Indigo Rumbelow: Globe-trotting farmer’s daughter who lectures the public on saving the planet

The Just Stop Oil spokesman urged to stop screaming on live TV last night is a keen traveller racking up thousands of air miles when away from the stunning Welsh farm she grew up on, MailOnline can reveal today.

Indigo Rumbelow, 28, appears to have travelled to Nepal twice since 2015 – posting a picture of herself jetting there by plane at around 30,000ft. 

The activist, who once glued herself to the M25 for Insulate Britain and was Extinction Rebellion’s arts coordinator from North East London, has also apparently enjoyed breaks in Sweden, Lithuania, Croatia and other beauty spots abroad.

Last night she was begged to ‘stop shouting’ by Sky News veteran Mark Austin when her live TV interview descended into a cacophony of noise last night. The 64-year-old broadcaster became exasperated when Indigo kept talking over him and then asked if he loved fossil fuels more than his own children.

Miss Rumbelow was brought up at stunning £600,000 farmhouse with 35 acres of land close to the Gower peninsula in south Wales – one of Britain’s most beloved beauty spots. After leaving university, she worked in TV and movies as an art department runner on several productions including the 2020 movie Misbehaviour, starring Keira Knightley.

But before dedicating herself to eco-protests  – which has seen her arrested at least six times – the arts co-ordinator turned activist appears to have loved travelling.

Holiday snaps from her Facebook and Instagram accounts suggest that she went on 9,000-mile round trips to Nepal on more than one occasion. Seven years ago she shared an image from a plane window on her way to Asia, calling it: ‘Cloudland’.

In 2019 she told the Guardian while living at an ‘eco-squat’ to stop Heathrow’s third runway, she went to her ‘first mass action’ in 2017 to protest against coal mining in Germany’s Rhineland. But in 2018 she shared an idyllic mountain scene entitled: ‘Nepal’.

One critic branded her a ‘hypocrite protester’ while another said of her trip to Asia: ‘I assume she walked there? I really hope she didn’t fly! Unless on a magic carpet of course’.

Another tweeted of her other European travel: ‘This is Indigo Rumblelow of Just Stop Oil – criminals who don’t like the use of oil. These photos are of her in Russia, Nepal, Sweden, Lithuania, Croatia to name a few. Her feet must have swollen up bad walking all that way! I’m assuming you didn’t get on a plane!?’

Indigo Rumbelow, 28, appears to have travelled to Nepal twice since 2015 (pictured)

Mark Austin interviews Indigo Rumbelow, who was asked to stop shouting on Sky News last night

Seven years ago she shared an image from a plane window on her way to Asia, calling it: ‘Cloudland’. The decision to fly abroad has led to some branding her a hypocrite 

One critic shared these images from Miss Rumbelow’s foreign trips to Europe (left) and Nepal (right)

Miss Rumbelow comes from a well-to-do family of Rumbelows and grew up in a £600,000 farm in the pretty seaside village of Penclawdd on the Gower peninsular in South Wales – home to world famous beaches like Llangenneth.

She has also lived in rentals in fashionable areas of London like Shoreditch and Walthamstow as well as Brighton.

Back home the farm is run by her parents Peter and Clare. She has two brothers Jasper Rumbelow and Luke Rumbelow, a software whiz who designs computer games. Jasper has the middle name Bede – named after a seventh century monk who is credited with being one of Britain’s earliest historians.

A local in Penclawdd, who didn’t want to be named, told MailOnline: ‘The Rumbelows have lived here for years but we hardly ever see them. 

‘The girl is making a name for herself, she’s either in court or on TV. I just hope she doesn’t start any of her antics down here. Farmers around here wouldn’t like it’.

An online biography says she is an arts coordinator by profession but is ‘equally enthusiastic about climate issues’.

Speaking in 2019 she said: ‘I grew up on a small farm in the Gower, Wales, which is a really beautiful place and so I have always been connected to nature. But my first direct action was marching against student cuts. It was the first time I got really angry and realised that the people in charge are not always right, they don’t always know the answers and I needed to get my voice heard out there.

‘Two years ago, I went to my first mass action, protesting about the coal mining in a massive area of the Rhineland, Germany. Our group stopped a train from delivering to a power plant. We linked our arms and sat down on the train track. You have an adrenalin rush like you have never felt before.

‘It was there that I heard about the Grow Heathrow camp. Living here gives me the freedom to get involved in lots of environmental campaigns, anti-fracking and protests against open cast coal mining in the Pont Valley. We are all one movement, united in fighting for environmental justice. The way society is living now is not sustainable. We have to act now or regret it later’.

Indigo has been arrested at least six times and was involved in the Just Stop Oil protest which threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s sunflower painting.

Gallery owners around the world have condemned stunts like this as putting irreplaceable paintings at risk of damage.

As a high-profile JSO member, she has also inspired an ‘Indigo Rumbelow Fan Club’ group on Facebook – where members appear divided between those who genuinely admire here and those who find her activities are a menace.

One member wrote recently: ‘The interview Indigo gave on Sky news yesterday was so moving and inspiring. indigo’s words and emotion resonated with truth and urgency. It left me feeling more hopeful and more determined to change my own habits, to use less oil dependent things and to think of other ways to try to help. Thank you Indigo for being so brave and articulate. Thank you for caring so much.’

But another said: ‘So what you’re saying is, your Just Stop Oil mates will break the law till it gets what it wants, very much like sulking children. It doesn’t work like that. UK’s emissions are one the best, pipe down.’

Interview with Indigo Rumbelow, 28, descended into noise as she defended Just Stop Oil’s protest actions on live TV

Things got so loud, host Mark Austin was moved to ask her at one point ‘please stop shouting at me Indigo’ during the chat

Indigo, seen lower left, is a long-time protester and has carried out various different stunts and action with Insulate Britain

Just Stop Oil halted protests on the M25 today after four days of chaos on Britain’s busiest motorway caused misery for thousands of motorists. People lost work, missed funerals, cancer check-ups and even the birth of their children. On one occasion a police outrider was knocked off his bike and two lorries crashed when a protester climbed a gantry in Essex.

Man misses own father’s funeral due to eco-protests

Tony Bambury was travelling with his family to the funeral just off the A13 near Pitsea from his home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire on Monday when he discovered that the eco-mob had blocked parts of the M25 in protest

A man has blasted Just Stop Oil zealots whose stunt on Britain’s busiest motorway this week caused him to miss his father’s funeral.

Tony Bambury was travelling with his family to the funeral just off the A13 near Pitsea from his home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, on Monday when he discovered that the eco-mob had blocked parts of the M25 in protest – hugely disrupting his journey.

He was forced to divert off the motorway towards St Albans to find an alternative route to Essex, but got caught up in long queues of traffic.

Describing the heartrending moment he had to call his grief-stricken mother that he would not be able to get to the funeral on time, Mr Bambury told ITV Meridian: ‘I called my Mum, who’s 79, and was very upset as you can imagine. My brother and his family were there, I wanted to be there, and I had a eulogy that I was going to say about my father.

‘These people have forced me not to go to my own father’s funeral by their actions and it’s not like I can get a second chance at this. I’ll never forget what they’ve done and I’ll never forgive what they have done.’  

Suella Braverman has called for a crackdown on disruptive eco-activists – but Chief Constable Chris Noble, who leads the National Police Chiefs Council on the issue, rejected the Home Secretary’s demands for officers to take a ‘firmer line’. 

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley insisted: ‘We’re going as quickly as we can’ – but one damning photo yesterday showed 17 of his officers standing and watching as one protester stood on a gantry above a closed M25. 

Miss Rumbelow, 28, who is from the Gower, Wales, has been arrested at least six times while protesting. Last night she was invited on to Sky News to defend Just Stop Oil’s actions in disrupting members of the public. Asked by presenter Mr Austin about their ‘illegal’ measures, the arts co-ordinator turned activist became increasingly irate.

She screamed: ‘Do you love your children more than you love fossil fuels? We are asking you to side with young people who are asking our government very politely in line with the UN saying that we need to cut out fossil fuels.’

It prompted a patient Austin, who has three children Beatrice, Jack and Maddy, to tell her ‘stop shouting at me Indigo’.

Rumbelow told him the media had failed to make political change.

She said: ‘I am sure that you will agree that we are in an incredibly grave situation in climate crisis.

‘The climate crisis is disrupting people around the world right now.

‘Even here in the UK this summer we saw the effects of the climate crisis with the UK getting 40 degree heat, birds falling out of the sky, pensioners dying before they should.’

Austin then pointed out such things were already being reported by news outlets and publications, prompting the interview to go up a notch.

She shouted: ‘I’m 28, this is 27th COP conference and what has happened, every single year the emissions have risen and risen.

‘If you were doing your job properly everyone would be out on the street.’

An exasperated Austin tried to reign the conversation back to the intended topic, but Rumbelow then asked him if he was a parent.

The news anchor has previously movingly written for the Mail about Maddy’s successful battle with anorexia nervosa.

Indigo was first arrested at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival in 2019 for gate-crashing a Facebook conference and has been held by police on at least six occasions since then.

In 2020 she began digging up the lawn in front of the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government and was arrested again in Parliament Square later that year when she blocked the road.

This morning Just Stop Oil spokesperson Emma Brown told BBC Radio 4 that bringing the M25 to a standstill was ‘proportionate’ due to the millions of deaths and estimated one billion climate refugees the group says will take place due to global warming in the next 20 years.

She insisted climate change is ‘a risk to our lives, a risk to you, and to the lives of all your listeners, so we can’t stop’ – but added the arrests of dozens of activists was ‘a factor’ in the decision to halt actions.

Emma Brown, who acts as a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil, has taken part in previous civil disobedience events including at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and outside No 10 

On reports that one man tragically missed the funeral of his father due to action on the M25, Ms Brown said she felt ‘really terrible’, but that the group’s action was ‘proportionate’.

Brown told the radio station: ‘We’re giving the government another chance to sit down and discuss with us and meet our demands, which is the obvious no-brainer that we all want to see no oil in the UK.

‘What are you prepared to do to save the lives of your family members?

‘I think it’s a question for all of us. We’ve got COP 27 happening right now and the UK can’t even commit to halting future fossil fuel exploration. This is madness.

‘We have to do something about this or we are really all in danger.

The question for everyone is what are we prepared to do to get the action we need as our political system is broken if it’s not providing us with solutions to the impact of the crisis we’re facing.’

When pushed on the case of Tony Bambury, who had been due to read a eulogy at his father’s funeral but was unable to arrive in time, Brown said: ‘I feel really terrible about that.

‘I think it’s really upsetting that these things are happening and that this level of disruption is being caused because obviously people have got important things to get to.

‘But I do think that the action is proportionate.

‘I think it’s proportionate to the potential deaths of millions of people and a billion climate refugees in the next 20 years. Does that not scare you?’ 

This morning Just Stop Oil announced a halt to its protests on the M25 from today to allow the government to ‘consider their responsibilities’ to the world over climate change.

The group said on social media that inaction over climate change ‘is murder, plain and simple’ and added they ‘have a right to cause disruption to prevent greater harm’. 

Police officers were seen standing on the M25 on Thursday as they considered how to remove the protester from the gantry

Activists from the eco-group have brought the M25 to a halt for four days running this week, but paused their actions today

It comes after four days of chaos on one of the UK’s busiest motorways after protesters climbed onto gantries over the road, forcing police to close large stretches while they were removed.

In a statement released on Twitter, Just Stop Oil said: ‘From today, Just Stop Oil will halt its campaign of civil resistance on the M25. 

‘We are giving time to those in Government who are in touch with reality to consider their responsibilities to this country at this time.’

The halt to protests is another embarrassing moment for police who have failed to prevent the eco-mob climbing above the motorway – and were even involved in a crash between two lorries and a police motorbike earlier this week as the officer attempted to swerve across the road. 

Police have also been forced to apologise after several high-profile arrests of journalists, including LBC’s Charlotte Lynch, despite having her press card and showing it to officers. 

Just Stop Oil claim they and their supporters are now the ones upholding law and order in the UK.

The group called on Rishi Sunak to ‘consider’ and ‘honour’ his speech at Cop27 in Egypt this week, saying he has a ‘moral and economic imperative.’

Just Stop Oil want to ban new gas and oil extraction licences due to the devastating impact fossil fuels have on Earth and have repeatedly targeted dangerous spots on the circular motorway since Monday, with hair-raising images showing them unfurling signs atop gantries as traffic zooms past below.