Shortly before 8am on 13 September 2021, 92 people gathered in small groups at five junctions along the M25, the busy motorway that encircles most of Greater London. It was a warm day and adrenaline ran high.
Cameron Ford, a 31-year-old carpenter, was at junction 3, in Kent. The protesters gathered at the side of the road and prepared for the crucial moment. They did a group meditation on a grassy layby, rush-hour traffic roaring in the background. Louise Lancaster, a 56-year-old teacher with sharp blue eyes, was at junction 31, in Essex. They had amassed in a car park, and everyone took turns running into a nearby shopping centre to use the toilet. David Nixon, a 36-year-old care worker from Yorkshire, had woken early that morning feeling sick. As the group huddled together at junction 14, in Surrey, he found himself completely overwhelmed.
And then it was time. The traffic lights changed. The cars were momentarily stationary. The protesters walked out into the road and sat down in a row, linking arms, blocking oncoming traffic. “It kind of felt like we were floating,” Ford says. “We were calm and focused.” For the first time that day, Nixon relaxed. “I knew what I was trying to achieve. There was peace.”
Wearing orange hi-vis jackets, the campaigners sat on the road and unfurled red, white and blue banners that read, in block capital letters, INSULATE BRITAIN. Others handed out leaflets to motorists explaining the group’s demand: that the government fund the insulation of all social housing by 2025, and that it set out a “legally binding national plan” for a low energy and low carbon retrofit of all homes in Britain by 2030.
The activists may have felt calm, but the reaction was anything but. One video clip posted online that day shows a driver in Hertfordshire shouting, “Get out of the fucking way!” as he tries to drag a protester off the road. The protesters apologised for the inconvenience but explained that it was important they stayed put. Oliver Roc, a 41-year-old carpenter who was blocking a junction that day, found himself wondering: “How has it come to this point in my life, when the most useful thing I can think of to do is try to stop people going to work?”
It took five police forces over two hours to clear the roads. By the end of the day, more than 78 protesters had been arrested. Insulate Britain issued a statement vowing to keep disrupting roads until the government “gets on with the job of insulating Britain’s homes”.
This set off two months of rolling road shutdowns, scores of arrests and near-blanket media coverage, during which Insulate Britain was deemed the most hated protest group in Britain. Piers Morgan jokingly tweeted: “Just drive over them. Fewer people is good for the planet anyway. Win-win.” A young mother who nudged her SUV into protesters as she tried to get her son to school was, in the words of the Sun, hailed a “hero”. Sherrilyn Speid, who became known as Range Rover Mum, gained thousands of Instagram followers and appeared on national talkshows. (She was later banned from driving for 12 months over the incident.) Comment pieces argued that Insulate Britain was wrong to target ordinary people and would only alienate them from the cause. (Most of its activists are now involved with a new campaign, Just Stop Oil, which is also dominating headlines with debate over disruptive tactics.)
Long before the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine brought our energy system to its knees, Insulate Britain was making the point that home insulation was something the government could quickly act on. This could not be more urgent; Britain has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe and around a quarter of people in the UK say they cannot afford to heat their homes at all this winter. The National Grid has warned of blackouts. Keir Starmer has called for a “national mission to insulate homes”.
Last month, the autumn budget set aside £6bn to fund home insulation; this was followed with plans for grants of up to £15,000 to middle-income households to make homes more energy efficient. Insulate Britain welcomed the news, even though the plans will not kick in until next year. “If the government had started doing it last year, a lot of people would not be in fuel poverty,” Lancaster says. “A lot of people will die this winter who wouldn’t have if their homes had been insulated.”
* * *
Before Insulate Britain there was Extinction Rebellion, known as XR, which swept across Britain in the spring and summer of 2019, using mass civil disobedience to draw attention to the climate crisis. The reasoning behind this, as set out by XR’s founders, is that disruption gets attention – and people will take protesters more seriously if they see they are willing to make the sacrifice of being arrested and going to prison. Addressing an XR event in 2018, the environmentalist and journalist George Monbiot said, “The only time that people know it is serious is when people are prepared to sacrifice their liberty in defence of their beliefs.”
Over a thousand people were arrested during the XR protests, including many who had never been involved with climate activism before. Lancaster, then working as a teacher, was arrested twice. Sitting in the cell after her second arrest, she had a moment of realisation: “We’ve got to start doing something bigger so that people see what’s happening here.”
A small group of hardcore campaigners began to feel XR was no longer achieving the cut-through needed to create real change. “It was so difficult to get government attention – everything was ignored,” Lancaster says. A new idea emerged: to use mass disruption and arrest to draw attention to a specific demand. “This seemed like it had a chance of actually getting through to people.”
Ford had attended XR protests in 2019, but stopped short of being arrested; he was considering emigrating to Canada, which wouldn’t be possible with a criminal record. But he was finding it harder to ignore his sense that he needed to do something about the climate crisis. At a festival in the summer of 2021, he attended a talk called Insulate Britain, where campaigners called for people to join. They explained that the expectation was not only to be arrested but to be held on remand in prison for several weeks (while waiting for a criminal charge or to go on trial, rather than being allowed out on bail). Something clicked for Ford.
On the face of it, the demands were not particularly controversial. Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was elected on a manifesto promise of spending £9.2bn on energy-efficient buildings, of which insulation is a key part. Britain can reach net zero – another manifesto promise – only with insulation, as buildings are responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse emissions. In June, a few months before the protests began, the UK Committee on Climate Change said there had been “minimal progress” on insulation. The Johnson government’s green home grants scheme was scrapped after six months, and there had been no attempt to replace it for over a year.
As a carpenter, Ford immediately understood the need for the campaign. “I’m really passionate about buildings being warm and comfortable, and making homes, not houses,” he said. “I knew I’d have a lot of energy for it.” Government action is needed, as it can cost a prohibitive £20,000 to make a home energy efficient, and it’s not an option for renters. Others who joined the campaign were drawn by the radicalism of the plan and the simplicity of the demand. “Insulation’s a practical thing that would help people, and something the government could just do,” Lancaster says.
Joining Insulate Britain was not a casual decision. People had to be willing to spend weeks in prison. The strategy was laid out: some protesters planned, on arrest, to tell police they would continue blocking the roads if they were released, which would probably result in their being remanded in prison. The protests were set to start in the autumn – some thought having a large number of peaceful protesters locked up as Britain hosted the COP26 climate summit in November 2021 would send a powerful message to the world.
This was not for the faint-hearted. Ford discussed it with his parents, who were worried but understanding, and his girlfriend, who was very upset. They’d planned to adopt children in the future, and Ford tried to find out if having a criminal record might make this impossible. He was advised that a conviction for non-violent protest would probably be OK. He signed up.
Nixon, a 36-year-old care worker in Yorkshire, recalls “three months of sleepless nights” considering whether to take part. Roc, who had been arrested with XR but was otherwise living a normal life in south London, working as a carpenter, doing yoga and attending a regular book club, found himself weighing up the morality of disrupting someone’s day against the enormity of the climate crisis. “I thought, ‘People will lose their shit if we repeatedly block the M25. We’ll be hated, but it will stir things up and create some movement.’” He joined.
Giovanna Lewis, a 65-year-old local councillor from Portland, Dorset, had been involved in environmental activism for years. Her main concern was whether she’d automatically lose her position on the council if she spent time in prison. She found out a sentence of less than three months might not disqualify her, and decided to take part, but missed the first day of protests because she had Covid. Instead, she sat at home and lit a candle, weeping as she watched the news coverage of her friends. As soon as she tested negative, she was out gluing herself to the roads. Each day, Lewis packed a small bag containing her glasses, a book, some stamps and a change of underwear – basic supplies in case she was remanded in prison. But that did not happen.
Time and again, protesters were arrested and released without bail conditions. “Everyone was a bit surprised,” Lewis remembers. “But we were so committed to what we were standing for that we just continued.” Some people commented on the lack of diversity in Insulate Britain, arguing that such a blase attitude to arrest is possible only for white people less likely to be mistreated by the system. People within the movement argue that they need to use their privilege for good. “I’m a white, grey-haired, 65-year-old woman and I realise that puts me in a privileged position,” Lewis says. “What am I doing with my life if I’m not using that for everybody?”
In total, around 150 people took direct action. The prolonged disruption of Britain’s motorways was big news, generating a largely negative debate about protest tactics. A YouGov poll in early October found that 72% opposed protesters’ actions. But the campaigners saw the conversation itself as a success. Each day, they’d look at YouTube clips of the news, or of their colleagues arguing with hostile media commentators. “It was amazing we managed to keep going out for so long and still get the media attention,” Lancaster says. She wasn’t concerned that the coverage was mostly critical. “Even if people thought it was negative, it planted a seed.”
* * *
On 22 September, nine days after the first protest, an injunction was granted to National Highways. This meant demonstrators who blocked certain roads would be held in contempt of court and could face two years in prison and unlimited fines. Though arrest and prison had always been expected, this changed the calculation. Some people worried they might lose their homes. The numbers going out to blockade the roads reduced.
Roc had prevaricated about whether to protest at all, but now felt very clear that breaking the injunction was the right thing to do. He wanted to highlight the injustice of the government introducing punitive penalties for non-violent protesters. He broke the injunction.
Insulate Britain’s protests formally stopped on 4 November, when 62 protesters blocked the roads around parliament. The final action did not get much attention. During the earlier road shutdowns, people had called on the group to take their protest to powerbrokers rather than disrupt ordinary people’s lives. Then, as Lancaster says, “We did, and everyone ignored it.” To members of Insulate Britain, this proved their point: the only way to get attention was to cause serious disruption. Holding placards and signing petitions was not going to cut it.
After almost two months, they were exhausted but also, as Nixon put it, “liberated and empowered”. Lewis felt physically depleted, but also had a sense of yearning: “To come back home and not have that community around – there was a great feeling of loss in that.”
Around this time, Roc received a court summons. Peaceful protesters are often given suspended sentences – meaning they don’t have to go to jail and can serve their sentence from home. But the lawyers told him to expect a prison sentence of up to a year. “I felt pretty sick hearing that,” he says, but the sense of community carried him through the days leading up to his court appearance. “We were doing this together. And what we were doing was the right thing, even though it was messy and shit and uncomfortable sometimes.”
Britain’s court system is beset by delays; on average it takes 708 days for criminal cases to be concluded. But for those who broke the injunction, things moved fast. Less than a fortnight after the last Insulate Britain protest, on 17 November, Roc and eight others were in the high court. They all got jail time. Priti Patel tweeted: “We will not stand by while these reckless and selfish criminals disrupt the freedoms and livelihoods of hard-working people.” Roc was sentenced to four months, meaning he’d serve two. As he was strip-searched on the way into HMP Thameside in south-east London, he says, a guard told him: “We fucking hate you.”
Prisoners at Thameside were kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, with an hour outside for exercise. These conditions – described by former prisons inspector Peter Clarke as “dangerous” – became the norm in British prisons during Covid and have mostly stayed in place. Roc found himself in a cell that measured 12ft x 8ft, shared with another person. This is strikingly intimate: this person knows when you go to the toilet and hears every phone conversation you have. Roc struggled with the noise; his cellmates changed several times, and kept the TV on constantly. The ambient noise was intense, with people banging on their cell doors and shouting. “I’ve had quite a nice life,” he told me. “It was only in prison that I experienced anxiety as a physical sensation.” Although Roc was certain he had done the right thing by breaking the injunction, he felt isolated, and at times thought: “This is going to break me.”
When Roc was released in January, Insulate Britain campaigners were waiting outside for him. He felt the sun shine directly on his face, with no metal bars, as they walked to the pub. But the best moment was going to the toilet, and being truly alone for the first time in two months. Freedom.
Insulate Britain activists all talk about how significant their first arrest was: “It’s a huge thing,” Lancaster says. Most had not previously had any dealings with the criminal justice system. It was a shock to experience having their liberty taken away and see the bleak reality. “There’s a lot of mental health problems, a lot of anger, and people are just shoved into this environment where the system is extremely under-resourced,” Roc says.
He and the eight others sentenced with him are known as the Insulate Britain Nine. They were the first to break the injunction and the judge appeared to be making an example of them: while others faced contempt of court proceedings, they did not receive prison sentences. However, many have subsequently spent time in jail because of other environmental protests. Lancaster was remanded for a week after blocking an oil refinery earlier this year. After two days her husband put out a missing person’s report because police had failed to notify him of her whereabouts.
“Everyone is terrified of what prison means,” Lewis says. “But we’re not criminals. I just have to stand still for a moment and remember that I know why I’ve done this and that I’ve done the right thing.”
* * *
Was it worth it? In February 2022, Insulate Britain issued a statement saying the campaign had “failed” in its aim to make the government insulate Britain’s homes. But those who were involved have more complex feelings. “Well, we didn’t get the government to insulate any houses,” Roc laughed, when I asked in September if the protests were a success. “But you don’t really know until years later what the full impact is.”
When I visited Ford at his home in Cambridge later that month, he was insulating it with his brother – stripping back the rendering to its brick and adding hemp insulation. As a carpenter, he can do this himself, but it has taken time to gather funds. He had been working on it for over a year, and laughed remembering TV hosts insinuating that campaigners were hypocrites if they hadn’t insulated their own homes. “It’s such a stupid question – if you’re renting or you’ve got no money, of course you can’t insulate your house. It’s bloody hard, and we’re trying to make it less hard.”
Insulate Britain has not officially disbanded. Some campaigners, like Ford, run workshops with people in the building industry around insulation, but most have turned their attention to Just Stop Oil (JSO), which launched in February. The demand is for the government to “immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”. The tactics are similar to Insulate Britain’s: throughout April, the group blockaded critical oil facilities, leading to around 1,000 arrests. In October and November they blockaded roads in central London and made international news by throwing soup at famous works of art, including Van Gogh’s sunflower painting. This reignited debate about tactics – this month, JSO protesters prevented a driver from attending his father’s funeral. During the Insulate Britain actions, protesters insisted they always left an ambulance lane open for medical emergencies. But of course some people who urgently had places to be were prevented from getting there. “It’s a shit thing to do to someone else – you’re deliberately messing up their day, making them late and running the risk of negative consequences for them,” Roc says. “That feels really uncomfortable. But on the other side, there’s this enormous climate crisis. And this is a way to move things.”
None of JSO’s core demands have been met – in fact, the government is actively issuing new oil and gas licenses. But the way the protesters see it, the urgency of the crisis means that any method of getting cut-through is worth it. “We can be the ones that are hated,” Ford says.
For a long time, the government’s only real response to Insulate Britain has been to make it harder to protest. (In April, a government report on insulation said that it would not be “imposed” as “the British people are no-nonsense pragmatists who can make decisions based on the information”.) The public order bill making its way through the Lords will directly criminalise a number of practices common in environmental protests, such as campaigners locking themselves to others or to buildings. On 16 September, 51 JSO protesters were remanded in jail for refusing to comply with court proceedings after breaking an injunction against protesting at the Kingsbury oil refinery. In November, home secretary Suella Braverman took the unusual step of criticising police officers in the midst of an operation, telling them to take “a firmer line to safeguard public order” and crack down on JSO. Far from putting protesters off, many feel compelled to keep getting arrested to highlight the injustice of the government crackdown. “It’s an abomination,” Lancaster says. “We won’t be silenced.”
The Insulate Britain activists went through a life-changing experience together. Lancaster left her job as a teacher: the school was not happy about her arrests, and she didn’t want to put any students at risk. Nixon is no longer a care worker; what started as a three-month sabbatical to protest turned into a complete life change. Both are now full-time organisers with JSO and other groups. At his court hearings, Nixon has started telling judges his climate activism is an act of care: “I am trying to keep you safe.” Many of the older members of the group are financially secure home-owners; others are engaged in what Roc calls a “dance with poverty”, working just enough to meet basic needs while dedicating most of their time to campaigning.
Ford is still working as a carpenter, but activism dominates: “You have to reshape your life.” Protest has become an integral part of his, but it requires engaging with the harrowing urgency of climate change every single day. This sometimes feels exhausting; he recently had a health scare and found himself thinking, “If I died, I wouldn’t have to fight the climate crisis any more.”
Legal cases against Insulate Britain activists for obstruction of the highways and public nuisance are ongoing, with a number of trials set to take place in 2023. Most months, someone appears in court somewhere in the country. Many have pleaded guilty, paying fines or serving suspended sentences; others are pleading not guilty, knowing this will push their cases to jury trial.
Ford was arrested four times with Insulate Britain and twice with Just Stop Oil. He is pleading not guilty to two charges of public nuisance – which can carry a 10-year sentence – relating to Insulate Britain. He plans to use the trials, due next year, to draw further attention to the cause. Like many Insulate Britain activists, Ford is self-representing in court, partly for financial reasons and partly to make a point about what he sees as the absurdity of a system that criminalises protest while allowing the oil and gas industry to proliferate. Ford has turned up to court hearings in costumes – a suit made of the IPCC climate report, another made of hemp-insulation materials. “I don’t think I’d do well in prison. Comedy is a coping mechanism for me, a way to mask what’s going on underneath,” he says. “But it’s also a way of saying – I shouldn’t be here. This is ridiculous.”
* * *
After nearly a year of silence, Insulate Britain re-emerged. Just after 11am on 12 October this year, around 25 people in orange hi-vis jackets walked on to the road outside parliament, unfurled the familiar red and blue banners, and glued themselves to the ground. It was the group’s first action in months, timed to be part of Just Stop Oil’s month of disruption.
It was around a month later, on 17 November, that chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced £6bn funding for home insulation. For Insulate Britain’s campaigners, it was something of a vindication. “We wouldn’t be framing the energy crisis through a lens of insulation had we not been out there on the streets,” Ford says. But there is still a sense of frustration: the funding pales in comparison with oil company profits. “It’s just wholly inadequate,” Ford says. “Time and again [politicians] demonstrate that they fail to grasp the enormity of the situation.”
Although insulation is now government policy, Insulate Britain’s activists are still embroiled in legal cases. Like many others, Lewis is awaiting trial. While her children, now in their 30s, are supportive of her activism, her extended family don’t talk to her about it, finding it difficult to understand. But she has no regrets. “We are just ordinary people who care very deeply about what’s happening.”
