Fuel protester builders, HGV drivers and farmers target London next

Fuel protesters who brought motorways including the M4 to a standstill yesterday are plotting to shut down London at the end of the month and ‘gridlock the whole city’ in the battle to convince Boris Johnson to cut the price of petrol and diesel, MailOnline can reveal today. 

Fuel Price Stand Against Tax (FPSAT) plan to meet in Parliament Square at Midday on Friday July 22, after driving slowly through the capital during the morning rush hour.

It came as Priti Patel urged police to take a ‘zero tolerance’ approach and use tough new powers to stop them and said officers should arrest and charge the drivers behind the protests. 

The maximum penalty for ‘wilful obstruction of a highway’ was recently increased to six months in jail and an unlimited fine. Previously the offence carried only a low fine of around £100 to £150, which many eco protesters have faced, in a string of cases where one sentencing judge even praised their commitment to green issues. 

On one occasion a police officer was filmed telling Insulate Britain fanatics to ‘just be careful’ because ‘I don’t want to put good people in a cell’ having offered them ‘another 10 minutes’ to block a road in Birmingham. Yet yesterday fair fuel activists were surrounded by as many as 100 police officers, arrested and had their vehicles towed.

One FPSAT member told MailOnline: ‘Priti Patel is going for us – but all we want is a fair deal on fuel so we can do our jobs. Look at how the climate change protesters have been treated. They cause chaos, are arrested and then released on bail the next day to do it all over again’. 

Critics have blasted the ‘soft touch’ approach police have taken against climate activists who in some cases have been arrested dozens of times in recent months only to pop up again to shut down roads, oil refineries and even glue themselves to British national treasures such at Constable’s The Hay Wain at the National Gallery yesterday and a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today.

On Sunday a mob stormed the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in an act Martin Brundle claimed could have seen them ‘sliced into 100 pieces’ or kill a driver, fan or race marshal. Six people were charged today including Just Stop Oil ringleader Louis McKechnie, a John Lennon lookalike who has already been arrested 20 times. 

Yesterday 12 drivers were arrested on the M4 travelling slowly between England and Wales and another driver was arrested close to the A38 near Bristol. There were also delays the A92 in Scotland, the M5 in Devon, the M32, the M180 in Lincolnshire and the A64 near York. After the protests yesterday, a petition to slash fuel duty as a litre of diesel and unleaded hits £2 a litre has blasted through the 300,000 barrier.

A post on the FPSAT Facebook page, seen by MailOnline, says that on Friday July 22 supporters should ‘meet your mates, congregate at Parliament Square, drive as slow as you can, gridlock the whole city, bring it to its knees, aim is to stay and not move until we get action’. 

Yesterday activists were surrounded by as many as 100 police officers with around a dozen arrested on suspicion of driving at 10mph – less than the 30mph which had been agreed in advance. The Government is said to fear the slow-moving convoys on major routes could become regular and see the start of a new movement akin to the gilets jaunes across the Channel, where working class protesters wearing yellow vests shut down France over economic problems.

As Britain faces a summer of discontent, it also emerged today:

• Environmental activists from Just Stop Oil have glued themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts this afternoon; 
• Police charged six over British Grand Prix track invasion where Just Stop Oil eco protesters sat on Formula 1 circuit as Gary Lineker and Lewis Hamilton backed them;
• RMT Union baron Mick Lynch warns the railways face the ‘fight of our lifetime’ as train drivers on up to £71,000 a year voting on industrial action involving ten companies;

Louis McKechnie, a John Lennon lookalike ringleader of the Just Stop Oil movement, has already been arrested 20 times because of his professional protesting. But despite his many brushes with the law his most recent punishment was a £150 fine for wilfully obstructing a highway in central London.

McKechnie’s partner in crime at an oil refinery protest this year, Matthew Powell, was fined £127 after he admitted aggravated trespass on April 10 at Exolum Storage Ltd.

Biff Whipster, 54, admitted criminal damage after leaving a ‘hard, crusty layer of glue’ on the window of a police vehicle, in a case where the judge praised his commitment to greener living despite him and his friends disrupting the journeys of 18,000 drivers on the M25.

Catherine Maclean was charged with aggravated trespass after an incident at an oil terminal in Thurrock in April. She was fined just £400 despite action that saw some petrol stations run low on fuel.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to go further than the 5p per litre reduction in fuel duty implemented in March’s Spring Statement, and said the growing wave of anger should not be ignored.

‘I don’t want anything that disrupts people in their ordinary lives,’ he said. ‘But I’m worried that this is a precursor to even more protests that are going to spread around the UK.

‘If we’re not careful, we’re going to have a Canadian-style situation, with truck drivers descending on Parliament.’

Among those taking part in the Fuel Price Stand Against Tax protest yesterday was welder Richard Dite, who risked six points on his driving licence and a £200 fine by filming the convoy on his mobile phone from the wheel of his van.

Shouting ‘give us our country back’, the 44-year-old was among about half a dozen vehicles in a small procession – admitting it was ‘not a very good turnout’.

He drives 30 miles from Maesteg to Cardiff for work daily, and said the cost is now ‘upwards of £300’ a week, having been around ‘£125 before the price increases’. ‘I am on the verge of putting my gear in the shed,’ he said, adding: ‘I would be better off on the dole. That’s not me. I am a worker. Something’s got to happen.’

Martin Crowley, 48, from Cardiff, said he is a self-employed exotic animal courier and fuel prices are damaging his livelihood. ‘Fuel cost me £280 over two days last week. It’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘You can hardly make a living anymore.’

Also taking part was Vicky Stamper, 41, a former HGV driver from Cwmbran, South Wales, said: ‘We had to leave those jobs because it was costing us £380 a week just to get to and from work’.

Farmer Andrew Spence, who targeted a Shell plant at Jarrow, South Tyneside, in demonstrations when Tony Blair was prime minister 22 years ago, claimed yesterday’s action was ‘just the start of things to come’.

‘We’re promising a summer of discontent – this is only going to get bigger and bigger,’ he said.

Mr Spence, 55, from County Durham, said the advent of sites such as Facebook had transformed his ability to mobilise people angered by rising fuel prices.

‘Social media is what makes people stand up and take notice,’ he said. ‘That’s something we didn’t have in the early 2000s.’

Mr Spence said blockades of refineries had ‘not been ruled out’, adding: ‘We’re promising a summer of discontent – this is only going to get bigger and bigger.’ He is planning a protest in Newcastle.

Priti Patel last night urged police to use tough new powers to stop fuel protesters bringing Britain’s roads to a halt.

Her broadside came as a Tory MP warned that rising anger at the soaring price of filling up could see Canadian-style ‘Freedom Convoy’ blockades targeting London. A veteran of the fuel protests that paralysed Britain in 2000 is helping to co-ordinate what organisers hope will be a ‘summer of discontent’.

Demonstrators who cause disruption on the roads risk stiffer punishments under measures that came into force earlier this year.

They were designed to combat protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion but would also apply to the fuel campaigners.

A Home Office source said last night: ‘Through our Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, we have given the police a wealth of powers to deal with disruptive and damaging protests, including imprisonment and unlimited fines for those blocking a highway – actions which inflict further pain on those affected by rising prices.

‘The Home Secretary would encourage and support the police to make use of all the powers available to them. Forces need to move people on.

‘These protests are blocking people from getting to work and from carrying out other vital journeys – this is not about whether you believe in the cause or not.’

Thousands of motorists experienced lengthy delays yesterday after protestors formed go-slow convoys on major routes, demanding an immediate cut in fuel duty.

In a campaign organised on social media, drivers descended on agreed gathering points early yesterday morning, with the Prince of Wales Bridge between England and South Wales closed both ways.

It prompted Bristol Airport to advise travellers to allow extra time for their journeys.

The M54 in Shropshire and M62 in West Yorkshire were also disrupted by separate protest convoys, with a Tesco petrol station in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, also targeted.

Canada’s so-called Freedom Convoy in February escalated from anger at Covid vaccine rules into a wider campaign against prime minister Justin Trudeau’s policies, leading to a three-week occupation of the capital, Ottawa.

By driving so slowly, they risked disrupting emergency services thereby ‘posing a risk to local communities’, Chief Superintendent Tom Harding of Gwent Police said.

Some motorists caught up in yesterday’s disruption slammed the protesters for making the situation even worse.

One van driver said he was ‘very annoyed’ by the rolling road block. ‘They’re just wasting time,’ he told Sky News. ‘It’s a pain in the backside – ridiculous.’

Among the groups understood to have helped organise yesterday’s ‘4th of July protest day’ is a Facebook-based campaign called Fuel Price Stand Against Tax.

It appears to have been started by a mechanic from Falkirk in Scotland and had almost 51,000 members yesterday.

Discussing trying to cripple refineries last month, the group’s organiser called on members to ‘block off and shut down’ the plants.

The protests come at a time when fuel duty and VAT currently make up 85p of the current average £1.91 for a litre of unleaded petrol, according to the RAC.

The recent wave of price hikes has been driven by global oil supply issues after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the average price of a litre of diesel at UK forecourts now as high as 199.1p.

Mr Sunak has said he will carefully consider calls for a ‘more substantial’ fuel duty cut after the 5p per litre reduction implemented in March failed to halt price rises.

Backing the protests although he was not involved in them, Howard Cox, of Fair Fuel UK, which wants a cut of at least 20p in fuel duty, said pump prices were ‘crippling’ businesses and livelihoods.

‘I do support them if they are lawful and do not interfere with emergency services,’ he told Sky News.

The Government said that while it understands people are struggling with rising prices and have a right to protest, ‘people’s day-to-day lives should not be disrupted’ and warned that traffic delays ‘will only add to fuel use’.

Just Stop Oil damaged Constable’s masterpiece The Hay Wain in their latest stunt as MailOnline can reveal that one of the eco-vandals arrested at the National Gallery is a hypocrite yachtswoman who has racked up tens of thousands of carbon-belching air miles travelling the globe while lecturing on climate change.

Brighton students Hannah Hunt, 23, and Eben Lazarus, 22, were held after sticking large sheets of paper over the 200-year-old painting’s Suffolk landscape, replacing it with a scene of scorched trees, polluted skies, and discarded household waste – and then gluing their hands to the frame.

Hunt and Lazarus lectured the public on fossil fuels being a ‘death project’ and warning of the ‘total collapse of society’ yesterday, but Miss Hunt previously admitted she ‘impulse flew to the Canaries to escape chilly British weather’, MailOnline can reveal.

A spokesman for the National Gallery, confirmed the painting had been damaged, and said: ‘Police attended and removed the protestors at around 4.40pm, and they were then arrested. The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our Conservation team. The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting – both of which have now been successfully dealt with’.

The painting, considered John Constable’s greatest work and a ‘national treasure’, will be rehung today. While its cultural value to the nation is priceless, the record price for a Constable at auction was £22.5million for The Lock ten years ago. 

But it was the target of another attack by Just Stop Oil, who have recently moved from disrupting football matches and shutting down oil refineries to attacking pieces of art. 

Yesterday security guards watched as Hunt and fellow student Lazarus, who describes himself as a ‘musician and activist’, forced the National Gallery to evacuate art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from Room 34 where the painting hangs.

MailOnline can reveal that Miss Hunt, 23, is the co-founder of Just Stop Oil whose social media pages are adorned with exotic holiday pictures from locations including south-east Asia, Australia and the Canary Islands. Earlier this year she glued herself to the red carpet at the Bafta awards, and she has broken into an ExxonMobil oil refinery in Hampshire.

The former XR supporter even used the long haul trips to try to bolster her environmental credentials, telling social media followers from Bali: ‘Can we look back in another 50 years and say we did everything to protect our pretty cool planet?’ 

If Miss Hunt flew to every destination she would have clocked up 49,404 air miles over five years and been responsible for the emissions of 13 tons of carbon dioxide.  The European average – per person – is 8.4 tons in a whole year, according to the My Climate website.

It is not known if the eco-activist chose to offset the carbon from her flights, which would cost a total of £379, according to non-profit Atmosfair.

The student co-founded Just Stop Oil in February, marching on No 10 to tell Boris Johnson to ‘intervene’ to prevent ‘the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on Earth’.

The aspiring psychologist has become a hero among eco-zealot supporters of the group, which formed as a breakaway of Extinction Rebellion.

Hunt and Lazarus were both arrested at around 4.45pm following their eco-vandal stunt earlier today.

Just Stop Oil said their reimagined version of the 1821 priceless work, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour in Suffolk, shows a ‘nightmare scene that demonstrates how oil will destroy our countryside’. 

Miss Hunt said today of her eco-vandalism: ‘We can forget our “green and pleasant land” as further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures which means we will be fighting for food. Ultimately, new fossil fuels are a death project by our government. 

‘So yes, there is glue on the frame of this famous painting, but there is blood on the hands of our government. 

‘The disruption will end as soon as the UK government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licenses.’

The Brighton-based activist, from Cumbria, who studies at Sussex University, said after protests she enjoys ‘a weird, dreamy, calm mindset’ she finds empowering.

Her father runs an environmental consultancy firm and her family purchased an early 20th century property on the west coast of Scotland that has one of the lowest possible energy efficiency available.

Heating and lighting the home results in approximately 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide being put back into the atmosphere, which is double Scotland’s average according to the national register for Energy Performance Certificates. 

The family also own a five-bedroom home near Kendal, Cumbria.

Miss Hunt is one of several middle-class campaigners who have been holding Britain’s motorists to ransom throughout this year.

Their protests continued in April when activists climbed onto lorries at the Grays depot. Dozens were arrested at three oil sites.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Extinction Rebellion supporters blocked four bridges and a major roundabout in central London. 

Environmental activists have bemoaned the impact of air travel, saying individual flights can release more CO2 into the atmosphere than some people generate in a year.

A return economy journey to Bali releases 4.2 tons of carbon dioxide, while a return ticket to Australia would generate 6.1 tons.

Just Stop Oil began daily protests just two months ago, demanding the Government commits to end all new oil and gas projects in the UK. 

The group has also faced criticism for attaching themselves to famous pieces of art in Glasgow and Manchester, with works by Van Gogh and J.M.W Turner all targeted in recent weeks.

Art historians and experts have all raised concerns that the vandals could have caused irreparable damage to the iconic masterpieces.

Dr Adrian Hilton, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, said today: ‘How is this even possible in the National Gallery? I mean, it’s a John Constable masterpiece; a national treasure. Is it really this easy to paper over or – God forbid – destroy it?’

The National Gallery later released a statement clarifying The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and on the painting’s varnish, both of which have been dealt with before it is re-hung in Gallery Room 34 on Tuesday.