Why we disrupted the Snooker World Championships

After their explosive action in Sheffield, Just Stop Oil explain their latest act of resistance in their fight to end new gas and oil projects.

One of the first ques­tions we get asked after an act of cul­tur­al or sport­ing dis­rup­tion is why that par­tic­u­lar event? Why that sport? Why that work of art? What has Dip­py the Dinosaur ever done to you? What have Van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers got to do with cli­mate breakdown? 

So, pre­dictably, after last night’s explo­sive action at the World Snook­er Cham­pi­onships, sim­i­lar ques­tions start­ed pour­ing in from the media. Why snook­er? What has snook­er ever done to you? What’s the con­nec­tion with cli­mate change?

One imme­di­ate answer would be: why not snook­er? Why should any cul­tur­al expres­sion be out­side the domain of cli­mate action? Noth­ing is safe from cli­mate break­down. No-one gets a pass from the col­lapse of the life sys­tems that make human soci­ety pos­si­ble in the first place. You can’t sit com­fort­ably and spec­tate while life breaks down around you: this cri­sis makes neu­tral­i­ty impossible. 

Because the threat doesn’t dis­tin­guish between legit­i­mate and ille­git­i­mate tar­gets, nor do our actions. When our sup­port­er leapt onto the table and explod­ed his pack­et of orange paint, he was break­ing the illu­sion of safe­ty many in the Glob­al North have as the impacts of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe con­tin­ues to main­ly be felt in the Glob­al South. His action told a very clear sto­ry that no-one, nowhere, is safe from the chaos we face if the Gov­ern­ment press­es on with its crim­i­nal pol­i­cy of licens­ing new oil and gas.

This sense of unpre­dictabil­i­ty, of chaos, is what we most urgent­ly need to com­mu­ni­cate right now. We know that, with­out rad­i­cal change, cat­a­stro­phe will accel­er­ate and inten­si­fy. But we don’t know when or where it will strike. Our snook­er action cap­tured exact­ly this sense of ran­dom­ness and insta­bil­i­ty: dis­rup­tion that could break out at any time, in any place. It’s the real­i­ty we’re fac­ing, and we need to cre­ate forms of sto­ry­telling and com­mu­ni­ca­tion that help peo­ple feel it viscerally. 

Actions like the one car­ried out at the snook­er also pose hard ques­tions about where we attribute mean­ing and val­ue. Snook­er fans, just like art lovers, feel deep pas­sion for their inter­est. We get that – in fact, we dis­rupt these cul­tur­al expres­sions to lever­age the very pas­sion they inspire. By hon­ing in on these sym­bol­ic and cul­tur­al hotspots, we show how every­thing we cher­ish real­ly is under attack. 

Right now, we need to rad­i­cal­ly re-ori­ent our sense of val­ue to the life-sup­port sys­tems which make our pas­sions and inter­ests pos­si­ble in the first place. What’s the point of car­ing about sport or art, if you don’t act to pro­tect the cli­mate sta­bil­i­ty on which they depend? And by leap­ing to the defence of snook­er in this par­tic­u­lar instance, are you real­ly say­ing it’s more sacred than the right to eat, to have a safe home, to live? 

Anoth­er cru­cial rea­son for tar­get­ing appar­ent­ly ran­dom sport­ing and cul­tur­al events is to fill the abyssal gaps in British media cov­er­age of the cli­mate cri­sis. Day in, day out, we get sto­ries on the Roy­als or the lat­est well­be­ing trends – with pre­cious lit­tle on the great­est threat human­i­ty has ever faced. The Dai­ly Mail recent­ly gave a huge head­line to a row over a park­ing space, squeez­ing its IPCC cov­er­age, warn­ing of human­i­ty on the brink’, into the bot­tom cor­ner of the page. This is as crim­i­nal as the Government’s own expan­sion of fos­sil fuels – it’s delib­er­ate­ly deflect­ing people’s atten­tion from the biggest threat they’ve ever faced. 

So when a pro­tes­tor cre­ates a moment of mas­sive dis­rup­tion, shat­ter­ing expec­ta­tions, espe­cial­ly in the very hushed, cod­i­fied world of the snook­er hall, the media can’t get enough. It’s dra­ma, the­atre, sto­ry­telling – emo­tion­al­ly vis­cer­al, pulse-rac­ing stuff. The enquiries flood in; Just Stop Oils mes­sage is sud­den­ly every­where. This morn­ing, spell­bound by the image of the young man tak­ing back his right to live in clouds of orange paint, hun­dreds of thou­sands of read­ers are see­ing the key mes­sages that have large­ly been with­held from them: no new oil and gas’, new oil and gas is a death sen­tence’, this is the great­est crim­i­nal act in human history’. 

Because these mes­sages are real and true, they car­ry a force that no amount of lying and decep­tion can counter. Once they’re out in the world, they will take on their own momen­tum – ger­mi­nat­ing, build­ing, cre­at­ing tip­ping points for trans­for­ma­tion and rad­i­cal change. 

The more unex­pect­ed, the more unpre­dictable the dis­rup­tion, the greater the impact. So we can see that the ques­tion itself – Why snook­er?’ – con­tains the answer. If peo­ple are mys­ti­fied, shocked, intrigued, they are also engaged, curi­ous, atten­tive. It’s in these sud­den open­ings, the overnight cre­ation of new chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, that real­i­ty can dawn and change can begin.

In moments of emer­gency, we must stand up and be brave, we must stand up for good over evil, life over death, right over wrong. Just Stop Oil is call­ing on every­one to pick a side. Either you are active­ly sup­port­ing civ­il resis­tance, fight­ing for life, or you are com­plic­it with genocide.

The time is now. Join us and slow march, while you still can. Our indef­i­nite cam­paign of civ­il resis­tance begins on April 24th and will not end until our gov­ern­ment ends new oil and gas.

Vis­it our web­site to join us in civ­il resis­tance at Just Stop Oil.

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