Thread: 4 years jail for blocking traffic ?

Climate activists sentenced to prison in the United Kingdom

OF

Mads Vestergaard




Four years in prison for each.

This is the punishment given to five climate activists from the group Just Stop Oil for planning and carrying out a blockade of the M25 motorway in London in November 2022.

This is according to Reuters, which also points out that the sentences are the harshest ever given in the country for non-violent protests.

Roger Hallam, who founded the Just Stop Oil group, is among those convicted.

All five, who are aged 22-58, have pleaded not guilty through the trial.

Guess that demonstrating your opinions comes with a price in the west these days.

Let them block the motorway, and be runover without punishment for the drivers.


#vote.4.Ed.

Originally Posted by helge

Guess that demonstrating your opinions comes with a price in the west these days.

It's not just any road. It's the M25, probably one of England's busiest roads that feeds London.

#NowregretthatIsupportedIrishminorityrightsinNI

#kneecapviolentdrivers

Originally Posted by armstrong

It's not just any road. It's the M25, probably one of England's busiest roads that feeds London.

4 years ?

Bon appetit

Originally Posted by helge

Guess that demonstrating your opinions comes with a price in the west these days.

They were not jailed for demonstrating

They'll be out on tag in 2 weeks

Originally Posted by Reg Dingle

They'll be out on tag in 2 weeks

Quite right, if I wanna a blocker give me a REGular Bus with Mock the week host

Dara Ó Briain

‘Fanatic’ Extinction Rebellion founder gets record jail sentence.

Roger Hallam handed record sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25

By
Emma Gatten
, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR ;
Robert Mendick
, CHIEF REPORTER and
Cameron Henderson
18 July 2024 • 9:10pm

The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been given a record five-year prison sentence after a judge said he had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

Roger Hallam was found guilty of conspiring to block traffic as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign on the M25 over four days of disruption in November 2022.

The Attorney General was under pressure on Thursday night to intervene over the sentences meted out to Mr Hallam, who also set up Just Stop Oil, and his co-conspirators, which are the longest for non-violent protest in living memory.

Four other eco-activists were each given four-year sentences after they were found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25.


The sentences were welcomed by Tory MPs, but widely condemned by celebrities Chris Packham and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and green campaigners including Labour’s biggest corporate donor.

The case threatens to become a cause celebre among Labour activists, opening up a potential rift in the party for Sir Keir Starmer.

In opposition, Labour voted against the policing Bill that introduced the new powers to jail the activists.

Dale Vince, the green energy tycoon who gave £1 million to Labour earlier in 2024, urged the Prime Minister to step in to reverse the “injustice” while supporters cheered as the prisoners were taken from court to prison on Thursday afternoon.


The sentences also attracted international condemnation with the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders describing it as a “dark day” in an intervention that will infuriate lawmakers who have tried to clampdown on disruptive eco-protests.

Southwark Crown Court had heard that each of the defendants had recruited activists over a Zoom call to take part in the motorway demonstration, which the prosecution said had caused economic damage of nearly £750,000 and cost the police £1 million.

The protests unfolded over four days from Nov 7, with 45 activists climbing up different gantries across the M25.


Hallam and his fellow defendants were prosecuted under a new law of conspiracy intentionally to cause a public nuisance introduced by the last Tory government in an attempt to crack down on disruptive protests.

Judge Christopher Hehir told the five eco-plotters: “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.

“You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change.”

The judge said the protests organised over a Zoom call had been “intricately planned”.

During the online conference call to arrange the demonstration, Hallam had boasted of “the potential to create gridlock”, telling activists: “It makes it absolutely impossible for this government to ignore… It has to be done, it has to be done, that is what I have got to say.”

The court heard they organised “height training”, teaching activists how to climb motorway gantries, and rehearsed a “blue lights policy” to let police pass on the motorway.

Only two of the protesters jailed on Thursday – Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 34, and Cressida Gethin, 22 – intended to climb the gantries, while Hallam, Daniel Shaw, 38 and Louise Lancaster, 58, remained on the ground.

Judge Hehir said the disruption had affected every section of the motorway, the crucial artery around London.


The disruption allegedly caused more than 50,000 hours of traffic delay, affecting the journeys of more than 700,000 vehicles. Two lorries collided and an Essex police officer suffered concussion and bruising after he was knocked off his motorbike in traffic.

“People missed flights, people missed funerals, students were delayed for their mock exam,” said the judge. “A child with special needs on his way to school missed part of the school day and [missed] his medication which placed the taxi driver at risk as he can become volatile without his medication.

“An individual suffering from aggressive cancer missed an appointment as a cancer patient and had to wait another two months for another appointment.

Tony Bambury, a motorist, said at the time that the disruption caused him to miss his father’s funeral after he was caught up in queues of traffic on his journey from Aylesbury to Essex.

The court heard that AirBnBs were booked near to the gantries and used as “safe houses” where the activists would go two days before their “climb”.

The sentences exceeded those handed out in 2023 to two other Just Stop Oil activists who were jailed for climbing the Queen Elizabeth II bridge on the Dartford Crossing.

In a defiant statement released after he was jailed, Hallam insisted his only crime had been: “Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.”


“The judge stated that ‘whether or not we are facing the end of the world is neither here nor there’ and that humanity ‘coming to a fiery end’ was irrelevant,” Hallam wrote on his website, adding: “He [the judge] then ordered me to be forcibly dragged out of the court by the police and remanded to prison. This is the indignity of a British courtroom.”

During the trial the judge had repeatedly tried to stop Hallam from trying to lecture the jury on points of law, but he was allowed to discuss the threat of climate change and how it justified his actions at length.

Eleven people were arrested for contempt on July 2 for allegedly attempting to influence jurors trying the case.

They were holding placards outside court saying: “Juries deserve to hear the whole truth” and “Juries have the absolute right to acquit a defendant on their conscience”.

Speaking outside Southwark Crown Court where the five activists were sentenced on Thursday, Mr Vince described the judge’s ruling as “harsh” and “undemocratic”.


Addressing the new Labour Government, he said: “I do hope they intervene because it is an injustice to give four or five years to people who simply protest.”

Mr Packham, the TV naturalist, called for a meeting with the new Attorney General Richard Hermer “as rapidly as possible so that I and others can address this grotesque miscarriage of justice”.


Chef Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall said the protesters had been “really viciously sentenced under some extraordinary, wicked, malicious legislation”, and the laws had been put in place to “protect a version of business-as-usual”.

A senior Labour source said the Government had no powers to intervene in the case and no plans to change the tougher sentencing laws brought in by the Conservatives.

The sentencing was condemned by Michael Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who said it was a “dark day”.


“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.

Priti Patel, the former home secretary who introduced tougher laws against protesters, welcomed the “long overdue” sentences.

“With the Labour Government now letting thousands of criminals out of prison early they cannot be trusted to protect the public and Britain’s hard-working, law-abiding majority,” she said.

Suella Braverman, who was home secretary at the time of the disruption, said: “Whilst the right to protest is fundamental in a democracy, we must be aware that harm and disruption caused to others is unlawful.”


© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2024

Hopefully sent a warning to the rest of them.

Originally Posted by armstrong

Hopefully sent a warning to the rest of them.

I very much doubt it.

What truly annoys me about these extinction clowns and their neurotic supporters, is the not entirely insignificant fact there is not the remotest possibility of that event taking place within the next millennia.

The stupidity is almost an emetic.

And just why should self appointed c list pseudo celebrities have the right to personally address the Attorney General immediately on issues that might pique their interest. The fucking arrogance of these poseurs knows no bounds.

Hopefully a few years in gaol will help change their minds.




But I doubt it because of how stupid they already are.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

Dragging the fuckers by their hair and kicking them in the groin should remedy most situations. If they knew they were going to get the shit beaten out of them, most would be loathe to re-offend.

And if what you are suggesting were done in Thailand you would be posting 'shitty people, shitty country, medieval snakepit blah blah blah'.

I thought it was jail time for a zoom video conference in whoch they planned to halt traffic on the M25. So it was the organisers rather than the demonstrators that have been jailed.

Fair enough if that's the case.

Absolutely. If folk want to protest that shouldn’t impact on others livelihoods or freedom of movement.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Absolutely. If folk want to protest that shouldn’t impact on others livelihoods or freedom of movement.

Pretty sure the main concern here was that road users could end up dead if this is not discouraged by severe penalties.

I suppose it could be said that would seriously constrain their freedom of movement.

Erm, I’m not disagreeing.

everything we use. everything we make uses oil. food, plastics, medicines, clothing all needs fossil fuel and its by products. fuel for cars and planes is only a small fraction of the uses.

consumption needs to be lowered, and the only wsy that will happen is when there are fewer people consuming, nd we all know that cant be controlled by government dictat or loony greens lying in the road and blocking traffic.

the planet will save itself, assuming it is indeed in danger, when nature decides. and not one minute sooner. a nasty incurable virus or a nuclear holocaust will do the job.

in the meantime we should all be out enjoying the hot weather and our big SUVs.

Wise words indeed tax. Are you planning on buying a SUV when the sun comes out? A chainsaw or 2? Put in a pool.and BBQ up some steaks maybe? The stumpster has already shown you how it's done.