Press release: 16 September 2024 FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES For further info: Howard 07459055152; Tim 07795316164; Paddy 07958275270
- Defend Our Juries launches new civil disobedience campaign, with nonviolent actions planned in Central London on 27 September and late October.
- Actions will see roads outside Southwark Crown Court and the Attorney General’s Office transformed into exhibitions of political prisoners past and present.
- Main demand is that the Attorney General agrees to a public meeting, to discuss ending the silencing and jailing of those taking peaceful action to prevent mass loss of life and to uphold international law.
- Further demands include freeing the 40 peaceful protesters currently held in UK prisons and removing paid lobbyist Lord Walney as Independent Govt Advisor.
- Friday 20 September, campaigners will deliver a petition of over 60,000 people to the Attorney General’s Office, in a final pre-action attempt to secure the meeting, followed by an online press conference.
- Campaign aims supported by celebrities, including Juliet Stevenson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and politicians, including John McDonnell and Sian Berry.
Today, two months after the record prison sentences handed to the Whole Truth Five, Defend Our Juries publicly launches its new Free Political Prisoners campaign. An escalating series of nonviolent acts of civil disobedience around the country will begin with two lawful yet provocative actions in Central London.
Up until this point, information about the actions has been kept strictly confidential. From 10am today, in a display of the same transparency organisers are calling for from the Government, full details and briefing documents will be made public.[1] These will be posted on the Defend Our Juries website and social media accounts.
The first action, on Friday 27 September, will see the road outside Southwark Crown Court occupied for 90 minutes, from 12.30–2pm. During this time, it will be transformed into a free public exhibition of political prisoners from throughout history. Members of the public, including office workers, along with court staff and attendees on their lunch breaks, will be invited to view the exhibition and to learn about the vital role that peaceful acts of resistance have played in shaping our democratic freedoms.[2]
Southwark Crown Court is the scene of the now notorious sentencing of the Whole Truth Five by Judge Christopher Hehir, following a trial in which they were banned from explaining to the jury the reasons for their actions.[3] The road outside the court is a barely-used cul-de-sac, so there will be minimal disruption and occupying the road will be largely symbolic. On 27 September, the same Judge Hehir has promised to also sentence Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland to prison, again for nonviolent acts of civil resistance to ecocide.[4]
A further free public exhibition, along similar lines, is then planned for late October (precise date TBC), outside the Attorney General’s Office on Petty France. While this is a through road, it is not a main route. Alternatives are easily available and any disruption to traffic should be relatively minor. This therefore represents a very gentle and gradual escalation. Both actions have been carefully designed to ensure that they are reasonable and proportionate. They will cause only minimal disruption and for a short amount of time. They conform to the legal principles established by the Supreme Court in the case of Ziegler. As such, the organisers sincerely believe that they are lawful. They intend to present the state with a dilemma: Does it meet a peaceful and lawful exhibition about repression with more of the same?
The central demand of the campaign is that Attorney General Richard Hermer KC agrees to Chris Packham’s and Dale Vince’s request for a fully open and transparent public meeting.[5] The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss the measures necessary to restore the fundamental rights to protest and fair trial essential to a functioning democracy, as called for by the United Nations.[6]
A further key demand is freeing the 40 peaceful protesters currently being held in UK prisons, on sentence or remand.[7] Until recently, it was almost unheard of for peaceful protesters to serve time in prison. In the last four years the lengths of custodial sentences being imposed has risen dramatically.[8] And in the last few months, imprisonment, often for multiple years, appears to be becoming normalised as the rule, rather than the exception.[9]
Since July, with the prisons overflowing, more than 40 peaceful people have been jailed for taking action to protect life.[10] On 6 September, Dr Larch Maxey was sentenced to three years for taking part in a peaceful tunnel protest at the Navigator oil terminal in Essex. A key figure in the environmental protest movement since the 1990s and an immensely popular veteran of countless print and broadcast interviews, it is astonishing that his lengthy imprisonment has gone all but unnoticed.[11]
The third key demand of the campaign is the removal of paid lobbyist John Woodcock (Lord Walney) from the role of Government Independent Advisor on Political Violence and Disruption.[12] Woodcock advocates for the abuse of terrorism powers to deal with nonviolent protesters.[13] Shockingly, this has now started to happen, with the Filton 6 held for a week without charge for damaging weapons intended for use against cilvilians in Gaza.[14] Woodcock and other oil and arms industry lobbyists, notably Policy Exchange, which infamously drafted anti-protest legislation for the last Government,[15] are largely responsible for the current sustained attack upon civil liberties in the UK.[16] This has left the country woefully unprepared for the racist riots that terrorised communities over the summer.[17]
Recent research by Demos shows that the public overwhelmingly support the right to protest and want to see repressive anti-protest measures reversed.[18] A recent report by Climate Rights International sets out many of the worst abuses and makes sensible suggestions for how to correct these.[19] In a clear sign of public opinion on this issue, and in spite of the legal crackdown, juries continue to defy judges’ explicit instructions that they must find protesters guilty.[20] The new Government would do well to value public opinion over that of paid lobbyists.
This Friday 20th September at 10am, campaigners will physically deliver a petition, signed by over 60,000 people, to the Attorney General’s Office, calling for him to grant the public meeting. This follows over 1,200 of the country’s leading cultural figures having already written to him in support of the same. Should the Attorney General agree to the meeting, then the actions will be put on hold and will not go ahead as planned.
Following the petition’s delivery, an online press conference will be held over Zoom. Spokespeople from Defend Our Juries and key partner organisations will field questions from journalists about the campaign’s aims, action designs and the steps which urgently need to be taken, to fix our broken democracy.
Defend Our Juries spokesperson Trudi Warner comments:
“Since the lobbyist for the arms and oil industries, Lord Walney, published his supposedly independent report in May into political violence, more than 40 peaceful people have been jailed for exposing the complicity of those industries in genocide and ecocide.
“It’s hard to believe that human rights lawyers such as the Prime Minister and the Attorney General are allowing gross violations of international law, condemned by the UN, to happen on their watch. If nothing else, our new campaign, Free Political Prisoners will make it impossible for them to claim they didn’t know.”
Palestine Action Co-founder Huda Ammori comments:
“Whilst the ongoing genocide in Gaza rages on, Britain continues to fail to abide by its legal obligation under section 1 of the Genocide Convention to prevent and punish the commission of genocide. The government is allowing 92% of arms exports licenses to Israel to continue and Israeli weapons factories to operate across the country.
“Rather than abide by their legal obligation to stop Israel’s weapons trade, the British state is imprisoning those who do. As a result, there are currently sixteen Palestine Action political prisoners, detained for trying to stop a genocide. From Britain to Palestine, the political prisoners are on the frontline of our collective struggle for liberation. For them, we must resist until we are all free.”
Just Stop Oil Co-founder Sarah Lunnon comments:
“The Labour Government needs to free the political prisoners, cancel the Tory North Sea consents and end oil, gas and coal use by 2030. It’s simple. Not to do so is to be complicit in a planned genocide. We have a moral duty to defend those who will be harmed.”
BAFTA-nominated actress Juliet Stevenson CBE comments:
“We are told, we tell our children, that the law is there to protect us. But when disproportionately heavy prison sentences are used on behalf of fossil fuel interests to punish and silence ordinary people, individuals of extraordinary courage who have had to resort to non-violent direct action when all else has failed… what kind of a democracy are we living in?
“When it’s legal to sell weapons to the Israeli military, which will be used to slaughter children (16,000 dead and rising) but to protect those children by attempting to intervene is branded terrorism – then I don’t know what kind of deranged rabbit hole I’ve fallen down.”
TV Chef and environmental campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall comments:
“Locking up peaceful people for trying to protect our planet and secure our future is perverse, and the threat of creeping authoritarianism in the UK is almost as frightening as the threat of climate breakdown.
“It is particularly pernicious that the persecution of the climate movement by the government is being done at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, represented by lobbyists like Lord Walney. This is a public scandal.
“I fully support the call to free all of these peaceful, peace-loving, peace-promoting prisoners. And I join the call on the Attorney General to give us a public meeting to fix this crisis of British justice.”
Former Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell MP comments:
“The sentences imposed upon nonviolent protesters, motivated by sheer altruism, are beyond any concept of proportionality. Attempting to silence people with draconian imprisonments like this offends against all that we stand for as a democracy, supporting the right to free speech and the right to peaceful protest. These sentences should be overturned and these people released.”
Green Party Justice Spokesperson Sian Berry MP comments:
“I’m ashamed to live in a country where we have so many people who can only be seen as political prisoners, locked up under laws created specifically to punish political protest. The Attorney General must start rolling back this terrifying situation.”
Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK Areeba Hamid comments:
“The road to many of the freedoms we take for granted has been paved with protest: from the Suffragette Emily Davison stepping in front of the King’s horse to demand the vote for women, to the mass trespass at Kinder Scout that helped open the countryside to the public.
“The crack-down on our right to protest in recent years was the action of a populist government that was fearful of public opinion. It created the conditions for an insidious culture where peaceful dissent is forbidden, where the police have excessive powers and where climate activists are sometimes banged up for longer than violent criminals.
“The new government should take a long hard look at the kind of regimes around the world that do not tolerate protest, before it follows suit.”
ENDS
For further info: Howard 07459055152; Tim 07795316164; Paddy 07958275270
Notes to Editors
[1] Campaign Intro https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRopDg6yY7zf4nVJ2j-_420kk7V1CXK9dm2WidOYmtc/edit?usp=drivesdk
Action Briefing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qh1lrJott4-n5-SQOsWdtVqFsEZvgbzxlAEoNsZE64E/edit?usp=drivesdk
Additional info for Aligned Campaigns and NGOs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKkTQ1_1CO6lCk-75c-6S7MPTIaFyefn4lR1M2XbOsY/edit?usp=sharing
Mobilisation Zoom call outline
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ah-AM9_rbT-grcM27yMQmjtfYoLvA5kSyXJs-KPNSWQ/edit?usp=drivesdk
[2] The exhibition will also exist online, expanding upon the gallery of prisoners already to be found upon the Rebels In Prison Support (RIPS) website https://rebelsinprison.uk/rebels/all/ and discussions are underway for a longer-term physical installation at a prestigious Central London location.
[3] https://planb.earth/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PR-WTF-Appeal-against-sentence-FINAL.pdf
[4] https://juststopoil.org/2024/07/25/soup-throwers-found-guilty-in-judge-hehirs-court/
[6] https://youtu.be/XI390ye1JHM?si=ThAfxTvHqmeEn7hm
[7] https://rebelsinprison.uk/rebels/ (not yet fully comprehensive)
[8] In 2018, the Court of Appeal expedited hearing the case of the Frack Free Three in order to overturn this rare instance of a custodial sentence being imposed, ruling it ‘manifestly excessive’ for peaceful protest. https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate/fracking-protesters-sentencing-was-unlawful-says-friends-earth-sentences-overturned
In 2021, James Brown received a twelve month sentence for his action at London City Airport, setting a new record at the time. This was reduced to four months at appeal. https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2021/12/08/blind-paralympian-james-brown-released-from-prison-following-sentencing-appeal/
In 2023, Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker were sentenced to three years and two years seven months respectively, for their QEII Bridge action. These sentences, then by far the longest for non-violent protest, were upheld by the Supreme Court. https://juststopoil.org/2024/02/19/dartford-crossing-bridge-climber-released-on-bail-however-now-faces-threat-of-deportation/
In 2024, the record was broken again by the four and five year sentences imposed upon the Whole Truth Five. https://juststopoil.org/2024/07/18/whole-truth-five-sentenced-to-4-5-years-at-southwark-crown-court/
Since then, several sentences of multiple years have been imposed. Even a year ago, these would have provoked headlines and outrage. Instead, they have passed by with barely a murmur in the mainstream media. https://juststopoil.org/2024/08/01/gantry-climbers-sentenced-two-years-in-prison/
[10] https://defendourjuries.org/five-more-young-people-jailed-for-trying-to-stop-war-crimes-in-gaza/
https://twitter.com/TTTMediaXR/status/1832142044669604200?t=SB6E7KJoe5g9D0_H2PS5tA&s=19
https://twitter.com/ScientistsX/status/1832453335221170183?t=_HIz79DQ0kCqkpOFUNcv4w&s=19
[12] https://planb.earth/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PR-WALNEY-REPORT.pdf
[13] https://twitter.com/LordWalney/status/1825486140226322799?t=vkFw9VxSfbLxV0HvFxLsBw&s=19
[14] https://palestineaction.org/detained-without-charge/
[16] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/14/climate/uk-climate-protests-policing-laws-prison-intl
[18] https://demos.co.uk/research/the-peoples-town-square-on-protest-looking-beyond-the-headlines/
[19] https://cri.org/reports/on-thin-ice/
The widespread documented abuses of nonviolent protesters by the police and in the courts include, but are not limited to:
- Injunctions upon a massive scale and blanket bans on protests
- Pre-trial bail conditions, imposed as means of control, including the electronic tagging of unconvicted members of the public
- Police violence and intimidation
- Pain grips used as a punishment
- Abuse of organised crime and anti-terrorism powers
- Dawn raids and pre-emptive arrests with guns drawn on peaceful protesters
- Detention without charge for extended periods, with usual rights withheld, such as the right to notify somebody of your arrest
- Smearing of protesters in the media
- Removal of legal defences
- Silencing of defendants in court
- Hamstringing of juries, with unequivocal directions to convict
- Disproportionately lengthy custodial sentences
Individually and cumulatively, these abuses are illegal and in breach of the UK’s obligations under International Law, as made clear by the UN. While it is primarily protesters concerned with climate change and the ongoing genocide in Gaza who have been on the receiving end of these abuses to date, they could in theory be visited upon anybody who seeks to stand up to the state upon any issue.
These abuses risk undermining democracy, at home and abroad. They damage the UK’s reputation, standing and credibility upon the world stage. They set a dangerous precedent, which is likely to be emulated elsewhere, providing succour to illiberal and authoritarian regimes overseas. As such, they threaten peace and stability, the international rules based order and the liberal democratic project.
[20]
https://twitter.com/Pal_action/status/1834573906297888976?t=H4XEx4TR64P1bJ9QEW6pKA&s=19
The Defend Our Juries campaign aims:
- to bring to public attention the programme to undermine trial by jury in the context of those taking action to expose government dishonesty and corporate greed
- to raise awareness of the vital constitutional safeguard that juries can acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, irrespective of a judge’s direction that there is no available defence (a principle also known as ‘jury equity’ or ‘jury nullification‘)
- to ensure that all defendants have the opportunity to explain their actions when their liberty is at stake, including by explaining their motivations and beliefs.