Oily Money Out!

Landscape with Upright White Figures, Wassily Kandinsky

Every week across the City of London, oil and gas companies, climate deniers and far-right lobbyists meet for conferences, dinners and drink receptions. As they pop champagne corks and toast to their obscene profits, we are seeing the ef

fects of their actions across the world: extreme weather events, climate breakdown, and destruction of biodiversity. The climate crisis is being orchestrated in London. 

Fossil Free London—a group that I have been organising with since joining LCW—refuse to let this happen. Our group exists to make our city inhospitable to the oil and gas industry by disrupting their events and confronting them with the reality of the climate crisis.

Our goal is to shut down events that allow companies like Shell, BP or Equinor (to name but a few) to be present, and shatter the facade of their legitimacy. Not only do we refuse to let them party in peace, but we are there to confront them with the consequences of their actions. We tell them stories of the lives that they have destroyed, the biodiversity and communities that have been decimated. We are not there to engage in dialogue as we believe that the time for civilised conversation is over. 

Since joining Fossil Free London, I’ve managed to get into award dinners, conferences about gender equality in the fossil fuel industry, events about the use of AI, even a drinks reception of Republican Party Overseas members. Perhaps the most nerve-wracking was when we disrupted a venture capital event where Richard Tice (Deputy Leader of Reform UK) was speaking. It’s amazing what manner of mischief you can get up to with a confident stride and a business-like outfit! Our tactics vary depending on the type of event we are disrupting, but our aims remain the same: bring noise and disruption to spaces that need to hear the truth. 

Getting involved with Fossil Free London has made me realise how deep my grief for the climate is. Before every action, we take a moment to remind ourselves why we are here. We hear stories of obscene oil company profits or yet another supercharged climate disaster. We share stories of people we know whose lives have been turned upside down. Often when I go into these actions, I think of our guests, many of whom have travelled from countries that have been torn apart by the climate crisis (or conflicts over natural resources). Indeed, there is something particularly disturbing about how these companies exacerbate the issues that cause people to make dangerous journeys across borders, all the while calling fossil fuel extraction good, plain financial common-sense. 

Confronting the very people who are destroying our planet can be challenging: there have been times that I have come back from an action feeling rather shaken up. Perhaps this is because actions like these require you to bring your whole self. Physically, I have to be willing to be manhandled and dragged out of buildings by overly enthusiastic security guards (sometimes even by disgruntled event attendees). But it also requires you to believe that justice for the climate is intricately bound up in justice for displaced people everywhere. Unlike some climate groups that I have been involved with, Fossil Free London are clear that there cannot be climate justice without justice for Palestine, the destruction of fascism, and the liberation of all workers and people.

Our calling at the London Catholic Worker is to build community with some of the most marginalised people in our society. But we are also, crucially, a community of resistance. Dorothy Day once wrote that “we must cry out against injustice or by our silence consent to it”. For me, our hospitality work is informed and fuelled by our activism and vice versa- indeed, I truly believe that we cannot do one without the other. So while I do bring my rage and grief to these disruptions, I also bring my faith and, in turn, the Catholic Worker’s desire to create a new society formed by love and justice out of the shell of the old. I believe that one day we will live in a world where ‘justice [will] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24)- but we must fight in order to get there. 

Naomi Orrell

Laivin Aiberdein Habour

Christie Williamson helps run Tell it Slant Books in Glasgow. His two collections are published   by Luath Press  - ‘Oo an Feddirs’ 2015 and ‘Doors tae Newye’ 2020. He comes fae Yell. 

Syne laivin Aiberdein Harbour

ivvir cost me tears

dey widna keep me

in Fairy Liqueed

an here agien mi taes

is spun sweet 

bi da grip

o aniddir year dancin.

Fu mony times

‘ll du gjit tae lairn

at life

is a habit formin activity

an da best eens

geeng tae da best eens?

Comin doon da steps

tae da back door

dis happy return

sees da compass squared

an wi his 91st circuit underwye

wi fire in his sails

an blyde in his een

da maestir o da hoose

shaas da wye.

I am hom.

He is risen.

Let us rejoice! 

Christie Williamson

laivin - leaving; syne - if; ivvir - ever; dey widna - they wouldn’t; agien - again; taes - toes; Fu mony - how many; ‘ll du gjit – will you get; eens - ones; geeng - go; shaas da wye - shows the way; hom – home

GCH Update - Easter 2026

We recently had one of our fortnightly Bible studies on the subject of 1 Corinthians 13, in which St Paul describes Christian love, in all its power and generosity. Both of the guests who were there reflected on their culture shock when they first came to Britain, which immediately seemed a less loving country than the East African countries where they had grown up. They recalled how drivers would offer lifts to anyone they saw walking by the road, or how, if you saw someone picking mangoes from a tree outside your house, rather than warning them about trespass, you’d offer them a ladder so they could get to the higher ones! I am very grateful for our little outpost of community in a grey and unfriendly city, and pray that it spreads. After all, as Dorothy Day wrote, ‘God meant for things to be much easier than we have made them.’

We are happy to have been able to re-open our night shelter, now as a joint project with our friend Conor from Martha House, to operate through the winter. In preparation for the re-opening, Conor and Harry worked miracles in the hall through January, installing new curtains, a dividing wall, and heat and sound insulation, which will make this winter shelter—and any future hospitality in the hall—much warmer, and much cheaper to keep warm. The shelter is already filling up, and a small army of volunteers have returned to cook and do shifts in it.

We had to say goodbye to James in November, who has returned to Australia to pursue his degree in social work; we are beyond grateful for all his work and his unfailingly warm, joyful presence here. Just before Christmas, we were joined by Eva, who will be a volunteer here until the summer. She has settled in well and, to our great relief, is undertaking much-needed work in the garden. One of the guests in the house, who had been detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation, is back with us. We are very happy that he is back here, but his imprisonment was pointless and cruel, and in a decent country would never have happened in the first place.

Moya spent January at Maria Skobtsova House in Calais. While there she was able to see the new Sojourner Truth House, a house of hospitality in Calais inspired by the Catholic Worker which she has set up with four other Quakers, which hopes to start welcoming guests in the Spring. We’re looking forward to maintaining close links.

Finally, we want to express our immense gratitude to Brian Arthur, who, having passed away last year, left us a very substantial legacy. We were glad to have been able to meet and get to know him in the last part of his life, and hope we will be able to use his legacy in a way befitting of his trust and generosity. Please keep him in your prayers.