So, Are We Just Going to Let Ourselves Die?
Original article by Roger Hallam republished from Roger Hallam. I don’t have permission to republish this article but expect that it will be ok & he’s in prison.
The elites are blind, the media asleep — but the fuse of revolution has been lit, and history is about to turn.
Shortly before I was imprisoned last year, I had the privilege of joining a Zoom call with a man living in the Central American rainforest. He had been the primary fundraiser for the Social Forum, which, as some readers will recall, was the first international organisation of this century to call for a new global social system: “Another world is possible.” He told me, “Roger, when you go to see funders, tell them two things: First, that the money is not theirs, and second, that it will be worth nothing in ten years.”
This week, I recorded a message for one of the most radical Western companies funding climate crisis activism. I spoke to them about these two realities. Five years ago, perhaps even a year ago, they would have politely—or not so politely—shown us the door. But not now. My colleague was told the presentation was “magical,” information about funding a new global movement was shared with over 100 staff members, and a personal letter from me will be delivered by hand to the company’s founder, whose funds run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
At the same time, Just Stop Oil announced it would no longer engage in civil resistance. The media response has been significant, but none of it has focused on what really matters. I was sent a series of questions by Justin Rowlatt, the BBC environment correspondent. I replied to him with three main points. First, it is the evolution of a deep culture of respect, service, and trust that took us from three people in a room with a few quid to a household name, with thousands of arrests and millions of pounds in financial support, all within a year. Equally significant has been the unprecedented battering we have received, resulting in hundreds of people being imprisoned, many on multi-year sentences, including nearly all the key organisers. Nothing like this has happened to an open, nonviolent organisation in this country since the Napoleonic Wars.
A day or two later, the police battered down the door of Westminster Friends Meeting House in a raid to arrest a group of young people planning a protest. How many centuries would you have to go back to find this kind of treatment of the Quakers? The point, however, is this: it is only in the face of such state violence that the fearless personality is forged, prepared for the enormous sacrifices needed to bring down regimes.
Then there is the third, least important point, that obviously JSO has not been able to stop the metamachine of universal death that is the British carbon regime. Justin, in true neoliberal style, focused only on the third point: our “failure” – the superficial, the short-term, the flat material plane. He and the media cannot see cultural and spiritual depth.
The key determinants of regime change are now coming into place — large-scale funding, service-based culture, and the spirit of fearless sacrifice. There is one more ingredient. Ignored by the media is the “climate news” of the past 12 months, which is a hundred times worse than what provoked the mass mobilisation of Extinction Rebellion back in 2018. Underlying temperatures have jumped 0.2°C in a single year. We are now over 1.6°C and will be hitting 2°C by 2030. The carbon sinks are collapsing, and the feedbacks are triggered. Buried in the Appendix of the recent British Insurance Industry report is its prediction of 2 billion deaths at 2°C, and 4 billion at 3°C. That is half of the world’s population dead. This reality is about to explode upon us and trigger the fusion of the elements of revolutionary transformation.
Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent for the New York Times during the 1990s, told me a while ago that the reason why the elites do not see revolutions coming is because they only speak to themselves. They are stuck in their silo. Like Justin Rowlett and the BBC, they can only see what they want to see. The world is falling away beyond our feet. Trump is doing his stuff. They have no alternative but to resort to appeasement. And like in the 1930s, their dream world is about to be swept away.
So are we just going to have ourselves die? The deepest paradox of the present historical moment is that only when we have the courage to answer yes to that question, and so allow ourselves to experience the agonising depths of despair, desolation, and self-contempt, can we come to see and feel reality as it actually is, and so play our part in the coming re-making of the world.
To find out about this new global movement (we’re recruiting!) go to rev21.earth.
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Original article by Roger Hallam republished from Roger Hallam. I don’t have permission to republish this article but expect that it will be ok & he’s in prison.
Just Stop Oil’s harsh sentences are the logical outcome of Britain’s authoritarian turn against protest
Graeme Hayes, Aston University and Steven Cammiss, University of Birmingham Published: July 19, 2024
Lengthy prison sentences have been imposed on five Just Stop Oil activists for coordinating direct action on the M25, the main ring road around London. For a non-violent protest, there is no equivalent in modern times.
The five years for Roger Hallam and four years for the remaining four: Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Cressida Gethin and Lucia Whittaker de Abreu, have been widely condemned as grossly disproportionate. According to one snap poll, 61% of the public consider the sentences too harsh.
But nobody should be surprised: these sentences are a logical outcome of Britain’s authoritarian turn against protest over the past five years.
Protest in England and Wales was previously dealt with by the courts according to what we call Hoffmann’s Bargain. This meant protesters should accept their guilt in court, but their conscientiousness – along with the wider importance of disruptive protest to democracy – would be rewarded with lenient sentences.
This changed with the prosecution of the Stansted 15, who were charged and found guilty of terrorist-related offences for stopping a deportation flight in 2017. The 15 were sentenced to community service, fines, and for some, short suspended prison sentences. On appeal, the Court of Appeal threw out the charges in 2021, but at the same time hardened the general approach of the courts to protest, confirming that a key defence (known as necessity) was not available to protest defendants in court.
Making it harder for activists to defend themselves
Since then, three things have happened. First, other potential defences that protesters could rely on, including lawful excuse, have been systematically restricted by the Court of Appeal.
Second, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has sought where possible to bring more serious charges against protesters than used to be the case. In this they have been encouraged by new legislation brought in by the last government, notably the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022) and the Public Order Act (2023).
Third, judges have typically sought to control and reduce the time that defendants have in court to explain their motives to the jury, because – without a defence in law – the defendants’ arguments are, in legal terms, not relevant.
We saw each of these dynamics in the Just Stop Oil “Conspiracy 5” trial. Before 2018, public nuisance itself was barely used for protest offences, but the CPS now regularly brings this charge against peaceful protesters. But the charge of a conspiracy to cause public nuisance, which these five defendants faced, is a further escalation as it treats protest movements as a criminal enterprise, and does not allow a lawful excuse defence. As a consequence, the stakes are higher and the outcomes more serious.
In court, the defendants were unable to argue that they had a lawful excuse for their action (Hallam repeatedly tried to argue this in court, and was repeatedly shut down by the trial judge). Finally, although the defendants did manage to explain their motives to the jury, the jury had no opportunity to find them not guilty in law. Although juries still have the power to find defendants not guilty by making a moral rather than a legal decision, this is much harder and rarer.
The result is that the first part of Hoffmann’s Bargain is being abandoned. With no recourse to a defence in law, protest defendants are now regularly being found guilty. But the second part of the bargain, leniency at sentencing, is increasingly being forgotten.
A new benchmark
In April 2023, Just Stop Oil activists Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker were sentenced to three years and two years seven months in prison respectively after being convicted of public nuisance for disrupting the Dartford Crossing, a large bridge over the Thames to the east of London. Upheld by the Court of Appeal, these sentences have now become a benchmark.
In the Conspiracy 5 case, the trial judge explicitly cited this benchmark as the basis for the sentences he imposed, and any appeal against them will have to reckon with the Court of Appeal’s determination that they are fair.
This case brings into sharp focus two very contrasting visions of what a trial is, and what the criminal law is for. The courts are effectively treating protest trials as a legal flowchart, with a strict distinction between what is and what is not relevant on the shortest route to a verdict.
But defendants often see the courts as a place where they can make urgent arguments about moral values and social justice. Rather than a public nuisance, they consider their actions a public service. By not allowing defendants to account for their actions properly, the courts create an artificial separation between law and politics, and diminish the democratic agency of juries.
By imposing prison sentences on non-violent protesters, they impose authoritarian responses to pressing social problems.
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Graeme Hayes, Reader in Political Sociology, Aston University and Steven Cammiss, Associate Professor, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Vigil for GP jailed over Just Stop Oil protest
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpq7j5z85z1o
Scores of people took part in a city centre vigil for a GP jailed over his role in a Just Stop Oil protest.
Dr Patrick Hart, 38, was sentenced to 12 months in prison in January after causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to 16 fuel pumps at a service station in Essex in August 2022.
In March, Dr Hart also had his General Medical Council registration suspended for an interim 12-month period, and faces a possible further suspension following his release.
About 150 people, including former colleagues and patients, gathered at Cascade Steps in Bristol on Saturday to raise awareness of his sentence.
Dr Romola Pocock, a GP and former colleague of Dr Hart’s at Bridge View Medical Practice, said he had shown “care, integrity and dedication” to his job and was “greatly missed by patients and colleagues”.
Fellow GP at the practice Dr Emily Pollard said: “Will history remember doctors who stood against the destruction of the health of our planet as criminals?”
Dr Hart was arrested after hitting petrol pumps with a hammer, spraying them with orange pain and “obstructed or otherwise interfered with the refuelling of vehicles”, and was found guilty of causing criminal damage.
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Original article continues at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpq7j5z85z1o
JSO hang up the hi-vis – Greenpeace response
In response to Just Stop Oil’s announcement this morning Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said:
“The history of democracies is built by groups of people like the Suffragettes, trade unionists, gay rights campaigners and anti-fracking activists who were brave enough to make themselves unpopular for a cause they believed in. With the benefit of hindsight we can see the debt we owe each of them for giving us rights and liberties, and protecting the things we care about.
“Whether you want to stand up for our planet against polluting profiteers, or save your local library from council spending cuts, the freedom to make your voice heard is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Just Stop Oil paid a heavy price for raising their voices at a time when politicians and corporations are trying to silence peaceful protesters – in the streets and in the courts. We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away, because it is the right that all other rights depend upon. Greenpeace and many others will continue to defend this proud tradition of taking action on issues that matter to make change possible.”
