Anti-oil fanatic who stopped M25 is sent to jail for 6 MONTHS
A SERIAL eco-zealot who ‘flagrantly ignored’ warnings his protests risked jail has finally been locked up.
Just Stop Oil supporter Jan Goodey, 57, was among a group of climate change activists who brought a section of Britain’s busiest motorway to a standstill during the morning rushhour, with tailbacks stretching for miles.
The Kingston University lecturer and journalist was handed a six-month custodial sentence yesterday after climbing a gantry at Junction 16 over the M25 near Uxbridge in west London on November 7 – weeks after being let off with a conditional discharge for blocking a road in a similar stunt earlier that year.
District judge Daniel Benjamin, sentencing him at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, said: ‘I struggle to see what more the courts could have done to warn you this type of conduct goes beyond what is legitimate and acceptable by way of peaceful protest.’
It was one of several stunts by Just Stop Oil on the M25 earlier this month.
The judge said to describe the disruption as ‘significant’ was ‘ perhaps an underestimate’, adding that the protest had caused ‘mile after mile of solid traffic on what is almost certainly the busiest motorway in this country’.
He added: ‘On November 7, you deliberately set out to disrupt the lives of individuals doing no more than going about their lawful business. You wanted that motorway to come to a halt on that day.’
Goodey, from Brighton, carried out the protest in a highvisibility jacket and used climbing equipment to gain access to the gantry. The
‘You wanted it to come to a halt’
judge told him that his culpability was ‘ particularly high’ because ‘you deliberately set out and equipped yourself to cause the disruption that you did’.
He added if Goodey’s intention was ‘not to inconvenience members of the public’ there was nothing stopping him from affixing the banner to the gantry and getting down, or affixing it to a safer location alongside the motorway.
Goodey pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance with the protest. He will spend half of the sentence in custody, with time spent on remand deducted automatically.
The activist was also given a £187 statutory surcharge to be paid by the end of July next year.