Appeal ruling is a victory for the people

NON-VIOLENT direct action has long been an honourable tradition of democratic expression in the United Kingdom, but in today’s dystopian corporatocracy such attempts to speak truth to power are greeted with unjust interpretations of the law to crush dissent and provide an example to working-class people that we must “know our place” in the unjust economic hierarchy.

No more so is this clear than in the infamous case involving anti- fracking protesters Richard Loizou, Simon Blevins and Richard Roberts, who did not engage in intimidatory conduct nor vandalised private property, yet were unjustly penalised anyway.

Mr Blevins, an esteemed researcher on the subject of toxicity in urban areas, and Mr Roberts, a teacher, were each jailed for 16 months after climbing onto lorries outside a shale gas facility in a valiant attempt to impede the passage of a convoy delivering drilling equipment, which went on for four days in July 2017. Fellow protesters provided them with bedding, clothes and food parcels during this period. Rich Loizou received a 15-month sentence; co-defendant Julian Brock was sentenced to a total of 12 months in custody, suspended for 18 months, following his guilty plea.

Those activists walked free two weeks ago after Court of Appeal judges branded the sentences “manifestly excessive”, in a clear example of the considerable disquiet at Judge Robert Latham’s weaponisation of legal interpretation to persecute and make an example of people exercising their right to protest, in addition to the judge’s astonishing failure to recuse himself on the grounds of undeclared family interests in the oil and gas industry.

The activists are believed to be the first prosecuted for an environmental campaign since the violent Kinder Scout mass trespass of 1932.

This latest ruling is a resounding victory for the majority of people who believe that big business should not enjoy legal supremacy over ordinary citizens – and a stark warning to all who seek to crush dissent that we, as a collective, are more powerful than any army of slick corporate lobbyists and litigators. Daniel Pitt Mountain Ash