Eight Just Stop Oil supporters were found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance at Heathrow by a jury at Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday 20 March, while one other supporter was acquitted.
The Heathrow 10 were arrested on 24 July 2024, on the first day of the Oil Kills International Uprising to end fossil fuels. Nine defendants have been on trial since 27 January before Judge Duncan. One, Rory Wilson (26), pleaded guilty last September.
Just Stop Oil Heathrow 10: the verdicts are in
On 19 March Julia Mercer (74) , who was arrested leaving a house in Wraysbury, where she had volunteered to cook meals for the group, was acquitted unanimously by the jury.
But on 20 March, eight Just Stop Oil supporters: Sally Davidson (37), Adam Beard (55), Luke Elson (31), Luke Watson (34), Sean O’Callaghan (29), Hannah Schafer (60), William Goldring (27), and Rosa Hicks (28) were found guilty by majority verdict.
Sentencing was adjourned until 16th May. Luke Elson, Luke Watson and Rory Wilson are to remain in prison, where they have been held since 24 July 2024. Will Goldring was also remanded ahead of sentencing, the remaining five were granted bail.
Sean O’Callaghan, Sally Davidson, Hannah Schafer, Julia Mercer and William Goldring were all granted bail in the weeks after the action last July. Rosa Hicks, was bailed in January after six months on remand because of a heating failure in the female court cells and Adam Beard was released in February, but Rory Wilson, Luke Elson, and Luke Watson remained in prison serving something close to a two-year prison sentence without having been convicted of anything.
The trial was adjourned in January due to Ministry of Justice rules limiting court sitting days as a cost saving measure, only to be reinstated on 24 January giving the defendants just half a working day to reorganise.
All legal defences removed
During the trial the judge removed all legal defences from the jury’s consideration, ruled the climate emergency to be ‘irrelevant’ and forbade defendants from mentioning that a jury has a right to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience.
The defendants were not permitted to bring expert witnesses on international law or climate science or to show the jury videos they recorded of themselves speaking before the action, nor were they allowed to read the quotes from news articles about their arrests and subsequent remand to prison.
The prosecution argued that between 1 March and 24 July 2024 the nine defendants had, along with Rory Wilson, planned an action which involved some of them entering Heathrow airport and gluing themselves to runways or taxiways in order to cause maximum disruption.
During the seven week trial, expert witnesses including a retired pilot, members of Heathrow Operations team and the Met Police Protest Removal Team presented their hypothetical scenarios of what might have happened had the defendants entered the airfield.
Laughable
Scenarios ranged from people being sucked into aircraft engines, vulnerable plane passengers being stranded in disabled aircraft with no access to air conditioning, planes being diverted to far flung locations or forced to make emergency landings in unsuitable locations. None of which actually happened.
The defendants argued that their intention was not to cause disruption, indeed none thought that they would make it to the perimeter fence, let alone cut a hole and go airside. Their plan was to use the publicity surrounding their arrests at Heathrow in order to get good information to the public about the scale and danger of the climate crisis.
Evidence for the defence included the prepared statements they had carried with them to the action, which outlined their justification for the action and the steps they would take to minimise harm. This included their commitment to remain clear of the runways and to wait until a 999 call had been made before entering the airport perimeter.
Despite repeated interruptions from the Judge, Sally Davidson, 37, a hairdresser from Portland, Dorset spoke at length about the climate crisis and said that although evidence had been included in the agreed facts of the case, facts could not convey the emotional force of the losses people are experiencing.
She said:
If you hear about the father who watched his wife and baby being swept off their car roof while trying to escape the floods last summer in Valencia, your emotional response to this is valid. It is what makes you human.
I did everything I could
Luke Elson, 31, a support worker from East London told the court that he felt compelled to take action because he knew one day his young nieces would ask him:
Uncle what did you do when you knew this was happening?
He said:
I want to be able to look them in the eye and say that I did everything I could.
In her closing statement Julia Mercer, 74 from Todmorden in Yorkshire referred to her time at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp saying:
Back in those Greenham days, peaceful protestors were treated differently by the law. And what’s happening now is that the law is becoming increasingly punitive with police raids and arrests; long periods for people in prison on remand before trial. It’s not right. It doesn’t serve the public to silence and jail those sounding the alarm. It’s only serving the interests of the arms dealers and oil barons. We have a long and honourable tradition of peaceful protest in the UK
In his closing statement Sean O’Callaghan, 30, an Environmental educator, from Dorking, Surrey referred to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and said:
Let’s not forget these anti-protest laws can be traced back to fossil fuel lobbyists. The repression being applied to peaceful activists since these laws came in, is a desperate attempt by powerful corporations to prevent the horrifying truth of decades of deception being revealed to the general public. If the fossil fuel companies had been held to account for their lies, we wouldn’t need to be doing this. If the Government had done its job to protect us, we wouldn’t need to be doing this. Who are the democrats in this situation? Those trying to conceal the truth, or those trying desperately to reveal it?
In his closing statement Adam Beard, 55, a gardener from Stroud, Gloucestershire said:
While the climate crisis was central to why I took the action, it has been ruled irrelevant to this case… I don’t have huge resources behind me but I do have my body, and sacrificing my freedom through civil resistance to get a message of truth into the media is within my power. This is what it was all about. So our action did not fail as the prosecution has claimed, it was a success. This was achieved because we were arrested at a high-profile location and then remanded into custody, with all the press attention that that brought. And all this coverage was about our message and information for the public, not about delayed flights.
Just Stop Oil: the uprising will continue
Following the verdict the defendants issued the following statement:
We thank the jury for their service and accept their decision. We recognise the constraints they were under given that the judge removed all legal defences, ruled the climate emergency to be ‘irrelevant’, and forbade us from mentioning that a jury has a right to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience.
Some of us now face many months in prison for planning an action that never happened. We sought to get media attention so that we could explain the growing suffering and the horror of our heating world and the urgency for global action. In that we count ourselves successful. A small victory won in the wider struggle against complacency, false hope and denial.
We have no regrets. We planned our campaign with care, aiming to avoid harm and with the intention of preventing greater harm. The bigger crime would have been not to act.
When it comes to global heating there are no winners. Governments are rolling the dice on billions of deaths and economic collapse as extreme heat, crop failure and starvation drive mass migration and civil unrest. Our government is failing to protect us and the courts and the judiciary are complicit. They are protecting those who profit from death and destruction while criminalising those standing up against it.
Civil resistance to a morally bankrupt political class is not only necessary as an act of self-defence, it is also morally justified. There are many who know the horror of our situation, who nonetheless are carrying on with business as usual, in the mistaken belief that someone else will solve the problem. We are sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you don’t stand up and do something, we are going to lose literally everything.
In 2024 Just Stop Oil successfully won its original demand of ‘no new oil and gas’. Now the courts agree that new oil and gas is unlawful. Just Stop Oil supporters are on the right side of history and nonviolent civil resistance works. Just Stop Oil will once again be stepping into action this April to demand that governments work together to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. You can help make this happen by coming to a talk and signing up for action at juststopoil.org
Featured image supplied
