Extinction Rebellion co-founder Dr Gail Bradbrook appeared at Isleworth Crown Court this morning, in front of the same judge who presided over a last-minute change in directions to the jury in another climate trial highlighted by Real Media yesterday.
She was sentenced by HHJ Martin Edmunds KC to a 12-month supervision order, 150 hours community service, and was handed a 15 month prison sentence, suspended for 15 months.
In October 2019, as part of Extinction Rebellion’s large-scale London protests a year after launch, Dr Bradbrook used a hammer to very publicly crack the glass above the entrance door to the Department of Transport in protest against the ecological damage caused by the HS2 project and other policies. She carried with her a 75-page dossier of evidence which explained the motivation and context of her action and which proposed a new People’s Law offering protection to ‘conscientious protectors’, in honour of her friend Polly Higgins – an international lawyer campaigning towards an ‘Ecocide Law’, enforceable by the International Criminal Court. Her hope was that the dossier would become part of the evidence bundle shown to the jury in any subsequent criminal trial.
But when the case finally came to court nearly four years later, delayed several times while awaiting the outcome of court rulings arising from the Colston Statue case, Judge Edmunds ruled that Bradbrook had ‘no defence in law’, and he ruled the dossier inadmissible, telling the court that the case was not about the principles of the climate crisis but about breaking a window and causing an alleged £27,660 damage.
Outside the court at the start of the second day, some supporters held banners highlighting a jury’s right to acquit on their conscience. Judge Edmunds discharged the jury, applied severe reporting restrictions, and even reportedly warned that a future trial may have to be heard by a judge only (through a judicial mechanism only occasionally used in serious organised crime and terrorism cases).
The retrial took place in October (coincidentally exactly five years after the launch of Extinction Rebellion), and Bradbrook had to submit her defence statement for approval beforehand with a warning that if she tried to address the jury outside the agreed boundaries it would amount to contempt of court. Other climate protesters have been previously jailed simply for disobeying similar warnings, for attempting to explain their motives to juries. In such a tightly-controlled and some might say ‘mock’ trial, it was almost inevitable the jury would find her guilty. She was placed on bail until today, when her sentence was delivered.
As she was facing a potential spell in prison, there was relief outside the court among supporters (which included Game Of Thrones actor Jerome Flynn, along with protesters dressed as Suffragettes) when they heard that there were no costs, damages, or any custodial element to the sentence.
In a speech to the crowd, Bradbrook claimed that even her police interview had been heavily redacted, with portions withheld from the jury, and she was unable to give a proper explanation of her intentions or of any of the scientific evidence of the seriousness of the climate crisis which motivated her.
She said “When the Establishment argue that acts of civil disobedience like mine aren’t necessary because we have a functioning democracy and court system to enable change, who do they think they’re fooling? Anyone with half a brain can see the courts are not acting on behalf of British citizens and of life – they are complicit in marching us off a climate cliff.”
When juries have heard more of the circumstances around protest-related ‘crimes’, they have often returned acquittals:
- In October, five XR protesters were acquitted after spraying fake blood from a fire engine outside the Treasury office.
- Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam has been found not guilty by juries on several occasions, including for his successful divestment campaign at King’s College London, and the long Burning Pink trial earlier this year.
- Palestine Action have won several trials for actions against Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, and just today a jury acquitted two ‘actionists’ who sprayed the statue of Lord Balfour with red paint inside Parliament.
- Six Extinction Rebels were acquitted in 2021 after breaking huge glass windows at the Shell HQ building.
- Last month, nine women accused of half a million pounds’ worth of damage to the windows of HSBC’s Canary Wharf HQ were also acquitted by a jury that was allowed to hear about HSBC’s support for new fossil-fuel infrastructure and exploration.
Concerned about new UK court rulings and Acts of Parliament designed to repress protest and ensure convictions, the United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur wrote to the UK government in August challenging the severity of sentences handed to the Dartford Crossing climate protesters, Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, as well as the introduction of the 2023 Public Order Act (which has just seen a Just Stop Oil protester sent to prison for six months for the crime of a peaceful protest walking a short distance in a road).
In her dossier, which Dr Bradbrook hoped the jury would have been allowed to see, she notes that historically when there is ‘no defence in law, it can mean the law is out of step with society and public opinion. Among the many examples cited was that until 1991 a woman defending herself from rape by her husband could be charged with assault and have ‘no defence in law’. Now at last the 2023 Sexual Offences Act explicitly outlaws rape within marriage.
Currently the UK government is pushing ahead with major new fossil-fuel exploration which science shows is utterly incompatible with climate targets designed to protect humanity from the worst effects of climate heating. Extinction Rebellion and other groups are still calling for Citizen’s Assemblies to address the political and economic problems around urgent climate action. The fact that properly informed juries (like mini assemblies) often acquit climate protesters, may offer some explanation as to why the state (backing fossil-fuel profits) are determined to clamp down on the flow of that information.
