To our kids, we advocate fighting for our rights and for our voices to be heard. Many take affirmative action in their youth by waving placards at protests that are media friendly yet with issues that many don’t fully understand, or by donning an orange T-shirt and dousing some dye on an Ashes wicket or a snooker table baize. Generally, however, we grow out of these public fits of pique and end up, like thee, in writing strongly worded emails to those we disagree with in which to vent our spleen.

The easy targets are Jonny Bairstow or Joe Perry and not those we should really be slapping our copy of the Daily Mail down on the coffee table surface for: China, the US, Russia, and Japan. To be effective, maybe Just Stop Oil should travel (via land if possible) to mainland China, who produce 30 per cent of all global emissions, and throw some orange paint on Xi Jinping outside of his Presidential palace, all for the press coverage, which will likely be non-existent, before being carted off to the local gulag for a 25 stretch.

There is little, if any, bravery in their attacks on soft targets. Now I use the word ‘attacks’ very loosely as it would be akin to being mauled by Mr Tumble or the lid coming off the turmeric jar as you knock up a home brew prawn biryani.

No, real bravery when it comes to the protest is how committed you are and how much danger you place yourself in for the cause. Much derided all those years ago, Swampy was an eco-protester who, in place of holding placards reading ‘down with this sort of thing!’ instead, in 1996, burrowed in Devon, at protest at the A30 extension (which I have to say is a joy on our frequent trips to Cornwall) down a series of tunnels for seven days and nights before finally re-emerging. At one stage there were an army of 400 security guards attempting to evict him and his unwashed mates, and the prospective Exeter Tory party candidate, Dr Adrian Rogers, demanded the tunnellers be ‘gassed out’. The Dr then, when he had chosen to not stop digging his own hole, defended his comments by saying ‘I did not recommend lethal quantities of CS gas’ more that a ‘safe irritant gas’ should be used.

As a peculiar footnote to Swampy’s rise to prominence, he was hauled in front of the local magistrate who, it turns out, is no other than future Prime Minister David Cameron’s mother.

So, from the great unwashed to the only real protestor who, in place of easy targets and protests, actively takes the road less travelled and challenges oppressors in their own back yard. Usually operating as a one-man band as, well, others talk the talk but don’t walk it, Peter Tatchell stands alone in the bravery stakes. Now aged 70, Peter most recently flew to Qatar to demonstrate against their anti-LGBT stance. He has tried, as you do, to perform a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe (unsuccessfully which is of no surprise) as well as challenging Mike Tyson outside his gym in Memphis in 2002 over homophobic comments made. Peter, who I have met a few times and is, one on one, a placid, amiable, and likeable chap, has at varying times been beaten and firebombed, yet has continued to criticise countries such as Iran and Russia, as well as religions for perceived injustices.

Yet, today we sit here and advocate not giving the Just Stop Oil mob any media oxygen as, despite most agreeing with the cause, it is but fanciful thinking with no substance or devil in the detail. Being lectured to by millennials who have driven to the protests in oil guzzling cars as they wear t-shirts produced in a factory that’s as environmentally pleasing as the Exxon Valdez, does little to enamour the masses. Even less appealing is throwing tomato soup over a Van Gogh, or spraying orange paint over an iconic (Home Office) building or stopping ambulances from attending to the needy as they show just how powerful Uhu really is. These are not acts of bravery, but of rank stupidity which do little but virtue signal and give them some copy for the scrapbook, ya.

No: You want our support and respect? Then I suggest taking the Eurostar or ferry to Calais and then driving (an electric vehicle) the 6435 miles to Beijing before protesting to the world’s biggest polluters. Only then will you court the public support and I for one promise to send you a monthly food parcel as you hunker down to some inedible breakfast porridge in Qincheng prison…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher