Court of Appeal makes ruling on protest sentences
‘Peaceful tactics… have been criminalised.’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has repeated its serious concern about harsh sentences handed down to climate protesters.
BYM’s statement came after the Court of Appeal upheld some sentences handed down to environmental activists for their roles in four disruptive protests in 2022. The ruling on 7 March was in response to a mass appeal in January when sixteen Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters – with jail terms ranging from between fifteen months to five years – claimed their unduly harsh sentences undermined their right to protest.
The court shortened the sentences of six protesters, including Quaker Gaie Delap, as ‘manifestly excessive’, but dismissed the other protesters’ appeals. But Sue Carr, head of the judiciary of England and Wales, ruled that the sentencing judge had not considered the protesters’ conscientious motivation. ‘Some attention must be paid to conscientious motivation, although much less than would have been the case had the offending been less disproportionate,’ she said.
Gaie Delap, seventy-eight, was originally sentenced to twenty months for climbing onto gantries over the M25, but had her sentence reduced to eighteen months.
Oliver Robertson, BYM’s head of Witness and Worship, said: ‘We welcome the ruling that defendants must be able to talk about their conscientious motivation, but we are seriously concerned about the ongoing stifling of dissent.
‘Anyone who cares about what corporations and those in power do, or don’t do, should be alarmed about their freedom to speak out.’
BYM said that the ruling sets ‘a precedent for non-violent protest to receive tougher penalties’. It also pointed out that Britain arrests environmental protesters at nearly three times the average global rate, according to research last December. ‘New legislation, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, means almost any protest can be defined as seriously disruptive,’ it said on the Quakers in Britain website. ‘Causing “public nuisance”, the offence in many of the recent mass appeal cases, now carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. Peaceful tactics like locking on, tunnelling and causing “serious annoyance” have been criminalised.’
