Defend Our Juries launched a new campaign in 2024, with nonviolent actions in Central London on 27 September and 24 October seeing roads outside Southwark Crown Court and the Attorney General’s Office transformed into exhibitions of political prisoners past and present.
The Free Political Prisoners campaign then brought over 1000 people to the Royal Courts of Justice on January 29th and 30th 2025 while the mass appeal of 16 UK Political Prisoners took place.
The ruling on the mass appeals was given on March 7th 2025, with the extreme sentences of 10 out of 16 of the appellants upheld by Lady Justice Carr. During the ruling, over 30 members of Defend Our Juries risked arrest by standing up to reveal t-shirts with “Corruption in Court” emblazoned on their backs.
The Court of Appeal’s unprecedented mass review of these sentences was a critical moment not just for the appellants and all our sister movements, but for democracy.
We must send a message to the lobbyists and the legal system that we will never give up. We will never consent to this corruption of democracy and the rule of law. We will never stand by as the peacemakers and truth tellers are silenced and jailed. We will never accept the knowing devastation of current and future generations of humanity and life of earth.
Actions
On Friday 20 September, campaigners delivered 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. This followed over 1,200 of the country’s leading cultural figures having already written to him in support of the same.
The first action, on Friday 27 September, saw the road outside Southwark Crown Court occupied for 90 minutes, from 12.30–2pm. During this time, it was 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, were invited to view the exhibition and to learn about the vital role that peaceful acts of resistance have played in shaping our democratic freedoms.
The next showing of this exhibition was on 24 October 2024, United Nations Day, at the Attorney General’s office and Ministry of Justice, Petty France, London.
On January 29 and 30 in 2025 during the mass appeal hearing for 16 UK Political Prisoners, sentenced to a combined 41 years in prison for peaceful activism, our exhibition was displayed by over 1,000 individuals outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
They defied police intimidation and remained steadfast in their determination to protect our rights to peaceful protest and freedom of assembly by remaining in place and calling for an end to the corruption of UK law by vested corporate influences.
This action happened just two weeks before the now disgraced “independent adviser” (paid lobbyist for oil & arms industries) to the UK Government, Lord Walney, was sacked from his position of influence in anti-protest lawmaking.
In a display of the same transparency organisers are calling for from the Government, full details and briefing documents for these actions have always been made public.
Southwark Crown Court was 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. The road outside the court is a barely-used cul-de-sac, so there was minimal disruption and occupying the road was largely symbolic. On 27 September, the same Judge Hehir sentenced Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland to prison, again for nonviolent acts of civil resistance to ecocide.
A further free public exhibition, along similar lines, was then planned for October 24th, outside the Attorney General’s Office on Petty France. While this is a through road, it is not a main route, and alternatives were easily available.
Both actions were carefully designed to ensure to be reasonable and proportionate. They caused only minimal disruption and for a short amount of time. They conformed to the legal principles established by the Supreme Court in the case of Ziegler. As such, the organisers sincerely believed 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?
Campaign demands
1 – To put a stop to the role of arms and oil industry lobbyists in drafting laws that criminalise those who expose the violence and lies of those industries. 2 – To ensure that everyone who has taken reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent mass loss of life has the opportunity to properly present that as a defence to criminal charges. 3 – To end the jailing of people for taking peaceful action to protect life in accordance with uphold international law.
The central ask 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. The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss the measures necessary (the three demands above) to restore the fundamental rights to protest and fair trial essential to a functioning democracy, as called for by the United Nations.
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. And in the last few months, imprisonment, often for multiple years, appears to be becoming normalised as the rule, rather than the exception.
Since July, with the prisons overflowing, more than 40 peaceful people have been jailed for taking action to protect life. 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.
One 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, and to end the role of arms and oil industry lobbyists in drafting laws.
This demand has now been met! Only a few weeks after more than one thousand people sat outside the Royal Court of Justice to speak out against corporate influence on the courts, ‘Lord’ Walney was sacked from his position as “independent” advisor.
Woodcock advocates for the abuse of terrorism powers to deal with nonviolent protesters. Shockingly, this has now started to happen, with the Filton 6 held for a week without charge for damaging weapons intended for use against civilians in Gaza.
Woodcock and other oil and arms industry lobbyists, notably Policy Exchange, which infamously drafted anti-protest legislation for the last Government, are largely responsible for the current sustained attack upon civil liberties in the UK. This has left the country woefully unprepared for the racist riots that terrorised communities over the summer.
Woodcock has now lost his position as “independent“ advisor on political violence and disruption, but how many more Woodcocks are out there? Campaigners stumbled across Woodcock’s corporate interests almost by accident and then began to publicise them.
How many other advisors and consulting companies that steer the proceedings in our courts are in the pockets of the fossil fuel and arms industries without public knowledge?
Recent research by Demos shows that the public overwhelmingly support the right to protest and want to see repressive anti-protest measures reversed.
A recent report by Climate Rights International sets out many of the worst abuses and makes sensible suggestions for how to correct these. 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. The new Government would do well to value public opinion over that of paid lobbyists.
Additional information
Additional info for Aligned Campaigns and NGOs
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The Free Political Prisoners 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.
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.
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.
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.
In 2024, the record was broken again by the four and five year sentences imposed upon the Whole Truth Five.
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