'If I just waved a placard, nothing would change'

As police\predict more disruption from Just Stop Oil, Kate Wills goes behind the orange banners to learn how the protest group operate*-from Coping techniques to an emotional support hotline

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IT’S 8am last Wednesday and 10 people in orange hi-vis vests stroll out onto one of the busiest roads in the City. They aren’t doing emergency roadworks but their actions will still cause miles of traffic jams. The bright orange banners they unfurl bear a crude black skull logo. As they chant “no coal, no oil, no gas”, police mill about, explaining to angry drivers that they are unable to do anything, as the group aren’t causing “serious disruption”.

Last week’s slow marches through London are just the latest wave of action from the protest group Just Stop Oil. Since forming in February, they have climbed onto overhead gantries on the M25, causing tailbacks and accidents, thrown tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and covered a memorial to Sir Captain Tom Moore in faeces.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has labelled them “extremists” causing “serious disruption to the life of the community”. Last week, sources close to Rishi Sunak said the PM wants police to “crack down” on JSO and more rigorously apply the Public Order Bill, passed last month, which gives police more powers to arrest protesters.

Emma Brown, 31, joined JSO in March, after seeing a leaflet in the library where she works which read “We Are F**ked — What Are We Going To Do About It?” Since then she has been arrested “quite a few times”, and has glued herself to 10 Downing Street, blockaded oil tankers in Essex and sprayed orange paint on car showrooms in Berkeley Square.