Whether you agree with their actions or not, the sentencing of the Just Stop Oil protesters signals an increasingly authoritarian approach to dissent that prioritises public order over the right to advocate for critical issues such as climate change.

For the past 18 months, prisons in England and Wales have been operating at 99 percent capacity, with 100 new inmates added each week. Keir Starmer has called the crisis “shocking” and worse than feared. Police chiefs warn that overcrowded prisons could soon cripple basic law and order. Meanwhile, five Just Stop Oil protesters have been sentenced to a collective 21 years in prison. Found guilty of conspiring to cause public nuisance, these activists face longer sentences than some individuals convicted of violent crimes with knives and guns. The sentencing has sparked serious concerns about the integrity of democracy in Britain as our prison system teeters on the brink of collapse.

Many see the unprecedented prison sentences of four and five years for planning four days of motorway disruption as a chilling attack on free expression and civil disobedience, both fundamental to a healthy democracy.

“Today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest,” said Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders. He suggested that the “purely punitive and repressive nature” of the sentences might violate the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.

Immediately after the sentencing, notable figures, including broadcaster and environmentalist Chris Packham, Green peer Jenny Jones, Dale Vince, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Labour MP Clive Lewis, called for an urgent meeting with the new Attorney General, Richard Hermer KC. Packham described the sentencing as a “grotesque miscarriage of justice,” expressing fears that such repressive measures could set a dangerous precedent for future protests. He said he felt “physically sick” about the sentencing and fears that peaceful protests may “escalate” and that the law may be applied to other groups. “It’s important that we do everything we can now as rapidly as possible, given that this case has reached a level of international condemnation, to make sure that these laws are repealed, and more sensible laws are put in place, Packham told the Byline Times podcast.

More than 1,200 artists, athletes, and academics condemned the sentences in an open letter to the Attorney General, labelling the imprisonment of the activists as one of the greatest injustices in modern British judicial history. Signatories, including former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and musicians Chris Martin and Annie Lennox, argued that these non-violent protesters were performing a crucial service by alerting the nation to the severe risks of climate change. “With prisons at breaking point and the new government acting urgently to address this, how can these sentences be seen as anything other than insanity?” they asked.

Disruption or moderation?

Outrage aside, Just Stop Oil’s protest methods, including throwing tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and gluing themselves to the wall of the National Gallery, divide public opinion on whether disruption or moderation is more effective for driving change. Observer columnist Sonia Sodha argues that in this “climate crusade,” the urgent needs of the road users affected by the protests were overlooked. While she acknowledges that a five-year prison sentence is excessively harsh and calls for scrutiny of whether the sentences for these offences are proportionate within the broader criminal justice system, she contends that suggesting freedom of conscience provides an “unlimited right to cause harm to other citizens” fails to address the nature of the offence. 

Sodha’s point is understandable. It’s easy to sympathise with a motorist trying to get to work and feeling frustrated by Just Stop Oil protestors holding them up. But then again, being temporarily delayed in traffic could be considered a minor inconvenience compared to the critical need for climate action that Just Stop Oil highlights. Love them or loathe them, their provocative actions certainly succeed in bringing climate action to the forefront of media coverage. Although most headlines are critical and denounce their methods, in a media landscape that often underplays the urgency of the climate crisis, any press might be considered beneficial.

A substantial body of academic literature suggests that radical activism can benefit the environment overall, challenging the common objection to protests like ‘SoupGate’ (the tomato soup thrown at Van Gogh’s painting) that such actions are counterproductive and alienate potential supporters. Research from the Social Change Lab indicates that radical climate protests succeed because they make the demands of moderate groups appear more reasonable, thereby shifting public perception on issues that previously seemed extreme. People might dislike Just Stop Oil or find climate activists annoying, but this doesn’t necessarily harm the climate movement, it could even benefit it.

Erosion of Protest Rights

Whether you agree with their actions or not, the sentencing of the Just Stop Oil protesters – resulting in the longest jail terms ever handed down in the UK for non-violent protest, exceeding those given for scaling the Dartford Crossing – signals an increasingly authoritarian approach to dissent that prioritises public order over the right to advocate for critical issues such as climate change.

Amy Cameron, Greenpeace UK’s programme director, described the sentences as a result of “years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric, and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience.” She called on the Labour government to address this issue by restoring the right to protest, which has been steadily eroded.

In recent years, successive Conservative governments have aggressively targeted protesters. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, rushed through Parliament in 2021, granted police tougher powers to crack down on protests.

The passing of the bill sparked widespread concern about its impact on the right to protest. More than 150 groups, including human rights charities, unions, and faith communities, warned that the new powers represented an attack on fundamental citizen rights.

Sacha Deshmukh, CEO of Amnesty International UK, described the Policing Bill as being part of a “hugely worrying and widespread attack on human rights from across government which will not only see basic rights reduced across the board, but will also strip people of the means to challenge or contest their treatment.”

In its report on the bill,  the Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights called the proposals “oppressive and wrong”. It accused the government of trying to create “new powers in areas where the police already have access to powers and offences which are perfectly adequate.”

Labour vowed to oppose the bill. The then-shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper described the legislation as “rushed” and warned it would create “incredibly widely-drawn” powers, which would “allow the police to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, including passers-by, people on the way to work and peaceful protesters.”

Despite Labour’s opposition, the bill became law in 2022, allowing police to impose conditions on protests and criminalise public nuisance. Police can now set a start and finish time, set noise limits, and apply these rules to a demonstration by just one person. The new law also includes an offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.”

In 2023, further changes to the Public Order Act were pushed through by Patel’s successor, Suella Braverman. The changes mean that police can now restrict or stop a protest if they believe it could cause “more than minor disruption to the life of the community”. They have the power to arrest anyone taking part in a protest, or even anyone encouraging others to take part. Targeting climate activists specifically, Braverman argued the new laws were needed to target slow-marching protests from climate activists Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

The changes were widely condemned. Labour MP Nadia Whittome described the Public Order Act as a “threat to our democracy.” “The Public Order Act is yet another authoritarian power-grab by a desperate government hellbent on silencing dissent. Like the Tory Party itself, it deserves to be consigned to the history books,” she wrote for openDemocracy.

In opposition, Labour certainly made the right noise in opposing the Tories’ ‘draconian’ assault on the right to protest. But will they be as forthcoming in repealing the two Acts passed by the Tory government – both conceived by Priti Patel when she was home secretary, and, in the latter case, pushed through by her successor, Suella Braverman?

Keir Starmer and his government have yet to show a commitment to reversing these repressive measures. Labour’s reluctance may stem from the difficulty of undoing established legislation, no matter how repressive. Alternatively, it could indicate that Starmer and home secretary Yvette Cooper share similar disdain for disruptive protests as Patel and Braverman. Only time will tell whether Labour will genuinely champion the right to protest or continue the repressive measures they once opposed. 

Right-Wing Media Watch – Right-wing press go berserk over Labour’s plans for immigration

The right-wing media’s brief honeymoon with the new Labour government has come to a screeching halt.  David Yelland, a former editor of the Sun, warned that Murdoch’s News UK’s endorsement of Labour just before the general election was “calculated” and came too late to make a real difference. “It’s important for Starmer and those around him to understand that the two most powerful newspaper groups, News UK and [Daily Mail owners] Associated Newspapers, are not his friends,” Yelland said. “They’ll never be his friends.”

His words ring true it seems, as just weeks into Starmer’s premiership, these media outlets are already in an uproar, using their favourite bugbear to stir up trouble – immigration.

Immigration is indeed an important issue, but numerous studies and polls show it’s not considered the most urgent by the British public. A YouGov poll in December found just one in five Britons thought immigration was one of the top issues facing the country. An earlier study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London ranked Britain as the most accepting of new arrivals on an international league table.

Yet for the right-wing media, immigration has long been used to generate reactionary headlines and push anti-migrant rhetoric. It could be argued that much of the anxiety about immigration in Britain is fuelled by the two dominant newspaper groups in print circulation.

The tactic was glaringly evident in the Daily Mail this week, with a headline proclaiming: “Now Labour opens the door to giving asylum to 70,000.” The article spoke of the “tens of thousands of illegal migrants” set to get asylum after Yvette Cooper scrapped the Rwanda scheme.

The Express, which, along with the Mail and Telegraph, remained preoccupied with Nigel Farage and his anti-immigration Reform UK during the election campaign, echoed the same alarmist tone. “Labour has already made its first grievous error – and is playing a dangerous game,” read the paper’s headline this week. The article criticised Labour’s dismissal of the Rwanda bill as a “gimmick,” and mocked their replacement with a “supposedly beefed-up Border Security Command.”

“Why this should be any more successful than what already exists in stopping the small boats is anybody’s guess,” the article stated hyperbolically.

The supposedly Labour-endorsing Sun was similarly condemnatory, headlining ‘90k illegal migrants due to be sent to Rwanda will be given chance to stay as Labour will fast-track their asylum claims.”

You would think that the likes of the Sun, Mail, and Express would have finally given up on the discredited Rwanda scheme, given its failure. When the government first advanced the bill to send migrants to Rwanda in April 2022, the then-home secretary Priti Patel promised it would “change the way we collectively tackle illegal migration.” Two years later, migrants were stating on live TV the scheme would not deter them, UN officials were warning it would harm Britain’s global standing by violating international law, and the government’s own spending watchdog all but confirmed it was economically unfeasible, costing taxpayers £1.8m for each of the first 300 people deported to Kigali.

Of course Labour had to axe it. They promised to do so in their election manifesto, and still won by a huge majority, proving, once again, that people are not buying the divisive anti-migrant rhetoric pushed by the right-wing newspapers. As for their honeymoon with Labour, it ended faster than you can say “fake news.”

Woke Bashing of the Week – Hold the front page, cat-walkers are woke!

The nebulous concept of wokeness, which leaves right-wingers frothing at the mouth, has reached new and amusing heights. People who walk their cats down the road on leads might be considered a bit eccentric, or very protective about their pets, but according to the Sun, they’re woke.

‘Woke pet owners who put their cats on leads and take them for a walk have been slammed by RSPCA,’ splashed the tabloid this week.

Common sense (something the right routinely champions) suggests that walking a cat might not be ideal due to their independent nature, and the RSPCA does caution against it. But despite this, the trend has been on the rise. Fuelled by the growing availability of outdoor cat gear and our collective obsession with sharing cute animal videos, (I have to admit, I spend many an hour scrolling Kitten World videos on Instagram) cat-walking has gone a bit viral.

But for the most, the decision to harness their cat is surely because they want their pets to enjoy the outside world in safety. As the animal welfare charity Four Paws explains: “It’s [cat walking] a choice usually made by people who don’t want their cats to venture out alone into a hazardous environment. The potential dangers might include busy roads, busy pedestrian areas or places where there are lots of dogs. More positively, some cat lovers see walking with their feline friend as a great way of strengthening the bond between themselves and their pet.”

Four Paws also warns about the stress it can cause cats, and, unlike the Sun in its sensationalist report, offers sensible alternatives like outdoor pens.

But for the right-wing tabloid, these cat-walkers are just another bunch of snowflake wokesters. Empathy and concern for animal welfare now qualify as woke, apparently. After “woke cops,” “woke teachers,” and “woke Glastonbury,” we now have “woke pet owners.” One has to wonder if perhaps an excess of empathy for cats, dogs, rabbits, and the menagerie we share our homes with, isn’t the world’s most pressing problem.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

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