Just Stop Oil supporters have disrupted a Labour Party fundraiser featuring Peter Mandelson, Ed Miliband, and Louise Haigh as speakers. The Just Stop Oil supporters are demanding that Labour, on gaining power, commit to revoking all Tory oil licences granted since 2021.
Just Stop Oil: Miliband and Mandelson disrupted
At around 8:30 pm on Thursday 28 March Ella Ward, 21, disrupted Miliband’s speech. As she was forcibly removed from the event, she could be heard saying:
Mr Miliband you must commit within six months of Labour coming into power to revoke the Tory oil and gas licences. New oil and gas means collapse. I’m a young person and my future is being completely destroyed, yet you continue to let the Tory oil and gas licences go ahead.
Explaining her action, Ward, an environmental science student from Birmingham, said:
I’m disrupting this event today because I’m calling on the Labour Party to do the right thing and revoke the Tory’s oil licences. Labour has an absolute responsibility to take meaningful action to prevent the breakdown of our climate and society.
Ed Miliband, Peter Mandelson and Louise Haigh need to accept their responsibility, do the right thing for their constituents and the people of this country by committing to using what leverage they have to cancel those licences. We will hold them to account until they do.
Labour must act
It comes after the group also disrupted an Emily Thornberry event Tuesday 19 March. As the Canary reported, as Thornberry was delivering her open remarks, the pair from Just Stop Oil stood up to confront the Labour front-bencher and shadow attorney general for England and Wales.
They threw orange confetti and addressed the assembly, remarking “We need you to make a commitment to revoke the Tory licences for oil and gas infrastructure which will lock us on to the worst pathways of global warming and climate catastrophe… Labour needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Everyone else has clocked that new oil and gas means more floods, more fires, rising food prices… when are you going to get it?”
Members of the audience were repeatedly heard to say “hear, hear!” to these comments. Security eventually escorted the activists away.
Back at the Miliband ‘do’, Greg Sculthorpe, an accountant from Doncaster, was also forcibly ejected from the event. He said:
I’m taking action to demand Labour take responsibility for people’s security and livelihoods. They must revoke the Tory oil licences and invest in safe renewable energy.
Also taking action and removed from the event was Jane Touil, from Rochdale, who said:
If we don’t stop burning oil and gas, we face collapse – crop failure, famine, more storms, flooding and fires. Law and order will break down along with all the public services we rely on, like the NHS. I’m desperate to prevent that.
The situation is catastrophically urgent. Our politicians are either in the pockets of big oil companies or they haven’t got the guts to do what’s needed to protect our communities. So it’s up to us to demand that they do the right thing and stop all new oil and gas projects the Tories have green-lit since 2021. We need a new politics where what the people want REALLY counts.
Featured image via Just Stop Oil
