UK: is five years in jail for climate protest justified?
Five members of the Just Stop Oil group have received four- and five-year prison sentences from a London court for their involvement in organising protests which blocked the M25 motorway in 2022. The judge justified this unusually harsh punishment saying that although their cause was just the activists had "crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic". The UN and Greenpeace have criticised the sentences.
Well-deserved punishment
The Spectator welcomes the sentence:
“Those who say that the protesters are merely conscientious practitioners of civil disobedience - and that the punishments imposed amount to a stamping on the right of peaceful protest - are wrong. ... Civil disobedience involves a willingness not only to disobey, but take the punishment. ... [Just Stop Oil] claims, in effect, the right to immobilise the country and decide who is allowed to go where. ... No state can allow such a corrosive policy.”
Listen rather than locking them up
Commenting in the Guardian, TV journalist and naturalist Chris Packham and eco-entrepreneur Dale Vance are outraged:
“Let's stop locking up our truth tellers. ... These people might be annoying. They might give you an earache. We might wish they would tone it down. But in a democratic society, they do not belong in prison. We need to be listening to them, not locking them up. And we're not just talking here about the courageous Whole Truth Five (WTF), the Just Stop Oil protesters who were jailed yesterday for 21 years between them, each locked up for longer than some people are for committing serious sexual assaults. People who took direct action to try to end the former government's insane and deadly policy of 'maxing out' on oil and gas reserves.”