The Just Stop Oil M25 plotters should serve their full sentences, leading MPs said today amid calls from Labour‘s eco-wing for them to be freed.
Roger Hallam, 58, the co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion was jailed for five years and his four co defendants each received four years’ imprisonment in what are thought to be the longest sentences ever given for non-violent protest.
Sympathisers in the Labour and Green Parties and broadcasters Chris Packham and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called for pardons or for the jail terms to be slashed.
But last night MPs rallied to defend the sentences given by Judge Christopher Hehir at Southwark Crown Court.
James Cleverly, Shadow Home Secretary, said: ‘It is right that these protestors have been given proper sentences, and a clear deterrent has been set out to those that seek to disrupt our country in a misguided attempt to further their dangerous eco-fanatic agenda.
MPs have backed the lengthy jail terms handed to five Just Stop Oil protesters despite protests. Pictured (left to right): Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw and Roger Hallam, who all received four year sentences besides JSO founder Hallam, who was given five
James Cleverly , Shadow Home Secretary, said: ‘It is right that these protestors have been given proper sentences, and a clear deterrent has been set out to those that seek to disrupt our country in a misguided attempt to further their dangerous eco-fanatic agenda’
Pictured: Protesters hold placards in support of the jailed activists outside Southwark Corwn Court on Thursday
‘Yet the Labour Party continually tried to frustrate the passing of our bill, which gave the very powers used to deliver these tough sentences, at every step of the way, with Keir Starmer himself voting against it.
‘Labour’s record is weak on crime, and weak on criminals. This new government must prove they are capable of standing up for law and order, and the Conservatives will be holding them to account on this.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘I think they caused huge chaos and a threat to life and limb and that was clearly taken into consideration by the judge.
‘Ambulances couldn’t get through, police struggled to get through. This was a dangerous, reckless event and it could have been astonishingly dangerous .
‘I don’t have any problems with the sentences they seem reasonable to me.’
Tory leadership hopefuls Tom Tugendhat and Suella Braverman also voiced their support.
Shadow Security Minister, Mr Tugendhat said: ‘UK law rightly protects peaceful protest. What it does not protect is attempts to undermine democracy.
‘It’s right that those who have orchestrated a campaign of damage, disruption, and harm to our society should face the full extent of the law.’
Tory leadership hopefuls Tom Tugendhat and Suella Braverman voiced their support for the sentences
Former Home Secretary Mrs Braverman said: ‘As a law-and-order Conservative, I welcome the length of yesterday’s sentence. It’s about time that common sense prevails, and I hope this sends a clear message to the Just Stop Oil eco-zealots: Britain will not tolerate your selfish actions anymore.’
Rupert Lowe, Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth said: ‘It’s about time the courts treated environmental fanatics as they do other people. People who disrupt other people’s lives in an undemocratic way deserve to be severely punished!’
Labour’s Luke Pollard MP, the Armed Forces Minister, also backed the judge, and told LBC: ‘What Just Stop Oil have done has been ridiculous. Their protests have been pathetic…
‘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.’
But former Labour frontbencher Clive Lewis urged ministers to intervene.
Labour’s Luke Pollard MP, the Armed Forces Minister, also backed the judge, and told LBC : ‘What Just Stop Oil have done has been ridiculous. Their protests have been pathetic’
However, former Labour frontbencher Clive Lewis urged ministers to intervene by pardoning the five activists
‘These laws in question should be repealed and the five wrongly imprisoned, pardoned,’ he said.
‘Our current government must not only undo the damage the last one did to our democracy, but it must also strengthen and protection our democracy with new laws and institutions that protect it in the knowledge that authoritarian governments may follow them the years to come.’
Former Labour justice secretary Lord Falconer told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme he was ‘very uncomfortable’ with the sentences, adding: ‘These people are not violent criminals… they cause enormous irritation to a large number of people, however sentencing people to four or five years prison for that may be…why the prisons are so full.’
Green MP Sian Berry said: ‘These sentences feel like a hangover from the last government’s obsession with punishing disruptive but non-violent, peaceful protests. They should be appealed as wholly out of line with the disruption caused.’