Just Stop Oil is a group composed mainly of young climate activists, taking direct action to stop oil and gas use in the interest of preventing the otherwise inevitable decline of the planet we all live on. The Labour Party, according to its website, was established ‘to give ordinary people a voice and has sought power in order to improve their lives’—something you might have thought would involve campaigning against mass death.

But this week, the party called for a nationwide injunction to ‘simplify police operations by making it easier to make arrests’ of Just Stop Oil activists, on the grounds that the group’s recent protests have caused ‘misery’ for motorists. Steve Reed, Shadow Justice Secretary, added that the government needed to ‘sort it out’.

At this point, it’s probably right to say that uncritical support for Just Stop Oil (or their close relative, Extinction Rebellion) is to be advised against. Any realistic solution to the climate crisis must directly oppose and dismantle its root cause—capitalism—and the strategy and underlying ideology of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and similar groups does not centre on systematic, socialist economic change. The class dimension of the climate crisis is barely acknowledged.

This almost apoliticial ideology (insofar as such a thing is ever possible) falls short of offering a way out of the climate crisis. Our environment’s wellbeing is a matter of our common good, and we will only save it by getting rid of the economic system which actively discourages us from protecting matters of common interest and encourages private gain.

Nonetheless, if we distil what these groups are thinking and doing into taking radical action to make doing nothing impossible for those who hold power, then we can, obviously, find common cause with them—and should oppose attempts to subjugate them.

Which brings us back to Labour. Calling for a police crackdown on those demanding urgent climate action is utterly counterproductive for any party trying to fight for working-class people. It is not the wealthy but the global working class who will suffer most from catastrophic climate change; it is a class crime.

The protesters’ demand—that the UK not increase its production of fossil fuels—is both modest and science-based. It’s a position shared by the General Secretary of the UN, António Guterres, who last week said that ‘Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.’ In calling for a police crackdown on activists, Labour has sided with the truly dangerous radicals—fossil fuel companies.

In response to these criticisms, Starmer supporters might point out that Labour has made some substantive green spending commitments, including a promise of £28 billion a year dedicated to fighting the climate crisis at last year’s Conference. But the party has also weakened on climate action in recent years, with Rachel Reeves arguing that nationalising key industries wouldn’t be ‘good value for money’ (a claim working people might now dispute given the squeeze energy companies are inflicting on their wallets), and an attempt made—and later overturned—to block a motion on the Green New Deal being heard at the same Conference. Labour’s rowing back on its previous commitments and its attempts to court the right-wing press during a climate crisis is not only morally indefensible but risks further alienating the party’s base.

To place any importance on some weighing-scales exercise, though, would be to miss the point. In opposing an increasingly authoritarian government, whose vast intended expansion of police powers against protestors in the form of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has been subject to widespread criticism both inside and outside the socialist movement, calling for the government to make it even easier for police to arrest demonstrators is incomprehensible.

In 2020, when Black Lives Matter protestors toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, Keir Starmer argued that by going outside of democratic institutions those taking direct action had acted in an unjustifiably undemocratic way. But the undemocratic activity here is a tiny, wealthy elite that resolutely refuses to bring in meaningful measures to fight the climate crisis even when it would help with interconnected problems like the cost of living crisis, even the vast majority of the population wants it—and even when failing to do so means death. And when the worst consequences of climate change are distributed so unevenly along lines of wealth and race, it’s impossible to understand that inaction as anything other than oppression.

The approaches of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are far from perfect, but backing increased police powers in response to their tactics is not the answer—not least because those same powers will doubtless be used to fight other progressive groups and causes in the future. Just last month, dozens of workers who lost their jobs after P&O Ferries’ illegal sackings blocked a road to the Port of Dover in protest at the company’s actions. The Labour Party’s support for heavy-handed responses to disruptive protests is enabling a government with authoritarian tendencies to attack the wider trade union movement.

We have very limited time to bring about the necessary action on climate change. Labour’s current leadership does not seem interested in playing a role in fighting this crisis, but that should not stop us fighting to make Labour a party that does. A socialist climate movement committed to a Green New Deal is our only hope.