This is the dramatic moment police swooped in on Just Stop Oil activists in a series of raids relating to a plot to cause a ‘summer of chaos at airports across the UK’.
It comes after Hackney Police arrested six ‘key organisers’ for the group, who had been plotting to cause mayhem for thousands of holidaymakers, at Haggerston Community Centre in east London last night.
House raids in London, Birmingham, Norwich and Oxford, co-ordinated by the Metropolitan Police, continued this morning with police searching through the belongings of several protestors.
In a video posted by JSO, an officer can be heard saying they were making the arrest under a section of the Public Order Act which makes it illegal to ‘conspire to disrupt national infrastructure’.
The Met said it had arrested 27 people in a series of raids in London, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Essex, Manchester, Surrey, Sussex, Norfolk and West Yorkshire.
Footage from this morning shows police arriving at one of the Just Stop Oil protestors’ doors to arrest them
Officers can be seen flicking through books and cupboards, explaining: ‘People can hide things in all sorts of places’
One of the protestors in the video who was arrested says to his partner ‘alright darling, catch you later’
Just Stop Oil protesters spraying Stonehenge with orange paint in their latest stunt
The force said it took action as ‘we know Just Stop Oil plan to disrupt airports and thousands of holidaymakers this summer’.
In response to the wave of arrests, a Just Stop Oil spokesman said: ‘It isn’t a massive surprise.
‘I think it speaks volumes when we’ve got a police force cracking down on non-violent Just Stop Oil supporters in this way.
‘The people enacting criminal damage on an unimaginable scale against all of us – oil company executives and the politicians that they’ve bought, basically – when is it that those folks are going to face the full force of the law?’
Asked about the justification for planning to target airports during the key summer holiday period, the spokesman said: ‘In normal times, that kind of disruption would be entirely unacceptable.
‘But you can’t really disassociate what we’re potentially planning on doing from the reasons why.’
He added that disruption is necessary because people are ‘dropping dead around the world’ from extreme heat, and ‘tipping points’ are being passed.
The climate group has made headlines in recent weeks for its latest stunts including spray painting Stonehenge and spraying two private jets at Stansted airport.
One of these jets was thought to have belonged to Taylor Swift, however it was actually revealed that a US bank’s jet had been targeted.
One of the planes targeted was an 18-seat Gulfstream G650, which would be worth around £60million when new, according to documents we have seen.
According to a source, the stunt at Stansted was only a ‘prelude’ to plans to disrupt even more airports over the coming months.
Speaking to The Times, the source said: ‘This is just another way of us taking action in the theatres of life we exist in because we’re not politicians.
Jennifer Kowalski and Cole Macdonald next to a private jet which they spray painted at Stansted airport’s VIP airfield
Several stones were covered in the substance before the protesters stopped and sat cross legged on the grass
‘Private jets are obviously mental for emissions and most people would agree they need to stop.
‘It’s a wake-up call for government that we need big radical changes.
‘If this incoming government doesn’t get us on war footing then we’re not going to have anywhere to fly to.’
At Stonehenge, Rajan Naidu, 73, and Niamh Lynch, 21, ran up to the stones and attacked them as members of the public tried to intervene.
Video footage showed two people wearing white shirts with the Just Stop Oil slogan, approaching the stone circle with canisters and spraying orange powder paint.
The group claimed it would wash off in the rain but archaeologists are concerned about potential damage to the 5,000-year-old world icon and landmark.
Tim Daw, a local farmer and historic property steward who used to volunteer at the site, carried out an experiment by mixing cornflour and food dye and then applying it to a small piece of sarsen, which is the same stone as Stonehenge.
On the piece of sarsen a series of little back dots are visible, which are the lichen.
He then washed the bottom half of the stone before gently rubbing it and noticed that the cornflour was in the stone’s pores and therefore ‘displacing the lichen’.
Mr Daw told the show that he was ‘worried’ about the lichen on the monument, and said of yesterday’s attack: ‘I was shocked and saddened. I couldn’t believe it.
‘Stonehenge is so precious, not just to me but to so many people. To do this act, which I think has worked against their cause, just seems pointless and damaging.’
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer were united in the condemnation of Just Stop Oil after the incident.
The Prime Minister described it as a ‘disgraceful act of vandalism’ while the Labour leader branded the group ‘pathetic’.
Mr Daw described this on BBC Breakfast as a ‘very, very rare plant organism that grows on rocks’ which ‘takes hundreds of years to grow because there’s no nutrition’.
MailOnline has contacted the Met Police.
