Was Just Stop Oil right to disrupt Pride?
by Peter Franklin, The Post:
The Left shouldn’t restrict its protest to enemy territory.
When the Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow the weekend before last, the world looked on agog. Why were the Russians turning on themselves?
As if to prove the adage that history repeats itself as farce, this weekend we were treated to another internecine conflict: the spectacle of Just Stop Oil disrupting the Pride parade in London.
Previously, JSO had made a point of targeting “normie” events — like the morning commute or various sporting fixtures. There have been some upmarket protests too — at the opera, for instance, or the Chelsea Flower Show. However, these are conservative-coded arenas and thus an expected target for radicals.
Pride, however, is Left-coded — hence the consternation when a group of JSO activists obstructed a float, refusing to budge until the police hauled them away. What’s more, the protesters were following through on an ultimatum. Last week, they challenged Pride in London with a list of demands, including an encouragement to join the campaign against new oil and gas. “Not meeting these demands will mean we may or may not take action at this weekend’s events,” they warned.
The stunt split progressive opinion. The writer and think tank director Sunder Katwala tweeted that he could “rarely recall seeing a more ill-judged piece of NGO advocacy”. He went on to describe the JSO “threats” as “weird”, “entitled” and “shameful”. However, LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell thought that the group’s requests seemed “reasonable”. Owen Jones concurred, drawing attention to “pinkwashing” by Pride-supporting corporations.
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