‘These excessive sentences are designed to put people off protesting’
Over the next two days, the Court of Appeal will review the jail sentences imposed on 16 Just Stop Oil activists between July and September 2024.
The sentences up for appeal include the five-year prison sentence imposed on Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, for taking part in a Zoom call to plan a protest against new oil and gas licences.
Phoebe Plummer’s two-year sentence for throwing tomato soup at the glass-covered Sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh at the National Gallery will also be reviewed.
Also among the group of 16 is Gaie Delap, the 78-year-old grandmother, who was recalled to prison just before Christmas, because government contractors SERCO were unable to find the right-sized tag for her wrist.
The activists have received combined jail terms totalling 41 years.
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have been granted permission to intervene in the appeals of five activists who were sentenced for joining a zoom call to discuss a planned M25 protest.
Supporters have nicknamed the group the ‘Lord’ Walney 16, pointing out that the activists’ long sentences all came after crossbench peer Lord Walney published an independent report as the Conservative government’s advisor on political violence, calling for groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion to be labelled as “extreme protest groups”.
Activists argue that as a paid chair of The Purpose Coalition, of which oil company BP is a member, Lord Walney has called for groups who oppose his clients’ interests “to be silenced and jailed”.
Over 1,000 people are expected to gather at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand on 30th January between 12.30 pm and 2 pm to protest the activists’ sentences and block traffic.
Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Zoe Cohen said: “Every citizen should have the right to effective protest. It’s a crucial part of democracy. These excessive sentences are designed to put people off protesting.
But the laws that enable these sentences were written by think tanks that are funded by the corporations, oil money and the obscenely rich – the same actors who are responsible for brutal inequality and driving us to extinction.”
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.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward.
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