Campaign calls for 1m UK consumers to stop paying energy bills

theguardian.com:

A campaign is urging 1 million consumers to stop paying their energy bills from October in protest at record price hikes.

Run by a group of activists who are operating anonymously for fear of repercussions from energy firms, the Don’t Pay campaign launched last Saturday and has already gathered 4,000 social media followers. They say they are hoping for a rerun of the poll tax protests that helped bring down Margaret Thatcher’s government when 17 million people refused to pay.

The manifesto, emblazoned in black and yellow on the group’s website, says: “Millions of us won’t be able to afford food and bills this winter. We cannot afford to let that happen. We demand a reduction of bills to an affordable level. We will cancel our direct debits from 1 October if we are ignored.”

Energy costs have rocketed this year, with the annual cap on average bills raised by almost £700 to nearly £2,000 in April. It is expected to rise again in October to just under £3,000, meaning costs will have more than doubled in less than a year. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced a £15bn package of help to provide one-off payments to households, but Don’t Pay argues this will not be enough.

“So much hope has been lost and we’re just heading towards a genuinely catastrophic winter,” said Tom, a spokesperson for the initiative. “Thousands of people will freeze to death in their homes if we do nothing.” He is demanding “intervention on a broad scale” and a cut to bills.

Tom is one of the “15 to 20” working on the campaign. He is deliberately vague about his background, only disclosing that he has worked in “energy adjacent policy”, and declines to give his surname. “We’re not actually telling people not to pay, we’re saying ‘this is an idea’, but