Just Stop Oil protesters have warned the Home Secretary that new legislation to crack down on marches won’t stop them, as the group moved demonstrations to major east and west London thoroughfares on Friday.
Supporters blocked traffic along Uxbridge Road in Ealing and Putney and Mile End Road, in east London, around 8am, in a fifth conseuctive day of protests.
Metropolitan Police said protesters crossed Putney Bridge just before 9am.
“Officers were quickly on scene and explained that Section 12 Public Order conditions would be enforced if they did not move out of the road. Protesters moved off the road by 09.03am,” the Met said in a statement.
“Police are quickly on scene and engaging with protesters to minimise disruption to Londoners.”
It comes a day after Suella Braverman introduced new laws giving officers the ability to intervene and stop the slow walking tactic, which is widely used by Just Stop Oil.
Previous days’ marches, which have concentrated on key roads in Westminster and Lambeth, prompted police to issue Public Order Act (S12) notices to remove supporters from the roads.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said: “People marching to protect their rights, lives and livelihoods is a time honoured method of resistance. We are doing what the Suffragettes did and what the Civil Rights movements did.
“We won’t be deterred by changes to protest laws or how strongly the police enforce those laws.”
On her Public Order Bill, which will pass into law after being approved by the House of Lords on Wednesday, Ms Braverman said: “Selfish, disruptive protesters are wreaking havoc in people’s everyday lives across the country and this must be brought to a stop.
“Not only will the Public Order Bill introduce new criminal offences for causing serious disruption, this new legislation permits the police to clear the roads of slow-marching protesters who are hell-bent on causing chaos across the UK.”
Last year Just Stop Oil changed its approach and deployed the tactic of slow marching widely after several activists were arrested for blocking roads.
The new legislation will support the Bill by clearly setting out what is meant by “serious disruption to the life of the community”.
The Government says this will give police the clarity they have asked for on when they can use existing powers to break up the “selfish, guerrilla” slow-marching tactics used to halt traffic across the UK.
The Public Order Bill creates a new criminal offence of interfering with key national infrastructure such as roads, airports and railways, with perpetrators facing 12 months behind bars.
People who lock themselves on to others, objects or buildings will face up to six months in jail or an unlimited fine. Police will also be allowed to stop and search protesters they believe are setting out to cause “serious disruption”.
On Saturday supporters plan to march from Parliament Square to the Home Office in solidarity with protesters Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who were sentenced last week for their part in the Dartford Crossing protests that caused traffic chaos in October last year.
