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August 23 2025 - 8:00am
Climate activists from the underground movement Shut the System (STS) have launched “a period of sustained sabotage” against banks and insurance firms. Security experts believe that STS has the means and experience to carry out this threat, thereby posing the greatest challenge yet to the Labour government’s ability to maintain law and order — not least because of its close links to radical, pro-Palestinian activists.
The group’s website says it is targeting the financial sector because “without funding or insurance, fossil fuel companies cannot operate or expand.” It threatens to “escalate” action against the “tools, property and machinery of the fossil fuel economy”, unless financial support for new fossil fuel extraction ends by the somewhat improbable date of October 2025.
This week, STS cut internet cables serving the London offices of JPMorgan Chase and the insurance giant Allianz, and disabled a 5G mast at Barclaycard’s headquarters in Northampton. It carried out similar actions in January. Its site includes a lengthy section on the security standards it requires from supporters, with detailed instructions on the use of VPNs, encrypted email and phone operating systems.
The group’s website explains these are essential, because “increasingly oppressive laws force us underground. This new phase requires heightened bravery and resilience […] and to watch each other’s backs like never before.”
STS also has links with the recently proscribed Palestine Action (PA). Last year, PA smashed windows and daubed red paint on 20 Barclays branches, while demanding that the bank divest from both “Israel’s weapons trade” and “fossil fuel”. Later, PA proclaimed on Instagram that it worked “in coordination” with STS. Since PA was proscribed, its social media accounts have been taken down. But STS’s remain accessible, and make the alliance plain.
PA’s proscription came in response to the £7 million damage its activists caused to planes at RAF Brize Norton by spraying paint into their jet engines in June. But earlier actions were more violent, including an assault on an Elbit Systems facility near Bristol which led to PA activists being charged in March with criminal damage and assault by beating.
Paul Taylor, a senior analyst at Welund, a security consultancy which advises businesses and public bodies on managing threats from campaign groups, told me: “The Brize Norton action was relatively moderate, compared to other attacks, and the Government’s response was a knee-jerk response to the embarrassment rather than an objective assessment of the threat.”
As to whether STS will follow suit, Taylor tells me that “there is a feeling within the climate change movement that, despite the Government’s Net Zero commitments, in reality little has changed.” The Government’s Heathrow expansion plans, as well as its determination to build AI data centers, cause particular consternation.
“STS hasn’t said what it will do if its goals haven’t been achieved by October,” Taylor explains. “But its activists believe that they need to take more extreme action.” As well as attacks on buildings and communications systems, there has already been “a noticeable increase in the targeting of individuals — either at speaker events or in their homes. This will inevitably escalate.”
The signs are that the decision to proscribe PA may make the problem worse. Proscription under the Terrorism Act means merely expressing support for PA is a criminal offense, and the 522 arrests made at a demonstration in support of it earlier this month have already come close to overwhelming both the police and the courts. Future protests may be bigger still — and hence, says Taylor, create recruits not only for PA, but STS.
