Five Just Stop Oil protesters, including one of its co-founders, have been jailed for conspiring to organise protests that blocked the M25 motorway.
Roger Hallam, an environmental activist who was one of the founding members of the group, agreed to causing disruption to traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the motorway for four successive days in November 2022.
The 58-year-old was joined by Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, as they were all sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.
Hallam was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while the remaining four defendants were each handed four years’ imprisonment.
Apparently, a journalist from the Sun recorded one of their planning sessions and gave it to the police.
Judge Christopher Hehir said the Zoom call showed ‘how intricately planned the disruption was and the sophistication involved’, and was ‘compelling evidence’ of the existence of a conspiracy.
The caterwauling on the Just Stop Oil account on X is a fun read.
Roger Hallam gives a harrowing hilarious account of the proceedings.
H/T strativarius, fraizer, j-boles
Great, only the UK has no prison space and serious offenders are going to get released after serving 40%. Low threat offenders like this will be out in months or suspended on appeal.
He will still be dumb for life most likely.
Plenty little islands off the west coast of Scotland, give them a tent and a bucket and they can live their delusion for the duration of their sentence.
Exactly. At best since they’re the types who advocate a simpler, non-polluting lifestyle, they should be provided with a small tent and sleeping bag and incarcerated in a rural area surrounded by one or more barbed wire enclosures. Food, water and cooking utensils should be provided so that they can demonstrate how well they can survive at the subsistence levels they want to force upon others.
Without fossil fuels or is that too harsh? 😉
They can burn their own dried faeces.
Put all of them on the same island.
Provide them with 5 gallons of kerosene.
Let them fight over its use.
(and every time one of their supporters tries to sneak them supplies, using FF of any kind, the supporter is added to the island.)
I foresee a great “reality TV” series based on this. The BBC, having promulgated such people, will not think twice before dumping on them as they receive their just deserts.
More seriously, and unfortunately, as others point out, they will get the sentences reduced on appeal.
But the very threat of really doing some time will probably work on most of such comfortable upper middle class wannabe eco-terrorists. Their parents tend to hale from the professional classes and the message might eventually begin to filter down. The UK animal-rights retards became a bit quieter when that happened. The judiciary eventually realised that people had had enough of their antics.
Why supply them with anything that requires oil for production?
No. Not instead of a sentence. Send them there after their sentence is finished and make sure they never receive the dole..
they should also be given a large bag of seeds and a rug. The seeds would have a large red tag stating: “for sowing, not eating” The rug? A prayer rug, to pray for a long warm growing season – much warmer than the 1.5 C pittance they already acknowledge.
Send them to prison farms in Siberia!
They should be sentenced for LIFE! Forced to actually live the LIFE they are trying to impose on us. No oil, nor any products produced by oil.
Now its necessary for anyone inconvenienced and who lost financially during the delays he caused to commence a class civil action against them and make them penniless.
They probably already are. It’s their backers who need to be made penniless.
They are the greatest allies of skeptics. It’s so easy to dismiss them and their views and consider them just whack jobs.
Yes, but unfortunately this does not lead anywhere. For the same reason the well known IngSoc slogan is not a vulnerability of IngSoc.
Everyone with half a brain already knows it’s nonsense, but either does not care or cannot do anything about it.
I admit I didn’t read everything he said that closely.
He talked about times for other crimes.
He never said why what he and his co-conspirators did was not ALSO a crime that deserves time.
A socialist never confronts his own misdeeds.
Hallam has done well for himself out of JSO. A failed eco farmer in Wales he now owns an expensive house in London.
He’s going to living in The Big House.
(American slang for prison.)
He talked about times for other crimes.
The only thing I get from his complaint about that is that sentences for violent crimes are too light.
At some point, if it hasn’t happened already, a person will die because of these disruptions. Then the whole lot of protesters at that action will be on the hook for murder. Can’t say I would like to see someone die to get satisfaction though.
It has already happened. JSO activists prevented an ambulance from taking a stroke victim to hospital. The delay was fatal.
Could they be charged involuntary manslaughter?
Given they claim the world is about to end, maybe they think it’s a life sentence 🙂
+10 to Eric !
I shoved it up to “11” – Spinal Tap, eh!
Using whatever the British equivalent of RICO against those who funded Just Stop Oil would be more effective. Jailing the frontmen is insufficient.
I disagree. These prison sentences will dissuade other Middle-Class tossers from joining the JSO ranks.
Unless these idiots become martyrs
I feel this five years in prison is inappropriate. He should have been given five years in a mental institution. That option would avoid the overcrowded jails which are releasing prisoners after just a fraction of the sentence time handed down. A secure mental asylum on the other hand, would ensure he does the full five years.
Do they have mental asylums in the UK as we once did here in the USA? Now we just have prisons for criminals and for crazy people who break the law.
Crazy people who break the law are let loose in Australia with a requirement for ‘treatment’ … and so it goes on.
I would have sentenced them to five years without access to the benefits of oil and gas.
They be naked since most cloth is made from synthetic fibers. Cotton and wool are still available but expensive.
Cotton & wool are produced using FF. So no clothes for them!
Hallam’s long rambling rant on his X account is built on the belief that he is listening to people who have their science correct. He does not realize that he and his ilk are in a cult—they do not understand how scientific discourse works. The realist/skeptic side was never given a fair hearing in government or the mass media to name a few.
He is going to prison because of scientific illiteracy and stubborn blind faith.
He is going to prison for wrecking the national economy.
It can’t be overstated how disruptive to the movement of goods and people his colleagues who climbed up the Dartford Crossing bridge was.
I live in Dartford. The town and surrounding area was gridlocked for two days. That includes access to the surrounding roads network; the M20 motorway to and from Dover, the A2 into and out of London, the M25 London orbital motorway, the M11, A1M and the M23, all major motorway routes north and south.
There was access to the Dartford ‘Tunnel’. It has two tunnels of two lane traffic each, normally in one direction as the bridge usually carries traffic in the opposite direction. The tunnel had to revert to it’s original designation i.e. two lanes in each direction with contraflows introduce further along the M25.
Just to provide a comparison, several years ago the bridge was shut because of a lorry fire on the M25 motorway. It took several hours to clear. I drove through the tunnel before the mayhem began and reached my destination 5 or 6 miles away with an hour or so delay.
It took me twelve hours to travel the 5 or 6 miles home. I could have, or perhaps should have, gone cross country through London but no one expects a 12 hour delay and I couldn’t get off the motorway once on it.
Bearing in mind this was just one day, and the clearance of a blockage that lasted only several hours. Hallam’s nutty crowd caused around 48 hours of delay. Around 50% of the M25 from Potters Bar in the north (A1M) to Redhill (M23) was at a complete standstill for the whole time and traffic didn’t clear for about another 12 hours.
The financial cost is incalculable. 50,000 hours of delay is nowhere near the disruption caused.
NUTS!! ZEROS!!
Lock ’em UP!
Just looked back on local news. I was wrong, it was four days, not two.
96 hours of mayhem.
I absolutely agree! (of all people I am actually most mad at journalists on topics like global warming.. no climate change is something very different ad we can talk about it as soon as CO2 contribution and feedback uncertainties are they known much more precisely as they are now..Don t journalists have a moral obligation to check facts before publishing!?)
Either way, the punishment seems harsh. .being an idiot and unrepentant might not have helped.
What is the actual crime they got judged for and what is a typical range of punishment for that?
The internet says his crime was “conspiring to cause a public nuisance” which seems a very specific term!?
Uh I believe I found it:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd051027/gold-2.htm
By section 137 of the Highways Act 1980 it is a summary offence punishable by a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale wilfully to obstruct free passage along a highway. Section 1 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 creates a crime of harassment, punishable summarily by imprisonment for a maximum of six months and a fine on scale 5. If the harassment involves repeated threats of violence the defendant is liable under section 4, on conviction on indictment, to five years’ imprisonment and a fine.
(I think he got the maximum possible, but maybe I misunderstand the British law.. there is also a section about bombs with 7years punishment)
According to the Daily Telegraph this morning, “conspiring to cause a public nuisance” is an offence under a new law passed by parliament last year in an effort to discourage the very sort of behaviour that they’ve been convicted of.
The severity of the penalties is deliberate and takes into account the widespread suffering that these idiots inflict on everyone else. It was difficult to know what to prosecute them for previously and anything they could be prosecuted for carried only light penalties, usually fines.
No wonder they’re squealing; justice has been done.
well, the link I sent mentions cases since the 18th century
These mongrels got off easy in my view. One of these days they are going to block a road that doesn’t just have your every day fella trying to get to work. They will stop someone like a Hells Angel or Bandido and they will get the living crap beat out of them. And it will be well deserved.
Or, they may stop some old grumpy wilfred brimley type guy in Panama and get a little more than they deserve.
A town called Crayford, only 2 or 3 miles from the Dartford Bridge is, or was, home to one of the principle Hells Angels Chapters in the UK.
Years ago the Hells Angels held a summer rally in my hometown, they were actually pretty well behaved. When my wife and I got married we rented a trailer in a run down trailer park. Unbeknownst to us we lived right next door to the Bandidos. Didn’t take us long to figure that out, They treated us fine but they were always fighting amongst themselves. Mostly fist fights but one knife fight and we heard gun shots one night. The cops never showed up at their house. We were there less than a year.
These people don’t realise they are just useful idiots.
You found a use for them?
China and Russia did.
While they are in UK prisons, circulate rumors that they desecrated Korans over oil production. The problem will take care of itself.
It’s a start.
WELL DONE !! 🙂
As we would say down here.. “About bloody time !”
(please excuse expletive) 😉
Item #2 of Roger’s 4 point GHG impact summary, as Roger tried to explain to the jury:
So for the “first time”, not the second time or the third time, “a group of people … are responsible for destroying everything forever”.
With logic like that how could the judge & jury not accept that his actions were for the greater good, and therefore the standard community rules could, and should, be legally ignored.
(The threat, to other inmates that act out, should be that Roger will be placed in the cell next to theirs.)
This makes me wonder whether infamous Archimedes Plutonium is one of their “experts”.
Ok, did they get the living sh*t beat out of them?
They should have been given hard labour and unpleasant dirty work that the peasants have to do to teach them some humilty and how to be considerate.
Not to mention the error in his fundamental premise. Maybe he will come out smarter.
Hallam and his unhinged disciples deserve life for criminal levels of gullibility. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to mingle with polite society.
Though I am a fair bit older, than Roger, I say he is an delusional old fart, indoctrinated with pseudo science. He quoted UN “…UN has said we have two years in which to make radical changes…”. Wasn’t it also UN which issued a warning in 1989, when Noel Brown from UN warned world’s governments to take action by 2000, or coastal cities will be flooded, whole nations will disappear and 50 million eco refugees were going to move poll-wards, because tropics will become uninhabitable? Also, someone should ask him to stop breathing, because he is polluting the planet with that “deadly” CO2, which he is so worried about. What a simpleton!
They won’t want any petroleum jelly then
Some big ol’ dudes will have him playing “drop the soap” in no time at all.
Best news for ages. The watermelons should have been locked up for longer.
They should bring back stocks for these nuisances.
The moral to the story is don’t hold up a few Tesla drivers running out of charge or you’ll be charged.
In fairness, i think those prison sentences are way too long. I think the judge wanted to send a message to stop these actions taking place in the future. Will it stop them? Im not sure. Will it be used to prop up their justification f their actions by claiming the ‘system’ is against them? Absolutely..
From the terrorism act of 2000
”Terrorism: interpretation.
(1)
In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where—
(a)
the action falls within subsection (2),
(b)
the use or threat is designed to influence the government [F1or an international governmental organisation] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
(c)
the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious [F2, racial] or ideological cause.
(2)
Action falls within this subsection if it—
(a)
involves serious violence against a person,
(b)
involves serious damage to property,
(c)
endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d)
creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e)
is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
(3)
The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.
“