Lights, tankers, direct action
IN A FLAT IN EAST LONDON, on the night of 31 March, two dozen people in their early 20s are packing sleeping bags and energy bars and discussing unorthodox toilet arrangements. There are bowls of vegan curry on the table and a Fontaines DC gig on the television. You might assume they were going to a music festival, if not for the foldable ladders. In fact, they are members of Just Stop Oil, a campaign group demanding the cessation of all new oil licences in the UK. Their plan is to bring traffic in and out of the Navigator oil terminal in Thurrock, Essex, to a halt in a few hours. From the flat, they can see Navigator’s white silos. “I saw it earlier and my stomach flipped,” says Hannah Hunt, a 23-year-old from Brighton. She calls it “the venue”.
Hunt is a veteran of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain. She delivered a letter containing Just Stop Oil’s demands to No 10 Downing Street, scaled the Fawley oil refinery near Southampton, and glued herself to the red carpet at the Bafta awards. She experiences anxiety before an action but, once it’s happening, she enters “a weird, dreamy, calm mindset. It’s really empowering.”
Another prematurely seasoned activist is Louis McKechnie, who served half of a three-month term in jail for blocking the M25 and tied himself to a goalpost during a football match between Everton and Newcastle. He’s a confident 21-year-old with curtained hair and large glasses. During his pitch invasion, Twitter users compared him to John Lennon and Paul Dano’s Riddler in The Batman. Most of the activists – members of the Youth Climate Swarm – have never been arrested. “Today will be arrest number 16 for me,” McKechnie says after a legal briefing, “so if you have any questions, I’ll be here all night.”
Hunt is a bloc coordinator, or “queen”. After dinner, she produces a map and holds an action meeting for a sub-group of 10. The plan rests on the “site-take team” blocking all transit in and out of the terminal by scaling the tankers and camping out there, which makes it illegal for the driver to move
