{"id":229174,"date":"2024-04-16T11:57:13","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T11:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/?p=229174"},"modified":"2024-04-16T11:57:13","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T11:57:13","slug":"jail-for-holding-a-placard-protest-over-the-climate-crisis-is-being-brutally-suppressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/jail-for-holding-a-placard-protest-over-the-climate-crisis-is-being-brutally-suppressed\/","title":{"rendered":"Jail for holding a placard? Protest over the climate crisis is being brutally suppressed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Y<\/span>ears ago, when Dr\u00a0Sarah Benn recognised the scale of the climate crisis, she made sure that she was doing all the right things. She recycled, she went vegan, she stopped flying, she voted Green, she signed petitions. It was because she didn\u2019t see real change happening, despite doing all those things, that she then went further. She glued her hand to a building. She sat down in front of an oil terminal. And she stood on a grass verge with a handwritten sign, saying, \u201cStop New Oil\u201d.<\/p>\n

Benn\u2019s story will be pretty familiar to anyone with a passing interest in the current wave of climate protest. This wave grew out of deep frustration with existing avenues for change. And it did feel, for a time, as if these protests might be a catalyst for the wider shift that so many people recognised was urgently needed. The marches and sit-downs sparked so much sympathy and curiosity, even with politicians from Michael Gove<\/a> to Dawn Butler<\/a>. I remember walking along a street on an Extinction Rebellion march in 2019 and people were cheering from their windows. A big part of all the early protests was outreach, with protesters talking to people on the streets, in communities and workplaces, and finding eager responses.<\/p>\n

This hopeful sense of engagement is hard to find now. Its disappearance is often blamed on the protesters themselves. Aren\u2019t they too disruptive? Too white? Too young? Too old? Too disconnected from politics? Too political? You can put the blame with them, and, for sure, protesters make mistakes, but you also have to recognise the impact of the backlash. Because where many of us saw great hope for change, others saw only a threat. And because they saw only a threat, they acted quickly to undermine and marginalise it.<\/p>\n

The legal response to protest in the UK has been transformed<\/a> at an astonishing pace. Actions have been newly criminalised; locking on, carrying glue to protests<\/a>, walking slowly in the road. The growth in the use of private injunctions has enabled corporations to impose crippling fines for, say, blocking certain roads or sitting down at oil\u00a0terminals.<\/p>\n

Existing crimes have been escalated, so that what once might have attracted a small fine, such as sitting down in a road, can now lead quickly to prison<\/a>. Defences are being stripped away; some protesters have been told by judges that they may not even mention the climate emergency in court, and are imprisoned if they do so. Long custodial sentences are becoming normalised.<\/p>\n

While many people are happily going along with this repression, thinking that it\u2019s necessary to stop disruption, or that it only affects a few extremists, the direction of travel is fast and frightening and its repercussions are growing.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to Benn. Not only did she spend more than 30 days in prison for protests, including holding that placard on a grass verge near an oil terminal, the 57-year-old is now facing an unprecedented development, a hearing by the General Medical Council<\/a> this week to decide whether she should be struck off<\/a>, or lose her licence to practise medicine, because of her criminal convictions for climate activism.<\/p>\n

Last week, I was at a conference at the Queen Mary University of London\u2019s School of Law where the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, talked of his grave concern<\/a> about the situation in the UK, and how such action against doctors might amount to \u201cpenalisation, persecution and harassment\u201d.<\/p>\n

This week also sees the start of another hearing, this time at the high court, of another woman. Trudi Warner is a 69-year-old retired social worker who silently held up a sign outside a court reminding jurors of their right to acquit.<\/p>\n

In the eyes of hundreds of supporters<\/a>, who have now mimicked her action, Warner was simply trying to uphold the right to a fair trial in response to those who are currently trying to undermine it. But in our newly repressive culture, she is facing the possibility of a severe sentence for contempt of court. And last week, new serious disruption prevention orders<\/a> came into force, which threaten to escalate still further the powers of the police to track and control protesters\u2019 movements and contacts.<\/p>\n

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