Five Just Stop Oil activists - including founder Roger Hallam - given record jail sentences over M25 protest

18 July 2024, 15:47 | Updated: 18 July 2024, 17:08

Five Just Stop Oil members - including one of its co-founders - have been jailed for between four and five years for conspiring to organise protests that blocked the M25.

They made plans for protestors to climb onto overhead gantries for four days in November 2022.

Roger Hallam, 58, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, agreed to cause disruption to traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the motorway for four successive days in November 2022.

Hallam - who also co-founded Extinction Rebellion - was sentenced to five years' imprisonment while the other four defendants were each handed four years' imprisonment.

The environmental group have described the sentences as a "obscene perversion of justice".

Prosecutors alleged the protests, which saw 45 people climb up the gantries, led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1 million.

They also allegedly caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delay, affecting more than 700,000 vehicles, and left the M25 "compromised" for more than 120 hours.

A police officer suffered concussion and bruising after being knocked off his motorbike in traffic caused by one of the protests on November 9 2022, prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward KC said at the sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.

'Fanatic'

Sentencing at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Christopher Hehir said: "The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.

"You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change."

The defendants, referred to as the Whole Truth Five by Just Stop Oil on social media, shouted "We love you" from the dock immediately after the sentences were passed down.

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All five defendants joined a Zoom call on November 2 2022 in which discussions were held about the planned protests, based off "what was said expressly and what could be inferred", and were aiming to recruit others for the protests on the call, Ms Ledward told the court.

A journalist from the Sun newspaper, who had joined the call pretending to be interested in the protest, managed to record some of it and passed the recordings on to the police.

Just Stop Oil have slammed the jailings on social media.

"Stop jailing those telling the truth" they said in a tweet with an image of the group nicknamed the #WholeTruthFive.

Earlier today, the environmental group tweeted a video of the group on trial arriving at court.

The video shows them arriving at Southwark Crown Court in a prison van to applause and cheers from other activists who then knock on the sides of the van.

Ahead of the sentencing, environmentalist and TV presenter Chris Packham said: "Our prisons are overflowing , yet 5 peaceful protestors have been remanded awaiting sentences for protesting climate breakdown . . . here's a radical idea– stop jailing protestors . They're not the fire , they're raising the alarm !"

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