Climate activists to appeal sentences after rioters given shorter terms

The five JSO activists who were convicted for conspiring to block the M25 have appealed against their record sentences, claiming the terms breached international law and are longer than those handed to rioters.
Roger Hallam, 58, was jailed for five years for co-ordinating the protests that disrupted the M25 in London over four days in 2022. Forty-five protesters climbed gantries on the motorway, forcing police to stop the traffic.
Daniel Shaw, 38, from Northampton, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, from Derby, Louise Lancaster, 58, from Cambridge, and Cressida Gethin, 22, from Hereford, were each sentenced to four years after being found guilty of conspiring to cause a public nuisance.
The group were sentenced under controversial legislation introduced by the previous government to get tougher on disruptive tactics used by environmental protesters, including blockading roads and attacks on sporting events. A 13-week campaign by Just Stop Oil (JSO) last summer cost the Metropolitan Police more than £7.7 million, the equivalent cost of 23,500 officer shifts.
The legislation, which provides stiffer sentences for protesters who block roads, was backed by Sir Keir Starmer, now the prime minister. However, it was condemned by the United Nations human rights commissioner as “deeply troubling” and “disproportionate”, with Dale Vince, a millionaire Labour Party donor, calling on Labour to intervene in the case.
The activists will argue that the sentences were “manifestly excessive” and that the judge “appears to have punished the defendants for disobeying his orders not to explain their motivations for taking such action”. They will also argue that they were barred from producing evidence of the immediate threat posed by climate change.
The Times also understands that campaign groups are planning a new wave of action calling for the release of climate activists from the UK’s prisons.
A spokesman for Defend Our Juries said: “Both the recent race riots and the filling of our prisons with climate truth-tellers result from the previous government’s attempt to distract from the existential crises we face by demonising easy targets. It’s time to leave that toxic legacy behind, and to bring people together with an honest confrontation with reality.”
A spokesman for Just Stop Oil claimed that “direct action works” and that it was only after the group disrupted the M25 that Starmer committed to ending licenses for new oil and gas.
“The Whole Truth Five [the five jailed JSO activists] along with others did the best thing they could, according to the evidence, to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to the public and life on earth,” the spokesman said.
“Judge Hehir’s imagined ‘deterrent effect’ is both cynical and naive: it assumes we don’t love our children, but we do. It assumes we have no care for the future of our country, but we do. It assumes we don’t want to live, but we do.”
The appeal also comes as Avaaz, an America-based campaign group, started a national petition condemning the “gagging and jailing of peaceful climate protesters in UK courts”.
The petition, which also calls on Starmer to repeal the “repressive” Tory legislation and “restore the UK’s influential role in upholding democratic rights and international law”, has so far gathered more than 20,000 signatures.