I posted this on Twitter yesterday:
Protestors seeking to draw attention to the desperate plight of our planet have been sent to prison for four to five years. And they were only planning a protest. They did not even cause disruption.
No one has been imprisoned for causing the global financial crisis.
No one is being imprisoned for polluting our rivers.
No one, so far, faces jail for the Post Office scandal.
And no one is being threatened with prosecution for permitting 230,000 deaths from Covid as a result of failed preparation.
Nor is anyone being threatened with prosecution for the mass pollution of our planet.
But for peaceful protest you can be described as a fanatic by a judge and be jailed for five years.
Is this the end of freedom of speech?
Is it just fascism in action?
Is it a sign of the madness of the end times of neoliberalism?
Or is it the state, captured by neoliberal interests, putting the right to make profit above human and democratic rights?
Maybe it is all those things.
And will Labour do anything about this? I very much doubt it. These judgements fit very nearly with their authoritarian views.
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
The plods decided to close a motorway, because of one or two people on a gantry. Why close it? Were they going to jump off onto traffic? Nope.
So why not leave them up there until tiredness/rain/cold drove them down. Taking this route would minimise disruption (sure traffic would slow to gawp but that’s all).
Hazarding a guess, discussions were had/instructions were issued and under the cloak of “‘ealth n safety” (whose health? whose safety?) the plods closed the motorway – thus providing a rationale (demonstrators cause massive disruption) to impose bonkers prison sentences.
If anybody cause “massive disruption” it was the plods (& the politicos that they may have been in cahoots with).
The intermperate language used by the judge shows the shape of things to come from what passes for the English establishment.
This will cause massive polarisation.
Apologies Mike, I do agree with your sentiment but speaking as a motorcyclist who was actually diverted away from the M25 on that day (it “cost” me about 15 minutes, max, no big deal), I do think the closure was appropriate. Falls happen.
Mr Hoare, you are of course correct with respect to falls. But they were wearing harnesses & were clipped on. Moving on & off the gantry – via ferrata stuff – always connected with one line. So yes, falls happen (& indeed equipment fails) but speaking as a ex-rock climber the risk they posed was close to zero from the point of view of “what happens if they fall off”.
Which of course then leaves the plods to catch them when they eventually climb down. My sympathies to all those delayed on that day – the fault lies 100% with the plods, not the demonstrators & the decision of the gov to demonise them rather than recognise that maybe, they have a point, As Ricahrd’s post makes clear, there is plenty of “in-plain-sight” law breaking going on- but it is always easier to crush small people.
Hopefully, bearing in mind all the reasons you give, these very harsh sentences will be overturned on appeal.
The Judge was very concerned about the economic cost.
One wonders if the judge has plans to address Quantitative Tightening and the deleterious effect it has on the economy. I’m going to guess he doesn’t, I admit…
It is precisely for calling for accountability in all the cases you enumerate that the neoliberal will see you as a fanatic. The neoliberal, after all, is merely doing what the market dictates, for which action there is no alternative. And who, but a fanatic, would hold someone accountable for taking the only reasonable course of action?
You may be right
But they are wrong
Has the problem « Establishment Bias » in our Legal System been noticeably mentioned in the main stream media?
* Advice from judge to jury to ignore defendants’ explanations to explain pro- environment actions.
*Use of Judge only trials for some political protestors (Mr.Craig Murray?)
* Pursuit and treatment of Mr Julian Assange
Might very much the most of the main stream media, not least the B. B. C., be under the intense influence/control of the « Fat Purse/Wallet » establishment?
I was going to say that the judiciary has been captured. But that’s probably not quite right as they are already part of that group of Public School – Oxbridge alumni who effortlessly make their way to the top in many professions, including politics and the law and seem to share many of the same attitudes, particularly in regards to the great unwashed.
The Social Mobility Commission and the Sutton Trust issued a report in 2019 which commented: “[The] report, Elitist Britain, shows that 65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school; 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge. The report describes judges as the ‘most socially exclusive groups of all the professions examined here’.”
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/senior-judges-most-socially-exclusive-of-all-professionals/5070720.article
The Chicgao Boys neoliberalism of the 70s involved very considerable brutality to meet the free market expectations of the dogma in South America.
Neoliberalism is ‘liberal’ only within very narrow confines.
It is pure corporatism.
The purpose of the state is to serve private property interests and this is the core of the mindset.
This extended Victorian class based and absolutist conservative property philosophies and neatly fitted the elite thinking of the Chicago and Austrian Schools.
There is an obscene irony in the disconnect between disproportionate protection of property and in sustaining economic activity through reduction of civil liberties in the 21stC, by comparison with the scale of property damage of sea level rise, but the law is both reactive, not pro-active, and deeply illogical.
It is astonishing – I mean some car crashes cause just as much delay on roads.
Then consider the current IT outage affecting so many systems, including flights, and the NHS. Will the programmers be held accountable for causing so much disruption – way more than a few people talking about walking slowly on a single road.
Sound points, well made. It is indeed a sign of the madness of the end-times.
In this end-of-Empire era, more extreme responses are seen to become necessary, both to draw attention to and challenge the madness, and by those hell-bent on maintaining the mad-times as long as possible. Think Roman Empire, or the former British Empire.
National systems of power – and by extension some, but not all, regional and global ones – are locked-up by our controllers. These are the tiny, impossibly-rich minority elite who are doing very well indeed from disaster capitalism.
They are supported in place by people who are also doing well by promoting or protecting our controllers’ interests – bought-and-paid-for politicians, destructive industries, propaganda-media, the military-industrial complex.
The lengthy, but inevitable demise of this frauduent, corrupt system – the Fall of the Anglo-American Empire – will be painful for all humanity.
In responding to the degrading of earth systems that is undermining human civilisation, the less-active options of resistance available to all of us are:
1) bear witness to the cataclysm and share knowledge with others, as Richard is doing
2) work with like-minded others where you live, for a sane alternative approach in your neighbourhood/district/country.
Following on from Mike Parr’s remark above, “This will cause massive polarisation.”
As a subscriber to the Just Stop Oil mailing list, at 16:31 yesterday they sent me an appeal for financial support for those convicted:
“The five are grappling with loss of earnings due to the 3-4 week trial and prior preparation, travel, accommodation and potential custodial sentences. They need your support.”
The appeal raised £12k in the first hour and now stands at over £36k donated by over 1,070 individuals, less than a mere 20 hours later. That’s just the beginning, I feel.
https://chuffed.org/project/support-the-five-on-trial-for-conspiracy
The charges I believe were for conspiracy. This opens the door for draconian sentencing but also under police Act 2022 for simply conducting an organising meeting that may lead to an act of public or economic disruption.
I hope I’ve read it wrong!
I think you probably read it right
Given the number of times that roads are closed daily because someone has decided to drive like a complete idiot and cause a collision I might usefully ask why these people dont get sent down for decades?
Thats before I start on those whose driving causes real risk of harm.
Nobody apart possibly from the protestors was going to get hurt in these cases