WORLD WORLDWIDE UK uk UnitedKingdom - news journal UPDATE - (en) UK, ACG: Just Stop Oil- Scrap the Prison Sentences (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Last week, five  members of Just Stop Oil (JSO), the  so-called Whole

Truth Five, were given  harsh prison sentences for their part in
allegedly organising a protest on the UK's M25 motorway against the
granting of new oil and gas licenses in November 2022. Roger Hallam,
seen by the authorities and by the sentencing judge, Chrisopher Hehir,
as the leader of JSO , received 5 years in prison, whilst four others,
received terms of 4 years in prison. They were found guilty of
conspiracy to cause a public nuisance under the new Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Act. This was mainly on the evidence of a Sun
journalist who had infiltrated a meeting of the group.

This week, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were found guilty  by the
same judge of criminal damage after  throwing soup which covered the
glass over Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers, the month before. They will
be sentenced on 27th September.

Judge "Dread" Hehir refused in both trials to  accept fears over the
climate collapse as justification for the actions.  The motivations
were, he said, no defence against the charges against them. He went on
to say that evidence relating to climate change would be "constricted"
in his court, and that the world has exceeded the safe level of 1.5°C
for 12 consecutive months was "neither here nor there". So, the
defendants were not allowed to explain their motives to the jury. When
they attempted to do so, four of them were repeatedly re-arrested and
dragged from the dock to the cells.  Outside, 11 others were arrested
for contempt of court, just for holding placards reading  "Jurors
deserve to hear the whole truth" and "Jurors have an absolute right to
acquit a defendant according to their conscience".  Those arrested will
be tried in September, and face prison for up to two years, and/or a fine.

Sentencing the five, "Dread" Hehir said, "The plain fact is that each of
you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to
fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should
be done about climate change."

The Act can just as much be used against strikers on picket lines or
blockades of workplaces as it could against climate activists. Back in
July 2021, the then Labour shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds
attacked the Act because it destroyed the right to protest. Now that
they are in power, Labour is refusing to repeal the Police Act and the
Public Order Act. Similarly, Labour promised much in the way of
legislation on green issues, then promptly made a massive U-turn, on the
grounds of costing too much, even before it had got into power. A little
before the election, Keir Starmer went on LBC radio to say that Labour
were pushing for longer sentences for climate protestors and that "they
need to feel the force of law."

Responding immediately to the sentencing, Labour's Armed Forces Minister
Luke Pollard  endorsed the vicious sentencing, and stated, "'I'm glad
that there's now been a strong message sent to them, and anyone thinking
about that type of disruptive protest in the future, that there'll be
serious consequences if they go down that path."

As the ACG said back in 2019 about Extinction Rebellion (XR), from which
JSO split, "It is clear that the political establishment intends to
counter XR in a drastic way...This will mean increasingly heavy-handed
actions against XR protestors, increasing fines and imprisonment, and
the characterisation of XR in the bourgeois media as extremists." The
same applies to JSO.

We stand in solidarity with those sentenced and soon to be sentenced,
and call for the scrapping of the sentences. We have criticisms of the
politics of Just Stop Oil, but this does not mean we  do not condemn
their treatment. As we said back in 2019 about XR, the same criticism of
which can be levelled against JSO: "Despite much from the anarchist
movement on the dangers of climate change going back to the 1960s, it
has not managed to engage with the mass of the population and has not
succeeded in creating a large movement against climate change. XR has
been successful in this, on the other hand, at least in the short term,
and has drawn thousands into action. We can offer our criticisms, we can
condemn their sterile actions, but at the end of the day they have been
able to mobilise where we have not, and they have been able to highlight
the dangers of climate change like never before."

  JSO fail to link the climate crisis to its root cause, capitalism
itself. They engage in shows of love for the police and the legal
system, for instance, shouting out to the judge after sentencing that
"We love you." This  fundamentalist strategy of non-violence is laughed
at by the State and its servants. Hehir was to say in court, "I do not
regard your status as non-violent direct action protesters as affording
you any particular mitigation." In other words, an assumption could be
made that you might as well be h

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/07/27/just-stop-oil-scrap-the-prison-sentences/
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