Just Stop Oil Activists Sentenced to Record 4 and 5 Years for Planning to Block M25 London Roadway

Five Just Stop Oil supporters have been sentenced to a record four and five years for conspiring to cause public nuisance for coordinating four days of protests on London’s M25 roadway in November of 2022.

Judge Christopher Hehir, who sentenced the protesters — Roger Hallam, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw, Cressida Gethin and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu — said they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic,” reported The Guardian.

Hallam was sentenced to five years with the other four receiving four-year sentences.

The sentences are believed to be the longest ever imposed for nonviolent protest in the United Kingdom. They exceed those given to Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker — Just Stop Oil protestors who scaled the Dartford Crossing and received three years and two years, seven months, respectively.

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“The corruption of our judges by the carbon state has crossed a line in the sand,” Hallam said during the trial, as BBC News reported. “This is an opportunity, and an obligation, to act. We only have a limited amount of time to halt the unimaginable horrors of climate and social collapse – and to save our democracy.”

Conspiracy to cause a public nuisance became a law in the UK in 2022. It makes direct action illegal if it causes “serious harm” to the public, which can include injury, property damage, serious distress, inconvenience or annoyance.

In the M25 case, the judge said Parliament had made it clear that it viewed nonviolent direct action taken against national infrastructure as a serious offense that allowed for a sentence of as many as 10 years, or more for certain violent offenses.

The five protestors had been on a Zoom call attempting to recruit prospective volunteers for actions on the M25, which included climbing the roadway’s gantries, reported The Guardian.

“What sort of country locks people away for years for planning a peaceful demonstration, let alone for talking about it on a Zoom call? We’re giving a free hand to the polluting elite robbing us of a habitable planet while jailing those who’re trying to stop them – it makes no sense,” said Amy Cameron, program director for Greenpeace UK, as CNN reported.

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Hallam had expressed the intention that the actions would cause “the biggest disruption in British modern history,” with the purpose of forcing the government to meet the core demand of Just Stop Oil — the ceasing of new North Sea oil and gas exploration, reported The Guardian.

“The offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow,” Judge Hehir said at Southwark Crown Court.

The judge recognized the legitimacy of the human-caused climate crisis and that action needed to be taken to mitigate it.

“I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many,” Hehir said. “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 the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change, bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law. And your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.”

In mitigation Gethin said the action was needed to help stop irrefutable climate breakdown.

“I want to remind the court once more that my reasons for taking action were not beliefs or opinions. Earth’s life-support systems are breaking down due to human activities, whether we believe it or not,” Gethin said, as The Guardian reported. “I deeply regret that this action was necessary… I maintain that it was necessary and I stand by my actions as the most effective option available to me.”

The defendants’ supporters expressed outrage at the sentences, which followed a two-week trial. During the trial, Hehir ruled that evidence regarding climate breakdown should not be taken into account by the jury, even though it was what the defendants said was the main motivation for their actions, as well as a reasonable justification for them.

“Today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest” in the UK, said Michel Forst, the environmental defenders’ special rapporteur for the United Nations, as reported by The Guardian. “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. It should also put all of us on high alert on the state of civic rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom. Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”