Campaign groups to take part in appeal bids over M25 protest sentencing

Two environmental campaign groups will be allowed to take part in bids to challenge the sentences given to climate protesters for their roles in a protest which blocked the M25.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) said on Monday that it and Greenpeace UK had been allowed to intervene in support of the appeal bids of Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin, who were jailed in July.

Hallam, co-founder of environmental campaign groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years in prison while the other four protesters were each jailed for four years after agreeing to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the motorway for four successive days in November 2022.

FoE said the appeal bids would be heard on January 29 and 30 2025, and that the hearing will also review four separate cases involving Just Stop Oil activists, for which 16 people have been sentenced.

The campaign group said that it would argue that the sentences breach human rights legislation, and called for “proportionate” sentences for protesters.

Katie de Kauwe, senior lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said: “To be jailed for up to five years for planning a peaceful protest over the UK’s laggard progress in preventing runaway climate and ecological breakdown, shows the chilling effect of the previous government’s anti-protest laws in stifling our democracy and allowing the government of the day to curb dissent.

“In what functioning democracy can it be right for those peacefully raising the alarm about the climate crisis to receive longer jail sentences than people who participated in racially motivated violence this summer, and deliberately targeted migrants, refugees and Muslim communities?

“Peaceful protesters shouldn’t be locked up, period.”

Jack Robirosa, legal counsel for Greenpeace UK, said: “The last government’s draconian laws have led to a situation where conscientious people are getting five years in prison for discussing a planned peaceful protest.

“This is not the sort of thing most people associate with an established democracy with respect for civil rights and a healthy culture of protest and free speech.

“Is the UK still the kind of country that remembers how important protest was in giving us our rights and freedoms? Or are we drifting towards the authoritarian police states we have traditionally distanced ourselves from?

“If these sentences become precedents and the laws that enabled them are allowed to stand, they will make a powerful statement about the kind of country we are becoming, and tarnish our reputation for democracy and free speech.”

The five, known as the Whole Truth Five by Just Stop Oil, were convicted by a jury at Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy intentionally to cause a public nuisance on July 11.

Prosecutors told the court that the M25 protests, which saw 45 people climb up the gantries, led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1 million.

They also claimed it caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delay, affecting more than 700,000 vehicles, and left the M25 “compromised” for more than 120 hours.

The sentencing judge, Christopher Hehir, said the protesters had each “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic” and “have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change”.

More than 1,200 artists, athletes and academics later condemned the “injustice” of their sentences in a letter to Attorney General Richard Hermer KC.

Their jail terms exceeded those handed to fellow Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who scaled the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge on the Dartford Crossing in October 2022.

The Court of Appeal previously heard that Trowland, who was given a three-year sentence, and Decker, who was jailed for two years and seven months, had then been handed the longest terms for a peaceful protest case in modern times.

Published: 17/12/2024 by Radio NewsHub