Celebrities add voice to outcry over severity of Just Stop Oil sentences

Chris Packham has called for a meeting with the attorney general for England and Wales as he joined a chorus of prominent voices condemning long jail terms for Just Stop Oil protesters.

Speaking after five activists were sentenced to up to five years for planning protests on the M25, the broadcaster and naturalist said: “Be clear, be very, very clear, this is not just about climate activism.

“The laws that have been drafted, the injustices that are being wrought, threaten all rights of free speech. We stand here today because our future security may be compromised by the reckless and irresponsible erosion of our human rights, of our fundamental freedoms.”

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Packham called for a recorded meeting with the new attorney general, Richard Hermer KC, “as rapidly as possible” to “address this grotesque miscarriage of justice”.

Packham appeared with the television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the eco-entrepreneur Dale Vince, the Labour MP Clive Lewis and the Green peer Jenny Jones outside Southwark crown court, where crowds gathered after the sentencing.

Fearnley-Whittingstall said the activists, Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin had been “viciously sentenced under some extremely pernicious legislation, which should just not be in place.

“It’s increasingly obvious to all of us that these laws were put in place to protect the fossil fuel companies and to protect a version of business as usual that continues to damage the climate and harm us all.

“But we should be clear that these laws also remove the rights of every British citizen to engage in peaceful protest.”

Packham’s call to meet the new attorney general was supported by Vince, who last year switched from financing Just Stop Oil to becoming one of Labour’s biggest donors.

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After the sentencing, Vince issued a statement saying: “I think climate denial should be illegal, but instead it’s illegal to talk about the climate crisis in court. Now five peaceful protesters could face years in jail as a result of this perverse ruling. It’s a travesty of justice and that’s why I’m joining the calls for the new attorney general to intervene.”

Lewis backed calls for Hermer, who was made a peer on Thursday so he could serve in government, to act.

“I that needs to happen as a matter of some urgency,” Lewis said. “I will be raising this in parliament, as I’m sure many others will be as well. I also think that those laws that have allowed this to happen need to be overturned and put into the dustbin of history.

“And I will be cheering a Labour government on to do as much as it can to stop oil extraction, to stop that exploitation, and to ensure that those five are released as soon as possible.”

Bill McGuire, the emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, whose expert evidence the judge said could not be heard in court, derided the trial and verdict as “a farce”.

“They mark a low point in British justice and they were an assault on free speech,” he said. “The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance.

“Similarly, to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”