Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance.
Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022.
Hallam received a five year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years.
The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences even given in the UK for non-violent protest, beating those given to Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland (three years) and Marcus Decker (two years and seven months) for scaling the Dartford Crossing.
All five had spoken on a Zoom call trying to recruit potential volunteers for the actions, which involved activists climbing motorway gantries at strategic points on the motorway, which encircles London and is a key road transport link.
On the call, Hallam said they intended to cause “the biggest disruption in British modern history” in an effort to force the government to meet Just Stop Oil’s core demand: an end to new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Passing sentence on each of the defendants at Southwark crown court, judge Christopher Hehir said: “The offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow.
“I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns are shared by many, but the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.”
Supporters of the defendants expressed outrage at the sentences, which came after a two-week trial in which Judge Hehir denied them any of the defences in law for causing a public nuisance.
Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown, which the defendants wanted to point to as the key motivation behind their actions, and which they said provided them with a reasonable excuse for them.
Remanding the defendants to prison last week after their guilty verdicts, Hehir told them: “You are going to prison for a very long time.”
Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who had attended part of the trial, had criticised the severity of protest laws recently introduced under the former Conservative government.
“The UK is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view,” he told the Guardian. “Facing several years of imprisonment for taking part in a Zoom call – this is something I have not seen anywhere else and it is shockingly disproportionate.”
The naturalist Chris Packham called on supporters of the defendants to gather near the court at 4pm on Thursday. Pointing to the prisons overcrowding crisis that has led the incoming Labour government to order the early release of thousands of prisoners, he said: “Why would we possibly want to be locking up five peaceful climate protesters?
“They have just been through the sham of a court case where they were not allowed to say why they were protesting, and this has aggrieved the UN. They have criticised the UK government and said that basically it’s transgressing the UK’s obligations when it comes to upholding human rights.”
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