One Saturday, early in my political activity, two jeep loads of armed cops turned up at the door asking for me. At the time they were scooping up various people in my milieu for the sort of thing that gets you a life sentence. I momentarily debated hopping over the back fence and going on the run but realised I’d most likely get shot or caught within five minutes. This was also a period when I was sleeping with a hammer and a length of heavy chain by my bed, though I hadn’t quite figured out what I would do with them if anyone with a gun kicked in the door. Being a thoughtful son, I didn’t bother my mother with information about these precautions.

That was just normal at that time in that place. You were part of a mass movement and accepted the hazards that went along with it.

Last time I went to a Just Stop Oil (JSO) meeting in this area, there were about 60 people at it I would guess. Since then at least twenty five of its activists have been sent to prison. The meeting I went to yesterday evening was a fraction of the size and was evenly split between people in their 20s and ones with free bus passes. There was nothing in between. My expectation had been that there would be an assessment of how effective the strategy of getting the organisation’s most determined activists arrested and sent to jail had been, what campaigning was possible on the civil liberties issues and what the Trump election and Labour’s transformation into an Enoch Powell tribute act had been.

Instead, it was an evening dedicated to encouraging more people to get arrested and sent to prison. It is entirely possible to have great admiration for the courage and selflessness of the women and men who choose this form of political activity and to support them morally and materially while also thinking that it is not a viable strategy for building a mass campaign.

The phrase I wasn’t expecting to hear was that JSO is the “spearhead of a revolutionary movement”, albeit one which is entirely pacifist and has more emphasis on vegan suppers and emotional support than Che Guevara would have been familiar with. As the strategy document explains, a big part of the plan is to invite the state to be as repressive as possible and to fill up the jails: “we will be pressuring the state by exploiting its current weakest point: prison capacity.”

JSO has had real success in creating a public profile and getting its demands talked about. It has mobilised decent sized demonstrations outside the Royal Courts of “Justice” but a strategy of getting people locked up isn’t going to stop the new runway at Heathrow or the Rosebank oilfield. JSO’s idea of revolutionary change entirely relies on tiny numbers of individuals sacrificing themselves and setting a moral example which means that others can be persuaded to seek a form of martyrdom.

If the idea last night had been to build alliances with sympathetic political figures, Palestinian activists who are also being harassed by the state, unions and civil liberties groups I would have signed up like a shot. I reckon I’m just not martyr material and would much rather be offered a political structure which doesn’t make a virtue of being sent to prison. It feels too close to the politics of despair.

And it turns out that the cops wanted to speak to me about an unrelated matter. This was just as well as I had no idea where I would go on the run to.