Six Just Stop Oil supporters have been found not guilty while two were convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance in relation to the 2022 actions that blocked the M25 to demand an end to new oil and gas.
Ian Bates and Abigail Percy-Ratcliffe were found guilty and have been bailed until sentencing at a later date. Tim Hughes, Daniel Juniper, Karen Matthews, James Skeet, Alexander Wilcox and Christopher White were all acquitted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Just Stop Oil: not guilty (obviously)
Abigail Percy-Ratcliff (25, from Brighton), Tim Hewes (74, from Oxford), Karen Matthews (63, from Northampton), Ian Bates (65, from Northampton), Christopher White (31, from Somerset), Alexander Wilcox (24, from Northampton), James Skeet (37, from Manchester) and Daniel Juniper (30, from Bristol) were accused of criminal conspiracy in connection with the M25 gantry action in November 2022. They were tried by a 12-member jury in a four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, presided over by Judge David Tomlinson.
On 7 November 2022, police officers forcibly entered a property on Wricklemarsh Road, London, arresting Ian Bates, Karen Matthews, Christopher White, and Alexander Wilcox. Four days later, on 11 November, officers arrested James Skeet and Daniel Juniper at a property on Kentmere Road. Tim Hewes was arrested at his home in Oxford on 6 November 2022.
With no direct evidence of an agreement among the defendants to block the M25, the prosecution relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, using everyday items recovered during arrests. From an address on Kentmere Road, police recovered an outdoor jacket and trousers belonging to James Skeet, along with empty packaging for work gloves, a high-visibility jacket, and Ultraglue.
At Tim Hewes’ home, officers seized similarly commonplace objects like an umbrella, party poppers, sanitiser wipes, duct tape, string, an Extinction Rebellion-branded vest, a sticker reading “The planet burns, Boris fiddles”, and a screwdriver. These items were portrayed by the prosecution in as signs of a carefully orchestrated plan to disrupt the M25. Significant resources were allocated to this case, including extensive police efforts since 2022 and a four-week trial involving multiple prosecution barristers.
‘Fiddling while Rome burns’
James Skeet, speaking after the verdict, said:
This trial has been nothing more than four weeks of fiddling while Rome burns.
In closing, the prosecution said that the law should be applied ‘equally without favour or prejudice.’ On that we agreed. Yet if the law were truly applied in that way, those driving new oil and gas projects—despite their clear violation of Article 30 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—would be held to account.
Government officials, whose net zero strategy has been ruled unlawful twice, would be made to answer for it. And farmers who have openly conspired to commit public nuisance would also find themselves dragged through the courts for three years.
Instead, since 2022, we have had the resources of 6 police departments mobilised against us in a Kafka-esque case where mere proximity to a protest and possession of party poppers or the wrong type of trousers has been regarded as sufficient evidence to waste vast sums of public money. To quote another admission from the prosecution, they ‘aren’t just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they are digging through the bottom of it’.
A toxic culture
During the trial, the Crown prosecution acknowledged the findings of the 2020 Net Zero Interim report, which stated:
Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Without global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will change catastrophically with almost unimaginable consequences for societies across the world.
Additionally, the prosecution agreed upon the established scientific consensus that warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels poses ‘catastrophic’ and ‘irreversible’ risks to humanity. It was further accepted that the average global temperature rise for the year ending 2024 was 1.65 degrees Celsius, with projections indicating that warming would permanently surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius before 2030.
In his closing speech to the Jury Ian Bates said:
In fact, you are now part of history. Unknowingly, unwittingly. You 12 good people have been thrust into the unfolding history of the end of humanity. I’m not being dramatic here. It’s in the agreed facts – the facts that the judge, the prosecution, and all the defendants and their legal representatives have agreed.
The climate crisis has been growing for 200 years. Oil companies knew in the 70s but buried it to keep their huge profits, using top PR companies. That decision, that choice, has been perpetuated ever since and is being perpetuated here in this court, at this precise moment in history, here before your very eyes.
It’s a small but hugely significant example of the culture we find ourselves living in—a culture which puts profit before people. This trial is all about what we are doing about this existential threat – a threat to existing.
Just Stop Oil: telling the whole truth
This trial follows the trial of the ‘Whole Truth Five’ in July 2024, convicted for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance due to their participation in the M25 gantry action.
Their convictions relied heavily on evidence from a Zoom meeting recorded by Scarlett Howes, a journalist from The Sun newspaper. Initially, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Roger Hallam to five years in prison, while Daniel Shaw, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Louise Lancaster, and Cressida Gethin each received four-year sentences—marking the longest custodial sentences for non-violent protest in UK history.
On 7 March 2025, the Court of Appeal found that Judge Hehir had improperly excluded consideration of the defendants’ rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as their conscientious motivations in his sentencing.
Consequently, the original sentences were judged excessive and reduced. Roger Hallam’s sentence was reduced from five years to four, Daniel Shaw and Louise Lancaster’s sentences were lowered to three years each, and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin each had their sentences shortened to 30 months.
Featured image supplied
