I posted this on Twitter yesterday:
Protestors seeking to draw attention to the desperate plight of our planet have been sent to prison for four to five years. And they were only planning a protest. They did not even cause disruption.
No one has been imprisoned for causing the global financial crisis.
No one is being imprisoned for polluting our rivers.
No one, so far, faces jail for the Post Office scandal.
And no one is being threatened with prosecution for permitting 230,000 deaths from Covid as a result of failed preparation.
Nor is anyone being threatened with prosecution for the mass pollution of our planet.
But for peaceful protest you can be described as a fanatic by a judge and be jailed for five years.
Is this the end of freedom of speech?
Is it just fascism in action?
Is it a sign of the madness of the end times of neoliberalism?
Or is it the state, captured by neoliberal interests, putting the right to make profit above human and democratic rights?
Maybe it is all those things.
And will Labour do anything about this? I very much doubt it. These judgements fit very nearly with their authoritarian views.
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
The plods decided to close a motorway, because of one or two people on a gantry. Why close it? Were they going to jump off onto traffic? Nope.
So why not leave them up there until tiredness/rain/cold drove them down. Taking this route would minimise disruption (sure traffic would slow to gawp but that’s all).
Hazarding a guess, discussions were had/instructions were issued and under the cloak of “‘ealth n safety” (whose health? whose safety?) the plods closed the motorway – thus providing a rationale (demonstrators cause massive disruption) to impose bonkers prison sentences.
If anybody cause “massive disruption” it was the plods (& the politicos that they may have been in cahoots with).
The intermperate language used by the judge shows the shape of things to come from what passes for the English establishment.
This will cause massive polarisation.
Apologies Mike, I do agree with your sentiment but speaking as a motorcyclist who was actually diverted away from the M25 on that day (it “cost” me about 15 minutes, max, no big deal), I do think the closure was appropriate. Falls happen.
Mr Hoare, you are of course correct with respect to falls. But they were wearing harnesses & were clipped on. Moving on & off the gantry – via ferrata stuff – always connected with one line. So yes, falls happen (& indeed equipment fails) but speaking as a ex-rock climber the risk they posed was close to zero from the point of view of “what happens if they fall off”.
Which of course then leaves the plods to catch them when they eventually climb down. My sympathies to all those delayed on that day – the fault lies 100% with the plods, not the demonstrators & the decision of the gov to demonise them rather than recognise that maybe, they have a point, As Ricahrd’s post makes clear, there is plenty of “in-plain-sight” law breaking going on- but it is always easier to crush small people.
Yes, well….you’re a motorcyclist and anybody who drives on four wheels knows from observation that motorcyclists are a law unto themselves. (Along with a proportion of Audi, BMW and Mercedes drivers who seem to have a similar attitude.)
Agree 100% Matthew. Even without the risk of falls there is also the very high risk of drivers being distracted and losing control of their vehicle. I realise this does not often happen to motorcyclists who need to be very aware at all times of what goes on around them, but many drivers of 4 wheel (or more) vehicles, don’t seem to have the same ability to concentrate or keep control.
@Cyndy Hodgson. Then they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.
Hopefully, bearing in mind all the reasons you give, these very harsh sentences will be overturned on appeal.
The Judge was very concerned about the economic cost.
One wonders if the judge has plans to address Quantitative Tightening and the deleterious effect it has on the economy. I’m going to guess he doesn’t, I admit…
It is precisely for calling for accountability in all the cases you enumerate that the neoliberal will see you as a fanatic. The neoliberal, after all, is merely doing what the market dictates, for which action there is no alternative. And who, but a fanatic, would hold someone accountable for taking the only reasonable course of action?
You may be right
But they are wrong
Start to look for the accountability that most voters should look for and call for and it simply isn’t there in any detail! That’s why Scammer & Co can manipulate their way into office’
Has the problem « Establishment Bias » in our Legal System been noticeably mentioned in the main stream media?
* Advice from judge to jury to ignore defendants’ explanations to explain pro- environment actions.
*Use of Judge only trials for some political protestors (Mr.Craig Murray?)
* Pursuit and treatment of Mr Julian Assange
Might very much the most of the main stream media, not least the B. B. C., be under the intense influence/control of the « Fat Purse/Wallet » establishment?
I was going to say that the judiciary has been captured. But that’s probably not quite right as they are already part of that group of Public School – Oxbridge alumni who effortlessly make their way to the top in many professions, including politics and the law and seem to share many of the same attitudes, particularly in regards to the great unwashed.
The Social Mobility Commission and the Sutton Trust issued a report in 2019 which commented: “[The] report, Elitist Britain, shows that 65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school; 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge. The report describes judges as the ‘most socially exclusive groups of all the professions examined here’.”
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/senior-judges-most-socially-exclusive-of-all-professionals/5070720.article
@ Geejay
I don’t believe the progression to the top of the professions is, as you suggest, ‘effortless’.
I think it must take considerable effort and an ability to ignore or overcome …..what shall we call it? Integrity? in the pursuit of ambition. Something like that. There are costs. Real costs.
There’s a lovely line in The Boulting Brothers Man for all Seasons with its biblical reference: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? But for Wales ?”, says one of the Tudor Thomases. It’s like a joke; but substitute money and social position and …….
But who nowadays believes in ‘souls’?
The Chicgao Boys neoliberalism of the 70s involved very considerable brutality to meet the free market expectations of the dogma in South America.
Neoliberalism is ‘liberal’ only within very narrow confines.
It is pure corporatism.
The purpose of the state is to serve private property interests and this is the core of the mindset.
This extended Victorian class based and absolutist conservative property philosophies and neatly fitted the elite thinking of the Chicago and Austrian Schools.
There is an obscene irony in the disconnect between disproportionate protection of property and in sustaining economic activity through reduction of civil liberties in the 21stC, by comparison with the scale of property damage of sea level rise, but the law is both reactive, not pro-active, and deeply illogical.
Thank you, Tony.
Further to what Tony, Mike, Steve, Geejay and Richard, the benighted kingdom dodged a bullet when one politician who has held great offices of state, but is back at a US bank, leading their healthcare privatisation efforts, failed to win Tory leadership contests.
As a youngster at a US bank in 1994, bald eagle wrote a paper recommending that the Mexican government shoot protestors during the Tequila Crisis as a means of telling the markets that it meant business.
If Bay Tampa Bay reads this later, I felt then and still do that NAFTA was and is a disaster and was one of the causes of Trump.
It is astonishing – I mean some car crashes cause just as much delay on roads.
Then consider the current IT outage affecting so many systems, including flights, and the NHS. Will the programmers be held accountable for causing so much disruption – way more than a few people talking about walking slowly on a single road.
Sound points, well made. It is indeed a sign of the madness of the end-times.
In this end-of-Empire era, more extreme responses are seen to become necessary, both to draw attention to and challenge the madness, and by those hell-bent on maintaining the mad-times as long as possible. Think Roman Empire, or the former British Empire.
National systems of power – and by extension some, but not all, regional and global ones – are locked-up by our controllers. These are the tiny, impossibly-rich minority elite who are doing very well indeed from disaster capitalism.
They are supported in place by people who are also doing well by promoting or protecting our controllers’ interests – bought-and-paid-for politicians, destructive industries, propaganda-media, the military-industrial complex.
The lengthy, but inevitable demise of this frauduent, corrupt system – the Fall of the Anglo-American Empire – will be painful for all humanity.
In responding to the degrading of earth systems that is undermining human civilisation, the less-active options of resistance available to all of us are:
1) bear witness to the cataclysm and share knowledge with others, as Richard is doing
2) work with like-minded others where you live, for a sane alternative approach in your neighbourhood/district/country.
Thank you and well said, Andrew.
Andrew: “The lengthy, but inevitable demise of this fraudulent, corrupt system – the Fall of the Anglo-American Empire – will be painful for all humanity.” Spot on. The empire won’t and can’t afford to go down without a fight. The confrontation is avoidable, but we are dealing with sociopaths and their hangers on.
The tragedy is that, outside the west / US and its vassals, structures to facilitate multipolarity, including help from retired western experts*, are making progress, if a bit slow. It feels like defusing a bomb or talking down a someone trying to endanger him/herself or others. Unfortunately, the MSM keeps us in the dark and, as I replied to Sean a day or two ago, promotes utter nonsense about the likes of Russia, China, BRICS etc.
*I know one, ex US Fed and Bank of England official**, working on payment systems. Richard may know her, too, at least from Twitter. **We work a lot on operational risk and resilience and have long warned about today and the reliance on US defence contractors. Fun fact: The Bank of England offered me a job to lead on such matters in November 2021, but I had accepted an offer two days earlier.
Readers may be interested in more. I suggest going online and looking for Michael Hudson, Yanis Varoufakis, Aurelien substack, Jeffrey Sachs and the late and great Stephen Cohen. YouTube and Naked Capitalism often feature them. You will be amazed and awed in equal measure. You will also learn that the war in / over Ukraine did not start in February 2022, or even at Maidan Square in 2014, and the genocide of Palestinians did not start in October 2023 and wonder WTF is going on.
All noted
I already follow Hudson and Aurelien, London Paul too. The MSM? Pfffft!
Thanks for Aurelien link.
I susbscribe to 8.9ha a blog about soil, natural capital, security, food. The article about another aspect of the Ukraine war is seriously interesting.
https://8point9.com/waging-a-war-for-land-and-soil/
@Deborah Booth. Rather than being “another aspect”, isn’t the black earth one of the principal reasons for the war, the other being control of the natural gas reserves in the Black sea?
Following on from Mike Parr’s remark above, “This will cause massive polarisation.”
As a subscriber to the Just Stop Oil mailing list, at 16:31 yesterday they sent me an appeal for financial support for those convicted:
“The five are grappling with loss of earnings due to the 3-4 week trial and prior preparation, travel, accommodation and potential custodial sentences. They need your support.”
The appeal raised £12k in the first hour and now stands at over £36k donated by over 1,070 individuals, less than a mere 20 hours later. That’s just the beginning, I feel.
https://chuffed.org/project/support-the-five-on-trial-for-conspiracy
The charges I believe were for conspiracy. This opens the door for draconian sentencing but also under police Act 2022 for simply conducting an organising meeting that may lead to an act of public or economic disruption.
I hope I’ve read it wrong!
I think you probably read it right
What Richard said…
The intent would seem to be then to give stiff sentences not because they’re deserved mais pour decourager les autres. I assume Labour are anticipating lots of autres in the near future anyway and are duly preparing for a large influx of political prisoners, many long-term, by releasing criminals into the community to make room for them.
Priorities, eh?
In response to Mr Griffin:
“simply conducting an organising meeting that may lead to an act of public or economic disruption.”
Thus: organising a community energy system that will ipso facto cause economic disruption to electricity suppliers by disintermediating them vis a vis their customers means I am guilty of conspiracy. The law is not worth the paper it is written on.
Given the number of times that roads are closed daily because someone has decided to drive like a complete idiot and cause a collision I might usefully ask why these people dont get sent down for decades?
Thats before I start on those whose driving causes real risk of harm.
Nobody apart possibly from the protestors was going to get hurt in these cases
“Or is it the state, captured by neoliberal interests, putting the right to make profit above human and democratic rights?’
So driving on a motorway without a bunch of self appointed terrorists preventing you is apparently ‘working for neoliberal interests’..have you gone mad?
They are peaceful protestors, not terrorists. Only a fool could not tell the difference.
And they, and I, are the sane ones in the room. The grown ups. The realists. Those in the right. And those possessed of the facts. That is why the judge had to deny them free speech – a breach of human rights a fascist state would be proud of.
So, are you a fascist?
No, but you may have.
Not another football trolling alter ego.
There is a fundamental dishonesty and cowardice in this form of concealment.
Might the appended article be relevant?
https://www.thecanary.co/editorial/2024/07/18/just-stop-oil-jail/
Since the judge refused to allow the defendants to explain the motivation for their actions, what right has he to conclude that they are ‘fanatics’? Many of us regard their actions as remarkably restrained, given the terrifying seriousness of climate breakdown.
Perhaps it would be more reasonable to describe the judge’s extreme defence of neoliberal values as fanaticism.
The prisons are full.
Labour policy is to reduce the numbers, especially convictions, of people who they say “shouldn’t be in prison”.
The judge hands out Draconian sentences to peaceful protestors, who really shouldn’t be in prison.
Labour will no doubt look for an excuse to justify it.
Precedent set. One assumes similar sentences will be handed out to others in future, whatever they are protesting about.
Prisons fill up again, but now with political prisoners.
No doubt the policy response will be to build more prisons. It helps GDP.
What’s that saying? One law for the rich, another for the poor, or every one else.
Labour won’t repeal these draconian anti protest laws.
We are miles behind on investing in renewables and stopping fossil fuels – meaning thousands or millions will be at risk in next few yers. Non -disruptive protests are just ignored even if tens of thousands march.
Only disruptive action gets reported – what are we supposed to do ?
We already have political prisoners – thank goodness the prisons are full.
Richard,
It will be extremely interesting to see what prison sentences are handed out for the perpetrators in this case.
https://www.upday.com/uk/arrests-made-during-disorder-in-leeds-suburb-with-bus-set-on-fire-and-police-car-overturned
Given the violence and destruction involved, surely 35 years would be expected,
If not, well, we can draw our own conclusions, can’t we?
Remember Starmer and Tottenham
The right to protest still exists. The right to disrupt the lives of tens of thousands of people does not.
Maybe you’d feel different if you were one of those repeatedly being inconvenienced by these loons?
What a stupid comment
Protest is denied as ‘a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something’. It dues necessarily need to be noticed as a result. The only way to do that is to cause disruption of some sort. So, the right to protest – even to make a noise – when doing so – has been abolished. It takes stupidity, or a fascist outlook, not to notice.
But Sasha – it was not the people on gantries that disrupted things – it was the plods. I suggest you pitch your complaints to them
Sasha, millions going into billions are now and will be in future, a damn sight more than simply ‘inconvenienced’ by the effects of out-of-control global heating
David Thoreau is credited with the expression: “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”