By: Emma Gatten , Robert Mendick and Cameron Henderson
18 Jul, 2024
Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, has been given a record five-year prison sentence. Photo / X
The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been given a record five-year prison sentence in the UK 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 London’s M25 motorway over four days of disruption in November 2022.
The Attorney-General for England and Wales was under pressure on Thursday night to intervene over the sentences meted out to 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 Conservative 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 new Prime Minister 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 ($2.1 million) to Labour earlier in 2024, urged Sir Keir 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 clamp down 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 November 7, with 45 activists climbing up different gantries across the M25.
Five prosecuted under new law of conspiracy
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 five protest organisers were convicted of conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance. 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 – 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.
Protest ‘caused more than 50,000 hours of traffic delay’
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.”
He had previously said he had suffered the “indignity of the British courtroom”, accusing the judge during his trial of dismissing his fears over the climate.
“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, 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.”
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 Hugh 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 British 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.”
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.”
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