Why we disrupted the Snooker World Championships

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 Oil​’s 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 24^th 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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