What is Just Stop Oil? Protesters charged after Theatre Royal play disrupted
What is Just Stop Oil? Protesters charged after Theatre Royal play disrupted
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Two Just Stop Oil protestors have been charged over allegedly bursting onto a West End stage amid a performance of The Tempest on Monday evening. The incident unfolded at 8pm and saw two protestors climb the Theatre Royal stage in Drury Lane with an orange banner they held up reading: “Over 1.5 degrees is a global shipwreck”.
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The pair also fired a confetti cannon, before one individual was heard saying: "We'll have to stop the show, ladies and gents, sorry.". Richard Weir, 60, and Hayley Walsh, 42, were charged with aggravated trespass on January 28, Scotland Yard said, and both are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on February 25.
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From what Just Stop Oil has been hoping to achieve to when the group was founded, here’s everything you need to know about them. Just Stop Oil was founded in April 2022, and the group has staged several protests since. The climate-activist organisation is formed of several groups, with organisers from Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain at the helm.
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Its website states: “Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure the Government commits to halting new fossil-fuel licensing and production. While the name is a key giveaway, Just Stop Oil has a number of objectives to put an end to new licensing and “consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”.
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The group is also demanding that the Government stop all new oil and gas projects. The website says: “Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene and genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion. It just has to stop.
