UK Climate Protesters Given Record Harsh Prison Sentences
Five climate activists who planned a protest that blocked traffic over four days on a major road circling London were sentenced on July 18 to as much as five years in prison.
The sentences were the harshest terms given for a peaceful protest in England, according to Just Stop Oil, the protest group that staged the demonstration.
The group's disruptive actions — from throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting at the National Gallery, to spraying orange paint on Stonehenge, to interrupting the Wimbledon tennis tournament — have earned them a huge amount of attention while also creating many enemies.
Judge Christopher Hehir added his voice to the long list of critics when he gave the stiff sentences in Southwark Crown Court.
"The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic," Hehir told the group. "You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change."
The five were found guilty of conspiring to cause a public nuisance by plotting over a video call to have dozens of protesters climb over fences on the M25 motorway to draw attention to their cause at the time of getting the UK government to stop approving new oil, gas or coal projects.
A journalist from The Sun newspaper, who pretended to be interested in joining the protest, provided recordings of the meeting to police.
Prosecutors said 45 people shut down the motorway for 120 hours in November 2022, affecting 700,000 drivers. Policing cost $1.4 million and the estimated economic cost was $990,000.
Roger Hallam, 58, a co-founder of Just Stop Oil and the group Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years in prison. The judge called Hallam the "ideas man" who was at the "highest level of the conspiracy."
Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, were given four-year terms.
Just Stop Oil called the prison terms a "perversion of justice ... for nothing more than attending a Zoom call."
