Sometimes I learn one thing I believe value sharing in full on this weblog. I did yesterday. It was on the weblog of an outdated pal, Jonathon Porritt, who has spent a lifetime campaigning on environmental points. Along with his permission, I share it in full right here, having solely edited some formatting:

First they got here for Simply Cease Oil; then they got here for radical environmentalists; then they got here for members of the Nationwide Belief, the RSPB, and WWF. However there was nobody left to talk for them.

I do know I should not be, however I am astonished on the lack of concern/curiosity on the a part of “mainstream environmentalists” as we slide inexorably right into a police state. The best to peaceable protest remains to be a fundamental human proper. However you positive as hell would not know that right here within the UK.

On January 23^rd, Michel Forst (the UN Particular Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders beneath the Aarhus Conference) issued his interim report after his go to to the UK earlier within the month. It is astonishing. In his personal phrases:

• “Because the UN Human Rights Committee has made clear, States have an obligation to facilitate the precise to protest, and personal entities and broader society could also be anticipated to just accept some stage of disruption on account of the train of this proper.”
• “Peaceable protesters are being prosecuted and convicted beneath the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, for the felony offence of “Public Nuisance”, which is punishable by as much as 10 years imprisonment. I used to be additionally knowledgeable that the Public Order Act 2023 is getting used to additional criminalise peaceable protest.”
• “In some current instances, presiding judges have forbidden environmental defenders from explaining to the jury their motivation for taking part in a given protest or from mentioning local weather change in any respect”.
• “I’m deeply troubled at using civil injunctions to ban protests in sure areas, together with on public roadways. Anybody who breaches this injunctions is chargeable for as much as two years imprisonment and an infinite positive.”
• “Prior to those legislative developments, it had been virtually unprecedented for the reason that Nineteen Thirties for members of the general public to be imprisoned for peaceable protest within the UK. I’m subsequently significantly involved by these regressive new legal guidelines”.

Michel Forst is telling it as he sees it. However I am unsure most mainstream environmentalists really perceive what’s presently occurring on the market.

1. Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland received the longest sentences in UK fashionable historical past for protesting, given 2 years and seven months, and three years respectively, after climbing the Queen Elizabeth II bridge over the Dartford Crossing with a Simply Cease Oil banner.
2. Defendants on trial for public nuisance, after a peaceable protest, had been forbidden from saying the phrases local weather change, gas poverty and the civil rights motion.
3. Steven Gingell was jailed for six months after pleading responsible to being in a peaceable protest march on a London Highway. This sentence is considered the primary jailing beneath the Public Order Act 2023, which has an offence of “interference with key nationwide infrastructure”
4. Tim Hughes, a 73-year-old clergyman, was arrested in November 2022, and charged with Conspiracy to Trigger a Public Nuisance. He was on remand in Wandsworth Jail for six weeks, then launched on bail in January 2023, topic to carrying a tag. His trial is just not scheduled till February 2025. Two years carrying a tag – with out having been convicted of any offence!
5. Civil injunctions have been issued to a whole lot of people. A breach might imply imprisonment and/or an infinite positive.
6. Trudi Warner, a retired Social Employee, is being prosecuted for Contempt of Court docket for holding up an indication exterior of a courtroom defending the precise of juries to determine a case on conscience.

(My large due to Sandra Laville on the Guardian, and to Anita Mureithi at OpenDemocracy, for offering these updates.)

Trudi Warner’s case has been taken up by Defend our Juries (@defendourjuries). On the 4^th December, 600 folks in 52 areas protested exterior Crown Courts to defend the precise of juries to determine a verdict on the idea of their conscience. (Their subsequent Day of Motion is on February 21^st). Because the Guardian just lately identified: “A jury’s energy to acquit had been seen for many years as a “constitutional safeguard” – insurance coverage that the felony legislation ought to conform to the unusual particular person’s thought of what’s honest that notion is held in contempt, evidently, by ministers”.

So here is my request – to assist beat back despair. Or somewhat, two requests:

1. Can anyone ship me chapter and verse, within the public area, from any of the mainstream environmental organisations, condemning any of this in the identical phrases as Michel Forst?
2. Can anyone ship me chapter and verse, within the public area, of anybody within the Labour Shadow Cupboard, condemning any of this in the identical phrases as Michel Forst?

These are real requests for info – to dispel my worst fears about gutless mainstream NGOs and equally gutless Labour politicians.

January 15^th was Martin Luther King day within the USA. Ben Philips, Director of Communications for UNAID, wrote a wonderful weblog to mark the day:

“When Dr King mentioned the arc of the ethical universe is lengthy, however it bends in the direction of justice, he did not imply this course of is automated; as he famous, “social progress by no means rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes by way of the tireless efforts of individuals.” Justice, Dr King taught, is rarely given, it is just ever received. This all the time includes having the braveness to confront energy. Certainly, he famous, the best stumbling block to progress is just not the implacable opponent, however those that declare to help change however are “extra dedicated to order than justice”. As he put it, “frankly, I’ve but to interact in a direct-action motion that was “well-timed” within the view of those that haven’t suffered unduly. This “wait!” has virtually all the time meant “by no means”.

Please consider these phrases each time you leap to sentence the techniques of younger local weather campaigners right here within the UK, whilst our police state closes down on them an increasing number of repressively.

And should you want any affirmation of what is going on on right here, please learn George Monbiot’s sensible article within the Guardian on Saturday 3^rd February (“It is a Plutocrat’s World – and all Dissenters are Swiftly Crushed”):

“Why, within the UK, are you able to now probably obtain an extended sentence for “public nuisance” – non-violent civil disobedience – than for rape or manslaughter? Peaceable environmental campaigners are being held on bail for as much as 2 years, subjected to digital tags, GPS monitoring and curfews. Even earlier than you have been tried, not to mention discovered responsible, your life is shredded.”

And he tellingly provides precisely why these deep injustices at the moment are changing into frequent place:

“Why is all this occurring? As a result of the UK, the US and lots of different nations have grow to be closed outlets run by the Plutocrats’ Commerce Union. Inequality calls for oppression. The extra concentrated wealth and energy grow to be, the extra those that problem the wealthy and highly effective have to be hounded and crushed”.

And is not that the reality of it?