Nine Just Stop Oil activists avoid further jail as eco mob complains of sentences for 'action that never happened'
16 May 2025, 20:01
Nine activists for Just Stop Oil have avoided further jail terms after doing time for what they have called "nonviolent action that never happened".
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The nine supporters were arrested near Heathrow on 24 July 2024.
They were later convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after police foiled their plan to cause "unprecedented disruption" at the west London airport.
Speaking today after avoiding further jail terms, the defendants said in a statement: 'We are relieved to have avoided further incarceration, but it remains the case that we have all endured time in prison, some for many months for a nonviolent action that never happened.
"The UK is dangerously close to becoming an authoritarian regime in which human rights mean nothing and no dissent will be tolerated."
Read more: Ben & Jerry’s co-founder arrested at US Capitol after Gaza war protest
They had either already served the time they were sentenced to or they were handed suspended sentences, spending a combined total of 44 months in prison on remand for the 2024 incident.
Those handed sentences include Luke Watson, 35, and Rosa Hicks, 29, who were given prison sentences of 15 months.
Rory Wilson, 25, Adam Beard, 56, and Luke Elson, 31, were given prison sentences of 12 months.
The group had plotted action to demand a fossil fuel treaty to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
'It demonstrates your lack of remorse'
Judge Hannah Duncan said: “No breach of the perimeter fence occurred. No disruption at all occurred. No actual harm was caused.”
But she told the activists that they treated their trial as an “extension of the protest”, adding: “A court room is not a street or a town square, and it is run at considerable cost.
“It’s where allegations of crimes are tried, where often the most vulnerable people in society find themselves as defendants or as witnesses.“Victims of crime sadly have to wait a long time for their cases to be heard, to receive justice for the wrongs that have been done to them before they can move on.
“There are women and children who have been abused, sexually assaulted or raped who are waiting for court rooms. You used one for seven weeks. Some of you dragging it out as much as you could at every opportunity, lying about your actions and intentions that day all to get more publicity.
“It does not add a single day to your sentence but it demonstrates your lack of remorse until now and it exposes the lie of accountability.”
Wildlife presenter Chris Packham wrote a letter to the court in support of the defendants.
He said: “As someone with a responsibility to communicate facts about science to the British public, I have been horrified to hear judges refer to the science of climate breakdown as ‘a matter of political opinion or belief.
"Treating uncontested, peer reviewed, established science as a matter of opinion or belief is a uniquely dangerous form of ideological extremism, which should have no place in society, let alone a court of law.”
'The most catastrophic crisis humankind has faced.'
Jonathon Porritt, CBE also wrote to the court.
He said: "Campaigners are increasingly frustrated that government policy and specific interventions do not reflect even the mainstream consensus of climate scientists, let alone the growing number of so-called ‘outliers’. “I've thought about these matters long and hard over the last 40 years.
"I completely understand why many more people today have come to see civil disobedience (and consequential acts of nonviolent direct action) as critical to ‘shifting the needle’, to ensuring that urgent and applied attention is now paid to what will otherwise become by far the most catastrophic crisis that humankind has ever faced.”
Last month, the group said they were "hanging up the high vis" given that their demand to end new oil and gas is government policy.
"It is the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets," they said in a statement.
"But it is not the end of trials, of tagging and surveillance, of fines, probation and years in prison."
The group added: "As corporations and billionaires corrupt political systems across the world, we need a different approach.
"We are creating a new strategy, to face this reality and to carry our responsibilities at this time. Nothing short of a revolution is going to protect us from the coming storms."
They said they will be holding a final Just Stop Oil protest in Parliament Square on April 26.
In the past three years, Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested for numerous direct action protests, including disrupting a West End performance of The Tempest, blocking roads, pouring paint on a robot at a Tesla shop and spraying orange powder on Stonehenge.
