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Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists are dusting down their placards, digging out their infamous fluorescent orange vests, and charging up their loud hailers — a routine they have gone through many a time before.

It has taken just three years of throwing soup, spraying corn-starch paint and blocking roads - lots and lots of roads – for the troop of climate activists to become one of the country's most reviled campaigning organisations.

They expect hundreds of activists to turn out on Saturday in Central London.

However, despite appearances, this JSO gathering is going to be very different from what has gone before. For a start, its existence is no secret. And secondly, there is unlikely to be any of the mass disruption that has been seen previously.

In fact, this is their last ever protest. JSO are, in their own words, "hanging up the hi-viz" and ending their campaign of civil disobedience.

The group's official line is that they've won their battle because their demand that there should be no new oil and gas licences is now government policy. But privately members of JSO admit tough new powers brought in to police disruptive protests have made it almost impossible for groups like it to operate.

Sarah Lunnon, co-founder of JSO, says Saturday's gathering will be a "joyful celebration".

"We've done incredible things together, trusted each other with so much," she says.

The group aren't the only ones who'll be celebrating. Many of the thousands of motorists who've been delayed, art lovers appalled by the attacks on great paintings, or the sports fans and theatre goers whose events were interrupted, will be glad to see the back of them. So too the police. Policing JSO protests has soaked up thousands of hours of officer time and cost millions. In 2023 the Met Police said the group's protests cost almost £20m.

But the end of JSO also raises some big questions, including if this is really the end of disruptive climate protest in the UK or whether being forced underground could spawn new, even more disruptive or chaotic climate action. And there's a bigger strategic question. Despite widespread public concern about the future of the planet, much of the public ended up hostile to JSO. How can the climate movement avoid a repeat of that?

JSO's model involved small groups of committed activists undertaking targeted actions designed to cause maximum disruption or public outrage. But it had strict internal rules. The actions had to be non-violent, and activists had to be held accountable – they had to wait around to get arrested.

For leaders like Roger Hallam, who was originally jailed for five years for plotting to disrupt traffic on the M25, being seen to be punished was a key part of the publicity.

The police, roused by public anger and hostile media coverage, demanded more powers to stop the "eco-loons", as the Sun newspaper dubbed them, and other protesters. And politicians heeded the call.

The biggest change came with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022. It made "intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance" a statutory offence. A list of loosely defined actions including causing "serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity" were now potentially serious crimes. And that opened up another legal route for the authorities: the charge of conspiracy to intentionally cause public nuisance. Now even planning a potentially disruptive action could bring substantial jail time.

The Public Order Act the following year broadened the police's powers to manage protests and brought in new criminal offences including "locking on" to objects, causing serious disruption by tunnelling, and interfering with major infrastructure.

At the same time judges, backed by the higher courts, have blocked the right of........

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