The environmental activist group “Just Stop Oil” faced a group of counter-protesters during a banquet in London on Sunday, video shows.
The “Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off” counter-protest group crashed Just Stop Oil’s banquet, called the “Beyond F***ed Banquet,” by deploying a series of rape alarms tied to helium balloons, according to a video from YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, who organized the counter-protest. Footage of the banquet shows the “Just Stop Oil” members using ladders to remove the alarms, which created a shrill shrieking sound.
Pieters and Manners aired the counter-protest on their YouTube channel, “Josh & Archie,” on Sunday. The duo argued 64% of Brits have a negative opinion of the group and that they could potentially alienate the public from climate change activism writ large. (RELATED: ‘Just Stop Oil’ Protesters Storm The Open, With Billy Horschel Gloriously Catching One Of The Idiots For The Police)
“I think it’s fair if we disrupt Just Stop Oil in the same way they disrupt us,” Pieters says in the video.
Pieters and Manners searched for volunteers to participate in counter-protests against the organization. The two seemingly found a large number of willing participants.
The duo also recruited a “mole” to infiltrate the Just Stop Oil group and learn about their plans, according to the video. The mole subsequently tipped off the duo about Just Stop Oil’s “100% plant-based” banquet, which they allegedly held to “step back, grieve for what will die and disappear but also to celebrate what we have achieved.”
“With the mole in place, we sent in the team,” Pieters says in the video.
The group of volunteer counter-protesters flooded into the banquet and disrupted it with the alarms, the footage shows.
“I’m sure they’re probably paid by the Daily Mail,” one Just Stop Oil member can be heard saying through a microphone, “and they’ve left us, with a very difficult problem to solve.”
The group later applauded the YouTube duo for their prank on Twitter.
“We thoroughly enjoyed Josh & Archie’s prank yesterday. Great action design — nonviolent and ever so slightly disruptive,” Just Stop Oil tweeted Monday morning.
“We demand that the UK government makes a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK,” Just Stop Oil’s official website reads.
The group has made headlines in the U.K. and U.S. for blocking roads and angering drivers. Protesters affiliated with the group disrupted the Wimbledon tennis tournament earlier in July, sprinkling confetti and puzzle pieces a court and interrupting two matches. Just Stop Oil members also glued themselves to a Vincent Van Gogh painting in July 2022, and threw soup on Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting in October 2022.