Week 29: Record Jail Sentences for Non-Violent Climate Protesters

Dear all,

Five years in prison. Conspiracy. Fanaticism. Obstruction of law. Non-violent environmental protesters are receiving severe jail sentences. The “Empire” strikes back to defend its power-play, using a legal system developed to protect it. The reason? Prosecutors said the action had resulted in chaos on the M25 over four successive days, causing 51,000 hours of driver delays, at an estimated economic cost of at least £765,000 and a policing bill of more than £1.1 million.

This “enormous” cost for UK taxpayers must be a nail in the coffin, given that the amount of tax lost in the UK through non-payment, avoidance, and fraud has increased to £35 billion over the last couple of years, according to official figures from the UK. According to LBS (London Business School), under current policies, the total cost of climate change damages to the UK is projected to increase from 1.1% of GDP at present to 3.3% by 2050 and at least 7.4% by 2100.

Conspiracy, fanaticism, and crossing the line. The message is clear: you challenge the system non-violently, you get severely punished. People responsible for the continuous destruction of environmental stability on this planet are called entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators. It was always about the narrative, and it will always be about the story that is being sold to the masses.

Five UK climate activists have been given record jail sentences for a non-violent protest under a new law, each serving a term of at least four years for their role in shutting down the M25 motorway. The five Just Stop Oil protesters were found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after they joined a Zoom call about the four-day demonstration that took place in November 2022. Judge Christopher Hehir said that while “at least some of the concerns [of the defendants] are shared by many,” the protesters had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.” The sentences are the longest since the introduction by the previous government of the public nuisance law to end disruptive protests. At Southwark Crown Court, Roger Hallam, 58, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, was sentenced to five years in prison, while Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, were handed four-year terms. The court heard that traffic was prevented from other roads from joining the motorway and that people missed medical appointments, flights, and exams.

The convictions follow the recent jailing of an Extinction Rebellion activist for a year for cracking a window at JPMorgan’s London office. The average sentence for home burglary is about 2.5 years in the UK, so the message the “Empire” is sending is crystal clear. After a spate of climate protests in recent years, the former conservative government introduced legislation to curtail the activities, including strengthening police powers to restrict protests, stop and search people “without suspicion,” as well as creating new offenses. At the same time, judges have handed down increasingly longer sentences for climate protests. Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who had attended part of the M25 proceedings, criticized the severity of UK protest laws. “Today marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders, and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom,” he said. The rulings set a dangerous precedent for “any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”