In March 2025, the climate activist group Just Stop Oil announced an end to their direct action campaigns, which left many surprised and more than a few relieved. Standing outside Downing Street, the group declared that after three years of high-profile civil resistance protests, they were hanging up their iconic hi-vis vests indefinitely.
Just Stop Oil declared victory as “one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history” and said their core demand to end new oil and gas licenses was met by new government policy. The group has not officially disbanded, but like Xtinction Rebellion before them, they burned bright and are fading into the background to make room for a new resistance.
Youth Demand is that new resistance. Originally conceived as the student-wing of Just Stop Oil, the group is now its own independent campaign. That said, many of its current members are Just Stop Oil alums and their intake is not limited to students.
As their name suggests, the group has a few key demands and, like its predecessors, favour direct action campaigns. “Youth Demand is a youth-led group in non-violent civil resistance” a spokesperson for the group told The Mirror. “It has two demands of the British government. The first one is to stop all trade with Israel. So, they must impose a total trade embargo with the state of Israel and that includes arms.”
The group’s second core demand takes direct aim at ‘elites’ making money through unsustainable corporate practices. “The second demand is to make the rich pay.” The Youth Demand spokesperson said the group aims to raise “£1trillion by 2030 from the super rich to pay damages to communities and countries most damaged by fossil fuel burning.”
According to a spokesperson for the group: “An essential part of what we understand to be central to what we’re here to do is that we’re non-violent civil resistance. So that means disruption, that means arrests, that means people going through the courts, that means people potentially facing prison.”
In Youth Demand’s eyes, disruption is the only logical and acceptable means to achieve their goals. They said: “Conventional means of campaigning are not really going to get the job done and so that’s what we’re here to do.”
As the student-wing of Just Stop Oil, Youth Demand has been part of civil resistance protests for over a year now. Since their conception in March 2024, the group has campaigned against the British Government and the Labour Party specifically – what they now refer to as the “Starmer Regime”.
Similar to Just Stop Oil, Youth Demand favours high-profile disruptions including spray-painting the words ‘GENOCIDE CONFERENCE’ across the front entrance of the Labour Party Conference building on September 24, 2024, to slow marching through the streets with orange flares and banners and, most recently, laying child-sized ‘body bags’ outside the home of the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Lammy.
In April 2025, the group declared a plan to ‘shut down London’ by taking to the streets every single day. The Metropolitan Police took the threat seriously, leading to more than 30 officers bursting into a Youth Demand meeting held at the Westminster Quaker house on March 27, 2025. The Quaker house raid resulted in the arrest of six women.
Youth Demand said the raid has only increased their recruitment and has moved forward with their plan to shut down London this April, holding open rallies every Tuesday and Saturday throughout the month.
The group is employing the tactic of swarming, which are “temporary roadblocks where teams of 10, 15, 20 people come together to hold a road.” The spokesperson explained further: “They hold the block and then they move out. The tactic works by attrition.”
The tactic is a means in which the group plans to evade arrest and effectively play cat-and-mouse with the Metropolitan Police while causing the maximum amount of sustained disruption. Still, according to the spokesperson, 20 protestors have been arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance this month alone, with four arrested following the London rally on April 12.
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