of fossil fuel lobbyists queuing up behind me.
What can ordinary people really do in a democracy when our voices are drowned out by an entrenched power? I believe nonviolent civil disobedience is one of the strongest political tools that we have left.
You say that Insulate Britain became pariahs and their message got blocked in the traffic jams. Not according to research undertaken by Social Change Lab, which found that the campaign was actually extremely effective in getting the media and politicians to talk about home insulation. Within a matter of weeks, 90% of the UK public knew about the campaign. A separate NGO working on home insulation said of this visibility: "In the past we couldn’t get anyone interested in this issue… Insulate Britain changed that".
The same can be said for the Restore Wetlands campaign in Sweden. They disrupted society in order to generate a media revolution around the topic of restoring wetlands. Within two years every single major political party in Sweden now has the demand as a key part of its climate policy.
I also think it is easy for us to get the impression that social movements of the past were well-received. History tells us this is not the case. Martin Luther King Jr is revered as one of the great communicators of the last century - despite the fact that a poll conducted in August 1966 showed that King only had an approval rating of 33%.
As Hajar Yazdiha wrote in Time Magazine: "…by seeing King as the saintly patron of colour-blindness and peace, beloved by all, an exceptional hero that the US had not seen before and will never see again, it becomes possible to create a cultural disdain for civil disobedience in the present".
I completely agree with you that we need lots of us doing lots of different things - in the courts, corridors of power and in our own communities. However, I do think the radical flank is still an essential part of this ecology of change.
Cheers
Calum
5. Tim Le Roy
Thank you Calum
It’s really good to have my opinions and positions challenged, and being provoked to think about the urgency is especially valuable.
I do understand why nonviolent civil disobedience might feel like the only action for some, but I stand by everything I wrote before. I don’t think actions on cultural icons work. We have to make sure that we are bringing people with us and selling them a realistic vision of something much better. You can only scare someone into action if you simultaneously show them the solution.
Lately, I’ve been followed around the net by an ad that proves both our points. A chirpy engineer lady in red and yellow overalls is travelling around a sunshiny world in her EV, building wind turbines and fitting solar panels, and it ends with “Shell, powering the energy transition.”
The fossil fuel industry desperately wants to own what the future looks like, and how quickly we get there.
We cannot let them have the primary colours of hope, while our side is painted as the doom-mongers and fun-spoilers. Yes, it is an urgent existential threat, but boiling frogs don’t jump, no matter how loudly you yell.
Since you mentioned the great Dr King, I will too. “Those who love peace must learn to organise as effectively as those who love war.”
I hope this isn’t a clumsy analogy, but I grew up in the 80s under the very real fear of IRA bombs targeting innocent people. It was a godawful campaign and it wasn't until the republican movement focussed its efforts on Westminster and Stormont that they started to win hearts and minds. Sinn Féin is now the largest party across Northern Ireland, and at Westminster. They control the vision towards a united Ireland.
We have to be smarter than the oil companies. Better at being credible leaders who say, “Here’s the problem, here’s the dream, and here’s how we all get to the promised land.”
While you’re right about the queue of fossil fuel lobbyists, I disagree that not everyone cannot be effective political lobbyists.
Firstly, I’d encourage everyone to watch Sarah Corbett’s awesome TEDx talk ‘Activism needs introverts’. Her ‘gentle protest’ movement is a blueprint for highly effective persuasion for those who feel powerless or don’t want to take to the streets. Inspired by her talk, I wrote a piece a few years back about what worked for me, campaigning for SAS, which might help some people too.
I do feel the terrifying urgency that drives you, and MLK’s arc of justice feels more like a sine wave of up and down than a hairpin change. But to change the system you really do have to get inside and work the system.
Thank you again, sincerely. I suspect that JSO’s legacy will be a good one in the end.
Tim
6. Calum Macintyre
Thanks Tim,
I hear what you are saying about letting the fossil fuel industry have the primary colours of hope. I do agree with you that the climate movement could do much better on its communication - in a way that gives collective hope for the future. I also completely agree that we need more really good leaders who can bring people together and inspire lots of different types of action.
I think that is the key - as I said before, there has to be a diverse ecology of change. We need people working on organising citizens assemblies as well as people organising for direct action. I am not trying to argue that everyone should join Just Stop Oil and go and spray Stonehenge with cornstarch. But I do really believe that disruptive protest can give others the push to get involved in ways that they feel comfortable with. I know people who have joined groups like Friends of the Earth after being exposed to disruptive protest, for example, because they felt they wanted to do more.
Above all, I think it is really important that we tell the truth. There is no hiding the serious predicament the world is in. Whether the action at Stonehenge is a truly effective way of conveying the urgency of the situation and the need for countries to work together on a binding fossil fuel phase out treaty remains to be seen. But the environmental movement has been trying and failing to communicate the need for serious action for the last 30 years without success. I hope that those reading this spare some sympathy for the people desperately trying something different. They will face serious personal consequences, and it's important to remember again that there was no damage to the stones.
We have definitely got to change hearts and minds. I think it's fitting to finish with a quote from an article in the Telegraph last week (a paper that has not been the biggest cheerleader for JSO over the years!), in which Ambrose Evens-Pritchard wrote:
“Just Stop Oil has always said it was wishful thinking to imagine that the oil incumbents could ever be part of the solution. I hate to say that may have been right all along”.
To me, this represents this slow and important process of winning those hearts and minds in different areas of society, while offering an alternative narrative for the future than the one pushed on us by the fossil fuel industry.
Thanks very much for the discussion Tim - it's been really valuable to get your take on all this stuff and it has made me really reflect on the different ways we are all working and how we can be most effective.
Look forward to chatting with you more.
Calum
What did you think of this exchange? Do they reflect your views on the climate crisis? How do you think we should approach the challenges ahead? Has it changed your view on direct action? Let me know:
I am getting a lot from this discussion in so many ways, thank you Calum and Tim and Matt and Sam and everyone else who is engaging in and continuing the discussion both online and in the real world. I have had a good number of conversations in the last few days that have come from this thread.
I am in a very similar position to Sam in that I can see both sides and in order to try and figure out if and how I might get off the fence, if that is needed- I am not sure it is? I am thinking about the following thought experiment.
Often, if I am thinking about how to lead people in dangerous terrain, if I am splitboard or ski guiding for example, and the conditions are deteriorating to the point there is a concern time is running out I have learnt that it's useful to both try and help people raise their game in order to be able to best help themselves and understand and deal with the urgency of the situation but also 'meet the group where they are at'. This is not easy and sometimes seems to be diametrically opposed in the goals. It means the group are likely to have to travel and take decisions based on the least resourced person. People who are more able to take on the urgency both mentally and physically will be frustrated by the necessary slower pace, people who feel a more cautious approach will get them to the plan B route in good time can become exasperated with those who feel they can go faster and harder and some less resourced people might need a lot of support just to be able to take on the situation in any meaningful way.
That is a difficult place to be as a leader.
There are options though in this scenario at least, and I know it doesn't map perfectly well on to the discussion at hand, but it does make me wonder if as well as having a situation where the people pushing hard and fast could go on ahead without jeopardising those less resourced people in the group, as long as they are able and willing to handle and take on the risks and consequences of doing that ( and like Sam I have so much respect for people taking direct action and dealing with the consequences of doing so), while those who can work comfortably and effectively with plan b do that and the group leader (I am still in snow guide mode) works to support and resource those who are not able yet to take on and deal with the situation for whatever reason. The plan and hope being everyone reaches safety in time and maybe even a bit more quickly if those pushing hard and fast alert help for example. This is just on version of this metaphor though and I can think of others where the context would mean anyone pushing hard and fast might have severe negative consequences and on the other hand, scenarios where without some people pushing hard and fast for help disaster is looming. In all though, as a leader, I would be working as hard as I could to try and help those not able to take on the situation to be able to take it on.
This brings me to consider Matt's comments about what is going on when so many people are apparently not taking on the urgency, or perhaps not able to? What's missing, what kind of 'support' might be needed to give people the personal resources to take on such a critical situation in a more meaningful way? How to alert people to the need to be courageous, think differently with a level of responsibility for self and others that is not something usually part of their everyday lives so far?
I understand the frustration Calum voices when he describes needing to wake people up to the urgency but perhaps there is a step before or alongside this? Or maybe Matt is right, people are just too comfortable. Does being too comfortable undermine a persons ability to face difficult and complex existential decisions? What do we mean by comfortable? Is there something missing in this picture?
Thanks again for this thread and the continued action and discussions.
It might have been you Matt who said (I paraphrase) "it doesn't matter if they think we're stupid or if they laugh at us, as long as they are talking about us" Adolf Hitler. If people aren't talking about the issue then nothing ever happens. Once the issue becomes talked about and in the public domain - then the talking around the table can start. It's like ecology. Every bit needs to be there for it to function well.
On leadership. I feel strongly that it is the people's voice and people's actions. It is powerful when doctors, nurses, electricians etc. are standing up in court and telling the jury why they, respectable people, are doing what they are doing.
Cheers Rich