Hot and Bothered

We associate "warmth" with kindness. A warm person is someone generous, someone you'd like to talk to. This isn't something abstract - we associate physical warmth with emotional kindness: if you're holding a hot cup of coffee, you're more likely to see the person in front of you as an emotionally "warm" person than if you were looking at that person with an iced coffee in your hand. The cognitive linguist George Lakoff attributes this to the fact that most of our warm experiences as children involved being held by our parents.

Our group declaring our faith in one another before heading out to the action

But perhaps our early experiences with warmth have mislead us about what to expect from people when temperatures start to rise. Here's what heat does, when it's not making us trust those around us more:

It increases violent crime. Studies in New York alone have found a positive correlation between ice cream sales and murder rates. Crimes like domestic abuse and sexual assaults increase by 5% on moderately hot days, with temperatures between 23°C and 31°C, and 10% on days above 31°C. Police officers, even in simulations, are more likely to fire on intruders when the room is hot.

A banner we made the night before our road block

The UK could potentially face a heatwave this summer, which could start as soon as this week. Temperatures may rise above 32°C.

***

It was warm, and getting hotter.

Duck, duck, goose in the park to let off steam before the action

We sat in a circle at Civic Square, nervously exchanging jokes on the grass. We'd been briefed, trained, and had played games to cool our heads for what we were about to do: sit on the road in front of Newcastle University, blocking traffic for five minutes.

Drivers were told both verbally and visually that we'd only be there five minutes.

Five minutes does not seem a long time, usually. Given the importance of our cause (namely, to stop 42 new oil and gas projects getting the go-ahead in the UK, in order to avert climate catastrophe), we expected relatively little resistance to our peaceful demonstration. But we soon found we'd underestimated the hot-headedness of the general public on merely an average June day.

Very quickly, traffic started to build up

Within a minute of stopping cars at our first location, pedestrians were in our faces. One man tore our banner from our hands, another yelled "selfish wanker" in my ear as I explained through a megaphone that we only have 3 years left to act.

Alex attempted to "de-escalate" the situation with the angry public.

According to one study, there's a direct link between temperature and drivers' use of their horns. More heat, more honking. On that sunny Saturday, surrounded by two lanes' worth of cars all blaring their horns in unison, I could believe it.

And away went our banner...

We managed to make it for the full five minutes, but that was a little more heated than we were expecting.

***

After some hugs, some reflection, and a stress-relieving exercise (which involved picturing a completely empty road surrounded by trees, vines growing across it and shoots growing up through it, with a fully-electric train whizzing along just nearby), we decided to carry on to the next location.

Our leafleting team calmed themselves after the intensity, while I made sure our high-vis jackets were hidden under my jumper

However the general public chose to react the next time, we figured, it couldn't possibly be as bad as what had just happened. Surely, there aren't that many people so annoyed by a five-minute delay that they're willing to abuse peaceful climate activists?

Nice and high-vis. Ready to be noticed again

Sitting across the road with a new sense of purpose, having learned many lessons already after a mere five minutes, we blocked the flow of traffic in front of Newcastle Central Station. The reason we picked the spot was because it was just the one lane (easier to block with a smaller group), it wasn't too near any outdoor pub areas (drunks get violent), and because it was the crossing-point for a great number of pedestrians (all the more to flyer to!).

The first signs that things weren't going to go to plan: we immediately lost our '5 minutes' sign

Very quickly, the one lane started to fill with cars. The drunks, who we thought we'd just about avoided, were on us before we'd even sat down. The gathering crowd of pedestrians, far from prime flyering targets, reinforced each other's frenzy. Screamed pleas to "get them off the fucking road!" tipped the tipsy blokes into action.

Angry drivers emerged from their cars to make their frustration known

One man, sporting a bowler hat and yellow shirt, leaned down to the ear of each of us individually, and enunciated the word "cunt" into it before moving on. Men started poking my chest, passionately explaining why I should get a job, the froth of their enthusiasm landing in thick droplets on my cheeks. A man walked across the front of us and took our signs, holding his chin high as he did so, as if a military general winning a major victory.

Sitting right back down on the road after having been lifted to the curb

Then the proper yelling began. Faces crumpled in fury as horns blasted at us for the second time that day; drivers left their cars and threatened us over the din. If we didn't move... well, you know.

The cars inched forward.

Hands clutched armpits. We were dragged, shoved or lifted off the road. Despite some still remaining sat down in front of cars, random pedestrians now took it upon themselves to begin directing traffic through. I was supposed to be talking through the megaphone about why we were there, and could have stood in the way of the approaching vehicles, but a large man had shouldered me into the hostile crowd, and there was no way to make it back onto the road to help my friends.

Pedestrians decided that, as long as they held us back a bit, it would be safe to let cars go narrowly past us as we sat down

We still had two minutes left, but the violence was increasing, and the atmosphere (ironically) was getting too dangerous for us to continue with our climate protest. All of us had been shifted, one way or another, and some of us were even being held down on the pavement by members of the crowd.

"Get them off the fucking road!"

The cars got through.

Even off the road, the public made clear their frustration with our methods

Still, it took me further minutes, and the help of a wonderful passer-by, who'd been confronting our attackers since they began, to convince the man in front of me not to start anything more serious than an argument. I eventually got around him and reunited with everyone at the other side of the road. We regrouped, hugged again, made sure nobody was badly injured, and made our way from the scene.

***

It may have turned out differently than we'd planned, but nonetheless... we did it!

We're a group of pretty "warm" people. We could've done some leafleting instead, smiled at people, used our friendliness and our intelligence and our passion to do something non-disruptive. Surely, given the reaction we received, the general public are against our actions. Surely this puts off more people than it attracts. Maybe a petition would've been better instead - or, as many have suggested to me recently, perhaps I, and the rest of the young people in Just Stop Oil, should focus all our energies into university work. Do our degrees, come out even more intelligent, more smiley, and more qualified to solve the climate crisis.

Public support from someone who stepped in to speak to other people who were being violent towards us

Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that many members of the public were so in support of our action while it was happening that they risked confrontation with people committing genuine acts of violence. Let's leave aside the thumbs-ups we got from drivers we'd blocked. Let's not think, for a bit, about the people who approached us at the end of the altercations and gave us hugs, asked how they could get involved. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that obviously overdramatic violent reactions against peaceful protest don't make our movement more sympathetic.

Some drivers even appreciated what we were doing

Let's just stress what's important: the violence didn't come from us.

Whatever your position on the tactic of road blocking, there is a clear distinction between the conduct of a small group of non-violence-trained activists sitting on a road for five minutes and the people lifting us up off the road and threatening to fight us, or run us over. Our actions did not incite that violence.

More interested members of the public who stopped to ask us about the campaign

If there's anyone to blame for the visceral anger of the general public, it's the media. Cliche, I know, but the coverage from outlets such as GB News, the Daily Mail and the Sun has called us selfish middle-class eco-zealots with no jobs, and some commentators have even outright stated that, given the opportunity, they'd shove us off the road themselves. Most people only know about Just Stop Oil through that media coverage. Some watch hours of right-wing anti-protest commentary about us on YouTube and Facebook. When we sit on a road, we act out in person what people have already been hostile to from the comfort of their own homes.

Debriefing after a stressful afternoon

On hot days, according to one study, people make more angry comments on social media. So as the world heats up, the reaction to those trying to cool it down will become more and more hostile.

Our government is still licensing new fossil fuels. Our temperature is still rising.

We can't let the reaction deter our action.

Ready to speak on the climate crisis

(Photos all taken by Nick Figgis - @themany2022)