The Times Editorials on the Tolpuddle Martyrs (March 1834) to Just Stop Oil (July 2024)
190 years have passed by The Times is still in favour of stiff sentences for those who have the temerity to organise and protest
The Times Editorial on the Tolpuddle Martyrs (21st March 1834) makes interesting reading. It said (in part):
The offence of swearing agricultural labourers, and binding them to the observance of an illegal oath, by ceremonial partaking of mingled folly, superstition and ferocity was brought home to the accused and the conviction was followed by a sentence of transportation for seven years against the whole of them, six in number. This sentence as regards the poor deluded men who are the objects of it seems to us too severe, but it may be useful if spreads alarm among those more powerful and acute disturbers of the town populations throughout England who combine in spite of high wages and whose combinations are as destructive to honest workmen as they are to all but the richest masters.
Meanwhile The Times has Editorialised on prison sentences for Just Stop Oil protesters (20th July 2024)
..Labour backbenchers and climate activists are among those calling the sentences draconian and clamouring for government intervention. Wisely, and constitutionally, Ministers say that is impossible. Nor will they repeal the new laws aimed at stopping attempts to paralyse cities, deface cultural monuments and disrupt public life. A strong signal has been sent. Just Stop Oil is not above the law.
In 1834 The Times was the paper of middle class radicalism, the Whigs (later Liberals) sending a message to working class radicals that there were limits to protest and the Martyrs sentence reminded of the consequences of exceeding them.
In 2024 The Times is the paper of the middle class but certainly not even vaguely radical. Even so the Editorial song remains the same. The Just Stop Oil Zoom call was not really the issue in the sentences passed. It was sending a message to other protesters that was the point.
The problem The Times has is that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were returned from Australia after a mass campaign. However set in stone the paper thinks the JSO sentences are they can also be overturned by protest. It’s called democracy
These laws of Public Nuisance, came from input from Policy Exchange, a Tufton Street dark funded think tank.
The last Tory “net zero minister”, Countinho worked for them.
It’s oil barons laws, administered by bias judges.