Five Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters have been jailed for their involvement in protests on the M25 which forced police to shut the motorway, causing widespread traffic.
On Nov. 9, 2022, drivers “suffered hours of delay” when activists climbed the gantries of the motorway during a protest which Judge Shane Collery, KC, said was done to “create mass disruption so Just Stop Oil would benefit from the media interest it would create.”
Sentencing five of the six defendants to between one year and eight months and two years in prison, Collery said at Basildon Crown Court on Thursday, “Your actions were disproportionate to your aims.”
Noting that the defendants were either recent graduates, students, or retirees, the judge added that “it’s easy to be blase and dismissive when it’s not your life that’s being disrupted.” He accepted that while they were not the organisers of the protest, they were ”willing volunteers.”
Activists Waved and Blew Kisses
The judge sentenced George Simonson, 24, of Leeds, to two years’ imprisonment. Simonson waved to the public gallery and smiled as he was led away.
Theresa Higginson, 26, of Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, was also sentenced to two years in jail. As Higginson was being led away, she shouted—in reference to information heard earlier during proceedings—that her vegan diet “did not make me ill.”
Twenty-four-year-old Paul Bell from Exeter was sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison, and waved and blew kisses as he was take to the cells.
Two retirees were also jailed for one year and eight months each. Collery told Gaie Delap, 77, of Bristol, and Paul Sousek, 73, of Bude in Cornwall that “age, I regret, has not brought wisdom.”
The only defendant to avoid jail time was 25-year-old Daniel Johnson from Perth and Kinross in Scotland, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison, suspended for 24 months. Johnson was ordered to pay £750 in costs and complete 200 hours of unpaid work.
The judge described Johnson as the “only defendant with a realistic prospect of rehabilitation,” noting that the remorse he had expressed over his actions was genuine.
Extinction Rebellion Co-Founder Jailed
The sentences come less than a month after five JSO protesters—including Roger Hallam, the co-founder of JSO and Extinction Rebellion—were jailed for conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance by blocking the M25 across four days in November 2022.On July 18 at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, to four years’ imprisonment. Hallam, 58, was sentenced to five years in jail.
During a Zoom call on Nov. 2, 2022, which had been obtained by a Sun journalist, all five defendants were seen to agree to cause disruption to traffic by having activists climb the gantries.
Prosecutors had said that the M25 protests, where 45 people had climbed onto gantries, resulted in an economic cost of at least £765,000 and cost the Metropolitan Police Service more than £1.1 million. The protests had caused more that 50,000 hours of driving delays, leaving the UK’s busiest motorway compromised for more than 120 hours.
Hehir said during sentencing: “The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.
Soup Thrown at Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’
Two other JSO activists also face jail for throwing a can of tomato soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” on Oct. 14, 2022.The artwork was protected by glass and the painting itself was unmarked, but prosecutors said they caused as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the painting’s frame.
Hehir, also presiding over this case, said Holland and Plummer “came within the width of a pane of glass of destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world.”
Plummer and Holland were released on bail until sentencing on September 27, with the judge warning them to arrive in court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison on that date.”
