As Sunak says Just Start Oil, Political Sentencing for Protest underlined in Court
Two Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker were denied the right to appeal against lengthy prison sentences at the Appeal Court on Monday.
Trowland had been given 3 years and Decker 31 months for a protest that closed the Queen Elizabeth 11 bridge for a day and a half. As the Court noted the protest had caused significant disruption.
It was the length of the sentences that caused the issue. The original judge argued they were designed to deter protest. The Appeal judges noted that Parliament had passed a law on protest which provided for sentences up to 10 years for protests.
Lawyers representing Trowland and Decker argued that the sentences had a chilling effect on protest. The judges noted that the scale and impact of the protest was different to others.
The point of protest of course is to have an impact and change things. In the case of climate and oil many might suggest that this is important.
Laws are of course political and the one in use here was inspired by the current Home Secretary Suella Braverman who seems intent on banning as much protest as she can.
Britain has a long history of political sentencing. At Peterloo in 1819 the speaker Henry Hunt and others went to jail. The Magistrate who sent the Yeomanry in to cut down protesters for the vote William Hulton was commended and went on to form the Tory Party in West Lancashire.
Much more recently Shrewsbury building workers involved in a strike in the early 1970s. Those who have survived were recently pardoned. The trial and sentences were entirely political.
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