Phoebe Plummer was found guilty of conspiracy at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday 9 April, while the jury was unable to reach a verdict for her co-defendant. The pair took action with Just Stop Oil in November 2022 to demand an end to new oil and gas.
Phoebe Plummer: guilty again
Guido Wieser (21) and Phoebe Plummer (23) were on trial at Southwark Crown Court in front of Judge Cole in relation to their role in the actions that caused gridlock on the M25 between 7 and 10 November 2022.
Both defendants were arrested on 10 November 2022 after a vehicle they were travelling in was stopped by police. Phoebe Plummer was held in custody for a month before being released on a three-month electronic tag in connection with the charge.
Phoebe has been bailed until 15 May, when they will be sentenced alongside David Mann and Christopher Ford who pleaded guilty to the charges before trial.
During the trial, the judge ruled out all legal defences that would have allowed the defendants to argue that they were exercising their rights to protest in the face of the grave threat to humanity posed by the climate crisis. The Crown Prosecution Service had previously accepted as agreed facts 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.
In their closing speech, Phoebe Plummer said:
In the body-worn footage of my arrest, one of the things I say is that scientists predict that soon there will be one billion climate refugees globally. The latest peer reviewed science predicts that we will reach that by 2030. One billion is a number so large that I find it difficult to comprehend.
Those people are not a number, or a statistic. They are real people, with names and faces, real people who haven’t caused this crisis, who aren’t to blame, but who are going to lose their homes, their safety, and possibly their lives. I agreed to climb a gantry in November 2022, because I thought it might have an impact that could reduce this suffering.
Another dodgy judge presiding over a Just Stop Oil case
Speaking before the verdict, Phoebe Plummer said:
The courts routinely deny us the ability to justify our actions as reasonable, proportionate and necessary and tell jurors not to acquit a defendant based on their conscience, leaving little leeway to return anything but a guilty verdict. Despite this, I stand by my actions and will not be deterred from engaging in necessary acts of nonviolent civil resistance to oppose injustice.
At one point during the trial the Judge threatened to order the arrests of anyone sitting outside the court holding placards referencing jury equity – the principle that juries can deliver verdicts based on their conscience.
This appeared to contradict a High Court ruling by Justice Saini in the Trudi Warner case last year. However, Judge Cole later backtracked from his view, calling such a measure “too extreme”.
In the second M25 conspiracy trial last month, six supporters were acquitted, while two—Ian Bates and Abigail Percy-Ratcliffe—were found guilty and now await sentencing. The first gantry conspiracy trial saw unprecedented custodial sentences, including five-year and four-year terms for members of the ‘Whole Truth Five’—the longest sentences in UK history for peaceful protest.
Those sentences were partially overturned in March by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the defendants’ conscientious motivations and article 10 and 11 rights under the ECHR had been improperly disregarded at the time of sentencing.
Despite Phoebe Plummer’s verdict, Just Stop Oil says it “will continue to stand with those being prosecuted for peaceful resistance to fossil fuel expansion in the face of rapidly accelerating climate collapse”.
Featured image supplied
