Police fear oil protest violence may flare

Police fear people will get hurt if clashes escalate between climate change protesters funded by United States oil heiress Aileen Getty and individuals impacted by the disruption they are causing.

The warning followed reports of angry motorists dragging Just Stop Oil protesters off roads they were blocking in central London on Saturday.

Matt Twist, assistant commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, told reporters the protesters demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels had "caused a significant amount of disruption and frustration among the public in London".

"We will always provide a proportionate policing response to protest and try to work with organizers so that protests can go ahead safely," he said. "However, the public rightly expects us to respond quickly and effectively where protest crosses the line into criminality."

The BBC quoted one frustrated driver as telling protesters: "You are stopping the wrong people; I've got to go pick my kids up."

The police arrested 33 protesters in that incident, which came toward the end of four weeks of ramped up "civil resistance" by Just Stop Oil throughout Europe, which has, so far, resulted in 626 arrests.

During the month of protest, the group has used radical tactics to bring the issue of global warming to the fore.

Getty, a granddaughter of the founder of Getty Oil, has funded much of the action through the Los Angeles-based Climate Emergency Fund, or CEF, which the Chronicle of Philanthropy said she began with a donation of $500,000 soon after the fund was launched in 2019 and which she has continued to support.

Margaret Klein Salamon, CEF's executive director, confirmed that the fund has financed the recent Just Stop Oil action and told Fox News Digital: "These activists intervene and they say, 'Things are not normal. They're so bad that I'm gonna do this crazy thing and glue myself to a painting or a frame'. It only makes sense because of how absolutely terrible the climate emergency is."

During recent protests, climate activists have poured tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting, thrown cake at a waxwork of King Charles III, sprayed the windows of major stores, and taken part in many other protests around Europe.

The heightened protests are set to conclude on Monday and some less radical groups, including MP Watch, which monitors lawmakers' words and actions on the climate issue, have questioned whether the month of protest was effective, given that it seems to have angered many ordinary people and turned them off the climate issue.

Jessica Townsend, a co-founder of MP Watch, told The Guardian newspaper: "The right-wing press has been so effective in trashing nonviolent direct action that a moderate approach might be the most effective route forward at this moment."