Throwing custard over the Crown Jewels and shoplifting at Waitrose (2026)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last December a group called Take Back Power made news by throwing apple crumble and custard over a glass case containing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. Describing itself as a ‘nonviolent civil-resistance group’, Take Back Power, though talked of as a successor to Just Stop Oil which has now dissolved itself, has a new and different agenda focusing on what can broadly be called ‘economic inequality’. Its declared concerns are matters such as the cost of living and, in particular, what it describes as ‘unfair taxation’. To bring attention to such issues, its members are promising mass shopliftings of ‘high-end’ stores such as Waitrose and redistribution of the food removed to those who need it. Such activities are seen as a way of exerting pressure on the government to set up what they call ‘a permanent citizen’s assembly – a House of the People, which has the power to tax extreme wealth and fix Britain’. This echoes the words on the sign carried by those arrested at the scene of the apple crumble and custard event: ‘Democracy has crumbled – tax the rich’.

Daily Mail v Take Back Power

The group was the subject of a predictably derogatory report in the Daily Mail on the occasion of its formal launch in January of this year. One of its founders, Arthur Clifton, was reported as telling the audience at the founding event: ‘We have seen that food is locked behind skyrocketing prices. Less and less people can afford less and less food’. And then the article went on to mention that two of those involved in the ‘custard’ protest were ‘an NHS worker and a former doctor’ and pointed out that Clifton was ‘privately educated’ at ‘one of the country’s top public schools’ and came from a wealthy family. In so doing it lit the blue touch paper for its discerning readers in the comments facility on the website. Typical examples of comments were:

‘Terrorists, by another way and means. They need locking up.’

‘Start prosecuting and imprison these vandals & thieves with long sentences.’

‘Morons and jealous half-wits.’

‘Why do this lot always look like they need a good bath!!’

‘If they hate capitalism why not moving to China or Cuba? or … North Korea?’

‘Anti-capitalist group: the upper-middle class way of saying “’thieves”’.

‘Middle class privileged kids playing at politics.’

‘A few baseball bats and pickaxe handles would soon sort these goons out.’ (from Big Richard of Birmingham)

‘Live rounds, now!’ (from Shampoo Bamboo of Sheffield)

Such comments are of course to be looked upon with the contempt they deserve, but of real relevance to the venture they are commenting on are a number of points made in earlier editions of the Socialist Standard about Take Back Power’s predecessor group, Just Stop Oil.

Single-issue groups

Firstly, single-issue groups, no matter how well supported they may appear to be at a given time, tend to have limited impact, if any, in the longer term. Recent history illustrates this when we think of, for example the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Anti-Vivisection Society, Occupy, Extinction Rebellion, which either become extinct when members tire of working hard for little visible gain or soldier on even when they get overtaken by events and changing conditions make the issue they are campaigning for seem less relevant. In general, it must be said that such organisations are nothing if not commendable for their concern for human welfare and the sincerity of their intentions. And on occasion they can be judged to have had some kind of positive impact on society or on social attitudes. But this is usually because their agenda becomes aligned with the needs of the social and economic system we live in (capitalism), making what they are campaigning for useful or necessary for the continued smooth running of that system. Examples of this are the campaign for a National Health Service in Britain at the end of the second world war (basically a necessary back-to-work scheme for efficient employment), and the Civil Rights movement in the US which was at least partially successful in improving conditions for the black minority. One of its effects was to put them in a less inferior position to the white majority in the labour market and so giving employers a wider pool of workers to choose from. In the end, such ‘successes’ as there have been among single-issue campaigns form part of the list of never-ending reforms that capitalism itself always needs to facilitate its operation.

What does ‘anti-capitalist’ mean?

Secondly, though the Daily Mail article referred to Take Back Power as an ‘anti-capitalist group’ and a number of its readers’ comments picked up on that, when looked at closely the group’s aims and activities are not ‘anti-capitalist’ in any meaningful way. It envisages its ambitions as being achieved within the framework of the current system of money, wages and buying and selling. They involve either influencing existing governments or leaders or somehow having a part in government themselves. There is nothing ‘anti-capitalist’ in this. Anti-capitalism (or ‘socialism’ as we would call it) means a social system without governments or leaders based on common ownership of all goods and services and free access to all the necessities of life for all. Reforms to the current system (even a conglomeration of them) cannot provide that. Nor does anti-capitalism or socialism have anything whatever to do with China, Cuba or North Korea, as suggested by some of the Daily Mail’s keyboard warriors.

Class

Thirdly, some explanation is needed regarding ‘class’, especially given that the protestors in question are referred to in the newspaper as ‘middle-class’ (and therefore not ‘working class’). The important reality to grasp is that there are very few of us indeed who are not ‘working class’. This is in the sense that the overwhelming majority of us need to find an employer to work for in order to have a wage or salary as a means of survival. And that will certainly be the case for virtually all those who gathered on 17 January at Limehouse Town Hall in London to formally found Take Back Power. We can say with a good degree of certainty that very few of them indeed, if any, belong to that small group of people who do not have to sell their energies to an employer day by day because they own enough wealth to be able to live comfortably without doing that, ie, those who belong to the tiny minority of people who own most of the earth’s resources – those we call the capitalist class.

Who pays taxes?

Finally, while the idea that imposing higher taxation on the rich and reducing it for the poor may seem superficially attractive, it is, when examined closely, fundamentally wrong-headed. It’s true that most people have an image of the state and its government as a kind of ‘neutral’ agency standing above society, to which all must contribute. In this view state revenue is the ‘public purse’, which we all have to support through taxation. But the main burden of taxation in fact rests on the tiny minority of people who own the vast majority of the wealth (the capitalist class) and who the government extracts it from in order to maintain the whole machinery on which the system depends for its orderly functioning . And they pay it out of the profit accruing to them from their ownership of the means of production and distribution over the whole of society. If they were prevailed upon to pay even more than they already do, it would have the effect of eating into the profit which is the life blood of capitalism, cause disinvestment, economic decline and possibly worse, and make workers even poorer as wages declined and unemployment rose.

Mirages, dead ends and the real deal

So in all these terms Take Back Power’s aim of a society run by a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ which would tax ‘extreme wealth’ is nothing more than a mirage. It is a mistaken notion that, within the framework of a society founded on buying and selling, things could be run in a notably more equitable way than at present. If, by some unimaginable quirk, such an experiment did come to be tried, it would quickly become clear that whoever or whichever body was running things, they would quickly have to bow to the dictates of profit and to a similar order of things as exist already for the vast majority (ie the workers) and effectively carry on running capitalism. While we can thoroughly agree with the statement made by Take Back Power that governments ‘serve the super rich’ and ‘do not care about working people’, their plans for somehow reducing the wealth of those they call ‘the obscenely wealthy’ could not possibly be realised within the existing framework of social organisation with its governments and monetary exchange.

The ‘guru’ of Just Stop Oil, Roger Hallam, who has recently served a prison sentence under the British state’s arsenal of repressive laws for involvement in tactics like blocking roads or gluing yourself to paintings, is on record as saying ‘If you don’t upset people, then nothing happens’. It remains to be seen whether Take Back Power will now go in for similar actions to try and attract attention to their cause. But even if they are successful in this, what they will be spreading is attention to what can only be a dead end. What is needed is a wider view of how society works than that adopted by any single-issue campaign. The working class does indeed need to ‘take back power’, but it needs to do that in a way that focuses not on social or economic reform within the framework of capitalism, but on a change from a society of production for profit to one of production for need based on common ownership of the world’s resources and free access to all goods and services.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

The following two articles from previous Socialist Standards go into more detail on Just Stop Oil:

• Dec 2022: Just stop being manipulative by Adam Buick
• May 2025: Just Stop Oil: the failure of a tactic by Adam Buick

Roger Hallam’s new plan (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roger Hallam, the man behind the failed Just Stop Oil campaign, has emerged from prison a reformed character. He has now abandoned civil disobedience as a way of trying to change things and has embraced electoral action. He is not, however, in a position to say what he really thinks as, if he did continue to advocate breaking the law, he’d be sent straight back to prison to serve the rest of his 2025 four-year prison sentence.

In January he brought out a three-hour video and podcast called How To Start a Revolution in 2026, subtitled ‘ordinary people can run society — but only if we build the structures to let them’. The subtitle gives a clue to what he means by ‘revolution’ — a radical change in the way political decisions are made.

He proposes that elected local councillors should be answerable to and overseen by citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. It’s basically a scheme for a functioning participatory democracy. It’s not necessarily a bad proposal in itself. The trouble is that Hallam envisages it being implemented under capitalism. What he is in effect proposing is a reform of the political superstructure of capitalism while leaving its social and economic base untouched.

But it is not a lack of democracy that causes the problems that the non-owning majority face today. It’s the capitalist system of minority ownership of the means of life and production for profit. Not even the most radical democratic decision-making structure can change or overcome the basic economic law of capitalism that making profits must come before all other considerations. Given capitalism, citizens’ assemblies would be no more able to solve the problems the majority face than existing governments or local councils. His proposed new democratic and community-led political structure could only work on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life. That is the only basis on which there would be neither vested interests nor coercive economic laws standing in the way of gearing production to meeting people’s needs.

So much for the goal but what about the means to get there? Here Hallam has drawn up a detailed plan of how to mobilise people at local level to put up their own candidates and win, involving regular weekly door-knocking, postering, telephoning, targeting non-voters (over 60 percent in most local council wards), meet-ups, and fund raising. He is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and try out his plan. The chosen place is Lambeth in London, currently controlled by an unpopular Labour council. He intends to organise candidates in all 25 wards and expects, even promises, that if his plan is carried out Labour will be kicked out.

Hallam may have embraced electoral action but he hasn’t changed his view from his Extinction Rebellion days that only a minority is needed to bring about political change. He still says:

‘Mass movements don’t grow by persuading everyone. They grow by activating a specific minority — roughly five per cent of the population — who are alienated, capable, and waiting for something credible. Most people will never mobilise’.

Lenin thought much the same. The results of the elections in Lambeth in May will show how large a following Hallam’s vanguard can get. But it would only be to reform the political set-up not for a social revolution to end minority ownership of the means society needs to survive.

Adam Buick

Letter: Just Stop Oil (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just Stop Oil

Arising out of the article in our May issue on Just Stop Oil ((‘Just Stop Oil: The failure of a tactic’), we received two emails from Tony Marone, XR Public Engagement Working Group, which we have combined into one.

The subtext of the disbanding of Just Stop Oil was that their aim had been achieved. If it was misrepresented as them having achieved their aim through their own actions alone, then that of course is not correct. However, you surely have to allow for a little self-encouragement in a world that is unremittingly bleak?

The conflation of JSO and XR through the involvement of Roger Hallam in both movements is poorly judged. The actions of JSO were neither overtly supported nor overtly denounced by XR – XR is XR, JSO is JSO.

Roger Hallam left XR in 2021 when he set up Insulate Britain (which still exists) and then moved on to set up JSO. It has been 4 years since Roger Hallam has been considered anything other than a founder member of XR. He holds no position in XR now.

The 3.5 percent minority theory was something that is closely associated with Roger Hallam, but was based in empirical research done by Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) on political campaigns from 1990-2006.

Roger was a high profile advocate of this theory when he was with XR, however it does not inform our current strategy.

You can read more about it (including links to the Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) paper) here:

I personally hold the SPGB in some regard for their educational work. However I am in constant wonder and puzzlement over how all organisations of the left seem to prefer criticising Fellow Travellers to attacking the pillars of neo-liberal capitalism.

As the saying has it, “the Right looks for Converts, The Left looks for Traitors”. Isn’t it past time to abandon ideological purity?

Reply:

We never claimed that Roger Hallam was still connected with XR and can understand why XR should want to dissociate itself from him. We did, however, say that both he and XR were committed to the theory and tactic that a minority of only 3.5 percent should try to bring about system change.

We say this is mistaken and undemocratic and that a majority of the population must be in favour of socialism before it can replace capitalism.

Thanks for the link to that article about the misuse of the 3.5% rule. We note that this rule no longer informs XR’s strategy. In which case, your website need updating as it still states:

‘We have a shared vision of change: Creating a world that is fit for generations to come.

We set our mission on what is necessary: Mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – such as “momentum-driven organising” to achieve this.’

In passing, your vision of ‘a world that is fit for generations to come’ is a bit vague. So vague in fact that everybody – and every organisation – will share it. Who wouldn’t want that? ‘System change’ is a bit vague too; from what system to what other system?

There may be a case for the multitude of reformist organisations to get together instead of criticising each other. That’s up to them. But there is no case for us, as an organisation that campaigns for socialism and nothing else, to join them or not to point out their inadequacies. 

Editors.

Extinction? Rebellion? (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Extinction Rebellion (XR) was founded in 2018 based on the following:

1. That there is a ‘Climate Emergency’ due to an imminent threat of extinction from global warming not just of other species but of humans too.
2. That because the government has failed in its duty to protect the security and safety of its citizens, they are no longer obliged to obey its laws.
3. That net-zero carbon emissions should be achieved by 2025.
4. That 3.5 percent of a country’s population practising non-violent civil disobedience can bring about political regime change.

Just Stop Oil is an offshoot inspired and led by one of XR’s founders, Roger Hallam. In 2021 it was called Insulate Britain. Last year it became Just Stop Oil. The difference with XR is over the immediate aim and tactics. Basically, Hallam is more militant. While they talk of love, he talks of toppling the government.

Extinction

In his Common Sense for the 21st Century, that came out in 2019, Hallam wrote of ‘the system spiralling out of our control and the likelihood of global collapse within a decade or two’ and of ‘6-7 billion people’ dying as a result of climate change ‘within the next generation or two’ (bit.ly/3jQIFMx).

He repeated this claim in an interview on the BBC Hardtalk programme on 16 August:

‘The capitalist system, the global system that we are in, is in the process of destroying itself and it will destroy itself in the next ten years. The reason for this is because it’s destroying the climate.’

‘I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of 6 billion people this century – that’s what the science predicts’ (bit.ly/2MDBhSZ).

Actually, it wasn’t what science said or says. It was just a worst-case scenario should average global temperature rise to 5 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial level, which no scientist expects to happen. Admittedly, if it did it would be catastrophic. But it is not going to happen, not even those who rule under capitalism are so stupid as to allow that.

Rebellion

XR subscribes to the myth that the government exists to serve and protect its citizens and argues that, in not doing enough to protect them from climate change, the government has failed in its duty and, worse, has betrayed those they are supposed to protect; the government having broken its side of the bargain, they as its citizens are absolved from having to obey its laws.

The political philosophy behind this justification for engaging in civil disobedience, ie, not obeying the law, is surprisingly old-fashioned. It’s based on the ‘social contract’ theory of the origin of government that underlies the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. This famously declares that all humans have

‘certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…’

And goes on:

‘That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.’

XR say they are exercising this ‘right to rebellion’. Hence their name.

In short, they subscribe to the conventional view of what governments are there to do, whereas in fact governments are there to protect the interests of the rich owning class. It is their government not ours.

Beyond politics

In the beginning they considered themselves to be ‘beyond politics’ as the situation was supposedly so urgent that politics must be set aside. This included not just the trivia of everyday conventional politics — the Westminster Passing Show — but talk of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ was also part of politics that they were beyond.

They have since come to recognise that they too are involved in politics in the broad sense and now say that they are beyond only ‘party politics’. In fact they have gone further and say they want political, economic and social change and spell this out as ‘a rapid change in wealth distribution and power structures, preventing a rich elite from perpetuating a self-serving ideology’ (bit.ly/3QjCug2).

That should mean that they are now open to discussion about ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ as well as discussion of the best means to get to the sort of society they say they want. They still dismiss ‘socialism’, though, no doubt because of what the word has unfortunately come to mean.

Changing slogans

XR’s demand of net-zero carbon by 2025 was unrealisable. Even if socialism had been established in 2019 we wouldn’t have been able to reach that by then. Yet this demand is still on their website where – with only two years to go – it is even sillier than it was in 2019.

Hallam didn’t think that this was good enough as a slogan to mobilise enough people to engage in civil disobedience on the scale he envisaged. He thought that what was needed was something felt as more immediate. The first such mobilising slogan he came up with was ‘insulate Britain’. Not that this demand would make much difference to global warming as the contribution to this from poorly insulated houses on an island of 65 million people off the north-west coast of the Eurasian land mass will be fairly minimal.

At the beginning of last year this slogan was dropped and later replaced by ‘Just Stop Oil’. Originally, it was meant as a slogan for a campaign to stop any further licences being granted to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.

Hallam’s Common Sense in the 21st Century – which, subtitled Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown And Social Collapse, is intended as a handbook on how to topple a government:

‘We must adopt the most successful model for regime change shown by the social scientific research – the civil resistance model. This involves mass participation civil disobedience: tens and hundreds of thousands of people blocking the centres of cities to demand change. There are a number of tactical options, but the main process is as follows:

• The people conduct mass mobilisation – thousands need to take part.
• They amass in a capital city where the elites in business, government and the media are located.
• They break the law – they cross the Rubicon. Examples include blocking the roads and transport systems.
• They maintain a strictly nonviolent discipline even, and especially, under conditions of state repression.
• They focus on the government, not intermediate targets – government is the institution that make the rules of society and has the monopoly of coercion to enforce them.
• They continue their action day after day – one-day actions, however big, rarely impose the necessary economic cost to bring the authorities to the table.
• The actions can have a fun atmosphere– most people respond to what is cultural and celebratory rather than political and solemn.

After one or two weeks following this plan, historical records show that a regime is highly likely to collapse or is forced to enact major structural change.’

At the beginning of the year XR announced what seemed to be an attempt to implement this ‘model for regime change. They are going to organise a mass presence over a number of days of at least 100,000 people in Parliament in London beginning on 21 April. Describing it as the ‘Big One’ and part of ‘Project 3.5‘, they declared:

‘Gathering peacefully in such large numbers at the nation’s seat of power will create a positive, irreversible, societal tipping point’(extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/#).

If they really think that this way they can topple the government and usher in ‘a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era’ within a couple of weeks, only one word comes to mind — delusional.

In praise of minority action

The underlying assumption of XR and Just Stop Oil is that political change can be brought about by as little as 3.5 percent of the population practising civil disobedience. The XR website says that its mission involves

‘Mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – using ideas such as “Momentum-driven organising” to achieve this. The change needed is huge and yet achievable. No regime in the 20th century managed to stand against an uprising which had the active participation of up to 3.5% of the population’ (for Erica Chenoweth’s research, see bit.ly/3Gn0NoV).

XR typically give three instances of this working: the Civil Rights movement in the US, the collapse of the ‘Communist’ regimes in Eastern Europe, and the Arab Spring. What these have in common is that they were political changes in the political superstructure of capitalism that were not incompatible with the operation of capitalism as an economic system. There are no examples of the economic laws of capitalism being overcome by this kind of action.

Supposing (just for a moment) XR or Just Stop Oil managed to topple the government, what then?

There’d still be capitalism, the cause of the problem and an obstacle to its solution, and to get rid of that requires majority understanding and democratic political action, not civil disobedience by a small minority. The capitalist economic and social system could not be toppled by the determined ‘rebellion’ of some 2 million activists, as they claim (2.3 million being 3.5 percent of the population of Britain).

Their strategy is not a democratic one. It is an attempt by a minority to impose its will on society by coercion (blocking roads is a form of coercion even though non-violent).

In his Common Sense in the 21st Century Hallam openly stated:

‘We should not make the mistake of thinking “the people have to rise” in the sense of the majority of the population. We need a few to rise up and most of the rest of the population to be willing to “give it a go”.’

Citizens’ Assemblies

He envisages that, once the 3.5 percent had toppled the government, decision-making power should be handed over to a National Citizens’ Assembly (chosen by lot) to decide the precise measures that should be taken to deal with the ‘climate emergency’.

Leaving what to do to citizens’ assemblies is a cop-out. For all the merits of such assemblies, most ‘citizens’ today will have the same ideas that they express in elections, ie, that they see no alternative to capitalism, and so would come up with proposals to be implemented under capitalism and which in all probability would accept its constraints. A majority of them would still have to change their ideas about society before they could decide what was required to deal with global overwarming.

Helping this change of consciousness to emerge – ‘making socialists’ –must be the priority as a majority in favour is a precondition for any effective ‘change in wealth distribution and power structures, preventing a rich elite from perpetuating a self-serving ideology’.

Hallam himself is still thinking within the capitalist box. His long-term goal seems to be the sort of mixed state/private economy geared to the market that we have today (plus a few social reform measures) ‘only there will be no oil, coal or gas industry’, as can been seen from the sort of measures he thinks his National Citizens’ Assembly would have to take:

‘the application of taxes, subsidies and mandates by government. Some examples include: Carbon taxes and dividends to both drive behaviour but also to compensate the poor;’ ‘taxes on all virgin materials to encourage investment in recycling; feed-in-tariffs to drive distributed energy and storage in homes, schools and factories.’

In claiming that we should give priority to campaigning for ‘climate justice’ rather than socialism, XR and its offshoots are begging the question by assuming that the threat of serious climate change can be lastingly and effectively tackled without getting rid of capitalism. But it can’t. In rejecting the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources – socialism, properly understood – they are rejecting the only framework within which the climate change crisis can be lastingly and effectively tackled.

Adam Buick