October 02, 2018

Protestors in the U.K. sentenced to prison for anti-fracking action

located:	United Kingdom
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

At approximately 8am on Tuesday, July 25 2017, a group of protesters blocked a road leading to Preston New Road fracking site near Blackpool, bringing a convoy of seven lorries to a halt. At this point, four men quickly hopped on top of the hoods of the lorries and remained there for three days and nights. Standing on the hoods of the lorries Simon Roscoe Blevins, 26, Richard Roberts, 36, Richard Loizou, 31, and Julian Brock, 47, waved flags that read ‘#rolling resistance’ and were given warm clothes, food and drinks throughout the days by locals and fellow activists. More than a year later, the men, who have been convicted for causing a public nuisance by a jury at Preston Crown Court in August were sentenced on Wednesday, September 26, for their direct action protest.  

Blevins and Roberts have been given 16 months in prison and Loizou a 15-month sentence. Brock has been given a 12-month suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty. A barrister representing one of the men told the Court that they “would become the first environmental activists to receive jail sentences for staging a protest in the UK since the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District in 1932” as reported by The Guardian.

A video surfacing Facebook, which has thus far accumulated half a million views, captures the three after the sentencing and gives an insight into the impact this will have on their lives. “If you are watching this,” says Roberts while he stands alongside his peers, “we are the first people to be sent to prison in the U.K. for anti-fracking action.”

The site near Preston Park Road where the men were protesting has been a monumental location for fracking in the U.K. as it is the country’s first high volume hydraulic factoring site. Since 2016, when the government gave the energy firm Cuadrilla permission to begin extraction of shale gas through the aggressive process of fracking – despite Lancashire county council’s opposition – 300 protesters have been arrested around the site. “I’ve known since I was 14 because I got taught in school that fossil fuels are not really the future. They’re not really the way forward. And unconventional gas exploration, like this fracking, is not even a good way of going about getting fossil fuels.” Richard Loizou says in the video. The currently available shale gas across the world, if accessed through fracking and burnt, will produce “half a trillion tons of carbon dioxide… enough to blow 2 degrees, 3 degrees warming.” Adds Roberts. “For me, it’s a global injustice.”

However in court, Judge Robert Altham did not consider the global or even local impacts of the toxic process of extraction, nor did her address the government’s overruling of the constituency’s opposition to the site. Instead, Altham soley focused on his prediction that the three men as likely repeated offenders and the financial damage the protests have cost Cuadrilla, £50,000 and local police, £12,000. In response, Greenpeace U.K.’s executive director John Sauven said that the demonstrators “deserve our gratitude, not a prison term...Peaceful protest is the safety-valve of a healthy democracy. It allows ordinary people to protect their health, families and homes from harm when all other safeguards have failed.”

As the three prepare for their prison sentence, it’s time we ask ourselves what they are being punished for and whether these are the kind of legal concerns we rightfully wish to stand behind: damage to Cuadrilla or damage to our planet and our health.

UPDATE: 

Meanwhile the Court quashes the jail sentences. The lord chief justice, Sir Ian Burnett, said: “We have concluded that an immediate custodial sentence in the case of these defendants was manifestly excessive. In our judgment the appropriate sentence was a community order with a significant requirement of unpaid work. But these appellants have been in custody now for two weeks, the equivalent of a six-week prison sentence. As a result, and only for that reason, we’ve concluded that the only appropriate sentence is a conditional discharge.”

Image by Reclaim the Power