London: The noble and ancient city where kings once enforced the laws with a sword, and residents nowadays enforce their grievances with—...wait for it....—garden shears!
Meet the “Blade Runners,” a self-styled band of anti-ULEZ saboteurs who have elevated civic protest to a DIY, hedge-trimming art form...
Their declared mission??
Liberate Londoners pocketbooks from Mayor Sadiq Khan’s expanded Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) enforcement.
Their tactics?
Vandalism, camera theft, and occasionally, the theatrical slashing of tires on enforcement vans. It is, in short, the most 21st-century revolution ever staged by protesters with pruning tools.
The ULEZ scheme, launched in April 2019 and extended to cover the entire city this August, charges drivers of older gas and diesel vehicles $16 per day (about £12.50 a day) to enter the Greater London area with their vehicle.
Defenders point to measurable air-quality wins: “Pollution levels in inner London are 21% lower than they would have been without the ULEZ,” a February 2023 Mayor’s Office report said.
The same document claims 74,000 fewer polluting vehicles on the road each day — a 60% cut since the October 2021 expansion.
Transport for London also says around 90% of vehicles are now compliant.
Yet the numbers have not soothed everyone.
Opposition ranges from principled environmental sceptics to full-throated conspiracy theorists.
Among the latter: the Blade Runners, who style themselves like extras from a dystopian film festival and, according to a saboteur using the name Ben MacMillan, are notable for their surprising demographics.
“It's mostly people in their 40s and pensioners,” MacMillan told The Daily Express. “I get old ladies asking me how to destroy the cameras. They're going around London with garden shears. These are normal people who work normal jobs, have businesses, families.”
That image — senior citizens with pruning shears moonlighting as urban Robin Hoods — has a definite Netflix-style pitch written all over it, but it’s also quite illegal.
By early September 2025 it was estimated that around one in four ULEZ cameras had been damaged or removed, prompting Mayor Sadiq Khan to roll out a fleet of enforcement vehicles; unsurprisingly, some of those vehicles have had their tires slashed.
It seems the protesters, you might say, prefer guerrilla gardening over direct dialogue.
Not all anti-ULEZ voices condone the Blade Runners’ actions or tactics though...
Lois Perry, director of CAR26, told Euronews: “ULEZ seeks to change behaviour, away from personal freedom. It's regressive as it hits those with older cars. It's clearly a revenue grab and not even about clean air. It helps Khan sell his new book and boost his future ‘green’ career.”
Perry also conceded that vandalism goes too far: “Protestors who damage property are going a step too far. It sets a bad precedent. We'd be more sympathetic to people putting bags over cameras.”
And if you imagined peaceful alternatives, Perry offered them: “Signing petitions, demonstrations, supporting campaigners, writing to MPs and voting.”
The climate for the debate is serious.
London’s pollution problem is no abstraction — a 2022 report found air pollution caused 1,700 hospitalisations in the city between 2017 and 2019, and the tragic case of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, whose death in 2013 was linked to air pollution, looms over the conversation.
For many public-health advocates, ULEZ is a practical measure that saves lives.
For many disgruntled drivers, it feels like a daily squeeze on wallets and freedoms.
Public opinion before the expansion was narrow: a YouGov poll found 47% of Londoners supported the enlargement, 42% opposed it and 11% didn’t know.
That 5-point lead may be slim by political standards, but it’s apparently wide enough to animate a movement of hobbyist saboteurs and furious neighbours alike.
So what now?
London teeters in its peculiar tug-of-war between clean-air metrics and the politics of everyday mobility vs finance.
There are debates to be had about fairness — exemptions, scrappage schemes, and assistance for low-income drivers — but there’s also a simple civic truth: you can’t have both garden-shear guerillas and a functioning camera network.
One side will win, or the city will settle into a weary stand-off involving repair crews, petitions, and strongly worded statements from the mayor’s office.
In the meantime, if you spot an elderly person wandering near a traffic camera with suspiciously sharp pruning tools: offer them tea, a magazine, and maybe, gently, a pamphlet about petitions and voting.
It’s less cinematic than a Blade Runner caper, but also less likely to land them both in court and in jail.
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