Five Just Stop Oil protesters charged after blocking Pride in London parade
Just Stop Oil protesters blocked the Pride in London parade (Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images).
Five people have been charged after Just Stop Oil activists blocked the Pride in London parade.
On Saturday (1 July), seven activists were arrested by Metropolitan Police officers after disrupting the parade, causing it to pause for a short time.
Members of the environmental climate action group made their way in front of the parade as it passed through Piccadilly, halting it, before spraying black paint on the road and lying down in front of the floats, whilst chanting “just stop oil”.
On Sunday (2 July), the force announced five individuals, aged between 22 and 68, had been charged under the Public Order Act for behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
The five were bailed to attend Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 4 August.
Two other men, aged 19 and 22, have been released on bail whilst further enquires continue.
Prior to Pride in London taking place, Just Stop Oil issued demands to the Pride organisation.
The demands included Pride in London being open about who its sponsors are, making a statement demanding an end to new oil and gas exploration, and setting up a meeting to discuss joining in the civil resistance against climate change.
Pride in London did not appear to fulfil these demands, thus resulting in the promise of action by the group.
In a statement prior to the protest, LGBTQ+ members of Just Stop Oil said “Pride was born from protest”.
“It speaks to how far we’ve come as a community, that high-polluting industries and the banks that fund them, now see Pride as a useful vehicle for sanitising their reputations, waving rainbow flags in one hand [while] accelerating social collapse with the other,” the group said.
“What would those who instigated the gay liberation movement, during the Stonewall riots in 1969, make of the corporatised spectacle Pride has become?”
The action at Pride in London follows a number of high-profile demonstrations by the group in recent weeks and months, which has seen them disrupt the Ashes at Lord’s and the snooker World Championships in Sheffield, as well as block key roads in and around the capital.
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