A judge has rebuked ‘blase’ Just Stop Oil protesters as he jailed them for an M25 blockade which caused 50,000 hours of delays and forced a man to miss his father’s funeral.
Judge Shane Collery told the defendants as he handed down the sentences that their behaviour was ‘disproportionate to your aims’ – a fortnight after JSO co-founder Roger Hallam was given a five-year prison term.
Mr Collery said it was ‘easy to be blase when it’s not your life that’s disrupted’, as he gave two-year sentences to George Simonson, 24, of Leeds, and 26-year-old Theresa Higginson of Biggleswade, Bedfordshire.
Paul Bell, 24, of Exeter, was jailed for one year and 10 months, while Gaie Delap, 77, of Bristol, and 73-year-old Paul Sousek of Bude in Cornwall, were jailed for one year and eight months.
The judge told Delap: ‘Age, I regret, has not brought wisdom.’
Eco-protest group Just Stop Oil released a picture including defendants Theresa Higginson, 26, Daniel Johnson, 25, Gaie Delap, 77, Paul Sousek, 73, Paul Bell, 24, and George Simonson, 24
The M25 blockade in November 2022, which saw campaigners climb gantries over the motorway, caused 50,000 hours of delays and forced a man to miss his father’s funeral.
Essex Police officers were seen removing Just Stop Oil protesters including this one on the M25 near Junction 29 in Essex on November 9, 2022
All the defendants pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to causing a public nuisance, as they were about to stand trial for the protests held in November 2022.
The sentencing took place two weeks after Hallam and four others were jailed for a total of 21 years.
They were found guilty of conspiring to organise protests blocking the M25 motorway and a judge said they crossed the line ‘from concerned campaigner to fanatic’.
Francesca Cociani, from the law firm Hodge Jones & Allen representing Delap, Bell, Johnson, and Higginson, said the latest sentences: ‘Today’s decision to imprison peaceful protesters is a grave injustice and does not align with the UK’s professed values.’
She said lawyers for the group were exploring the possibility of an appeal.
Among those affected by the M25 blockade was Tony Bambury, who was travelling with his family from his home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, to his father’s funeral just off the A13 near Pitsea in Essex.
He was forced to divert off the motorway towards St Albans in Hertfordshire to find an alternative route to Essex, but got caught up in long queues of traffic.
He was forced to call his mother to say he would not be able to reach the funeral on time.
He told ITV Meridien in November 2022: ‘I called my Mum, who’s 79, and was very upset as you can imagine. My brother and his family were there, I wanted to be there, and I had a eulogy that I was going to say about my father.
Police watch as traffic is held back as an activist from Just Stop Oil occupies a gantry over the M25 near Godstone in Surrey as part of the November 2022 protests
Specialist rope officers were deployed by Kent Police to remove the activists and limit disruption on the motorway
Activists carried out the blockade across different parts of the motorway orbiting London
‘These people have forced me not to go to my own father’s funeral by their actions and it’s not like I can get a second chance at this. I’ll never forget what they’ve done and I’ll never forgive what they have done.’
Another man missed the birth of his child, saying: ‘My wife gave birth yesterday afternoon, she was alone whilst I was stuck on the M25 desperately trying to reach the hospital.’
Addressing protesters, he said: ‘Unforgivable, I totally sympathise with your cause but I’m disgusted with what you deem the right way to highlight it’.
The protest saw campaigners climb gantries on the M25, causing widespread traffic disruption.
Mr Collery told Basildon Crown Court in Essex that the JSO protesters’ purpose was to ‘create mass disruption so Just Stop Oil would benefit from the media interest it would create’.
The judge noted that an accident happened near one gantry and it was ‘fortunate more accidents did not occur’.
Describing how the defendants were all either retired, students or recent graduates at the time, he said: ‘It’s easy to be blase and dismissive when it’s not your life that’s being disrupted.’
And he called the protest ‘perhaps a curious way of seeking to influence the public opinion’.
Mr Collery told the defendants they ‘considered you knew better than everyone else’, and suggested an element may have been ‘the day out and perhaps the excitement of a day’s action’.
Specially trained police officers using ropes to bring down a Just Stop Oil protester on a gantry on the M25 in November 2022
The eco-group carried out an entire month of action over October that year and were planning daily action until Christmas
Handout photo from Essex Police of a JSO protester being detained on November 7, 2022
He accepted the defendants were not the organisers of the protest but branded them ‘willing volunteers’.
The judge said the court ‘accepts a conscientious motive may be a relevant consideration’ but that ‘your actions were disproportionate to your aims’.
He told the offenders: ‘You are all intelligent people and more than capable of working out why you’re in this position and what you need to do to avoid it.’
Simonsen smiled and waved to the public gallery as he was led to the cells, while Higginson shouted – referring to details heard earlier in the proceedings – that her ‘vegan diet did not make me ill’.
Bell waved and blew kisses as he was led to the cells, while Sousek said, ‘Thank you very much’, after he was jailed and tried to read from a document before he was bundled towards the cells by a security officer.
A sixth defendant, Daniel Johnson, 25, of Perth and Kinross in Scotland, was spared jail.
The judge told him: ‘I’m prepared to accept the remorse expressed as genuine.’
He described Johnson as the ‘only defendant with a realistic prospect of rehabilitation’.
He sentenced Johnson to 21 months in prison suspended for 24 months and ordered that he complete 200 hours of unpaid work and pay £750 in costs.
The judge also ruled that the activists’ climbing equipment, locks and banners should be confiscated.
Tony Bambury was travelling with his family to his father’s funeral just off the A13 near Pitsea in Essex when he discovered that the eco-mob had blocked parts of the M25 in protest
Mr Bambury said: ‘These people have forced me not to go to my own father’s funeral by their actions and it’s not like I can get a second chance at this’ – pictured is his late father
There had been gasps at the start of the judge’s sentencing when he told the six defendants: ‘In all but the case of Daniel Johnson those (sentences) will be for immediate terms of imprisonment.’
The judge ordered that a second count of causing a public nuisance against all six should lie on the file.
Ahead of sentencing, Delap said in a statement: ‘I’ve had to read the evidence of people who were stuck in our traffic – it hurts me. I’m sorry I had to do this.
‘But we really have no other option. They didn’t listen to the scientists, they didn’t listen to their constituents, so we had to cause disruption in order to communicate the seriousness of humanity’s predicament.’
Simonson said: ‘I climbed a gantry on the M25 almost two years ago because I want to have a future.
‘As a young person, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. What is that life going to be like? How many people am I going to witness die because of our government’s inaction?
‘I realised the people in charge are willing to kill people for fossil fuel extraction. I couldn’t just stand by and let them do this.’
Hallam, 58, was jailed at Southwark Crown Court last month for his role in the disturbance, along with Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22.
Hallam was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while the remaining four defendants were each handed four years behind bars.
Roger Hallam (pictured) was one of five Just Stop Oil protesters jailed last month for conspiring to organise protests that blocked the M25 motorway
From left to right: Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw and Roger Hallam. Hallam was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while the remaining four defendants were each handed four years’ imprisonment
Prosecutors alleged the protests, which saw 45 people climb up gantries, led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1 million
Prosecutors alleged the protests, which saw 45 people climb up the gantries, led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1million.
They also allegedly caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delay, affecting more than 700,000 vehicles, and left the M25 ‘compromised’ for more than 120 hours.
A police outrider was knocked off his bike and two lorries crashed when one Just Stop Oil demonstrators tried to climb one of the motorway’s gantries.
There have been no protests on the M25 since November 2022.
