Speaker 1: Direct action is not a new idea. We've talked in
Speaker 1: previous episodes in this season about how it was used
Speaker 1: by the Suffragettes by various civil rights movements, and it's
Speaker 1: not new to climate or other environmental issues either. Probably
Speaker 1: the best known organization when it comes to these sorts
Speaker 1: of tactics in the environmental space is green Peace. From
Speaker 1: blocking whaling boats to locking onto offshore platforms, Greenpeace activists
Speaker 1: have been putting their bodies in the way of environmental
Speaker 1: harms for decades.
Speaker 2: Six Greenpeace activists are on trial in front of a
Speaker 2: jury at Maidstone Crown Called for causing thirty thousand pounds worth.
Speaker 3: Of damage to the King's North Power station.
Speaker 4: There was a very real danger, according to our lawyers,
Speaker 4: that we would go to jail.
Speaker 1: I mean this is from a short video that was
Speaker 1: made documenting an action in the UK in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. But when they got their day in court,
Speaker 1: the activists made a novel argument.
Speaker 5: They argued their actions were justified because they were trying
Speaker 5: to highlight the dangers of climate change.
Speaker 2: There was a lawful excuse that the harm we caused
Speaker 2: by the damage of painting was insignificant compared with the
Speaker 2: emissions from Kings North for that one day.
Speaker 4: Alone, and the moments when the jury became most engaged
Speaker 4: was when the witnesses, the defendants or the scientific witnesses
Speaker 4: were talking about the effects of climate change on our
Speaker 4: kids and on our grandchildren. As suddenly, I think it
Speaker 4: put our actions into a different context that made them
Speaker 4: look quite frankly proportionate and reasonable.
Speaker 1: And it worked. It was the first time that what's
Speaker 1: called a climate necessity defense had worked, and it sparked
Speaker 1: lots of similar defenses all over the world.
Speaker 4: It's verdict. We think mark's a tipping point for the
Speaker 4: climate change movement. When twelve normal people say that it
Speaker 4: is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down
Speaker 4: a coal fire power station because of the harm that
Speaker 4: it does to the planet, then one has to ask
Speaker 4: where exactly that leaves government energy call us same.
Speaker 6: Then.
Speaker 1: Just about a decade later, the UK government passed new
Speaker 1: laws that not only restricted what protesters could do, but
Speaker 1: also how protesters were allowed to defend themselves in court.
Speaker 1: Some judges don't apply the new laws so strictly, but
Speaker 1: others have held people in contempt for just trying to
Speaker 1: explain themselves. In some courtrooms, the climate necesspe defense has
Speaker 1: been effectively outlawed. How did that happen and how did
Speaker 1: it happen so quickly? That's our story today. After the break,
Speaker 1: reporter Isabella Kaminski joins us from the UK with a
Speaker 1: story about the backlash against climate protest and how an
Speaker 1: obscure law from the sixteen hundreds might be activist best hope.
Speaker 1: She also wrote a piece for our website on this topic.
Speaker 1: You can find that at Drilled dot Media. I'm Ami
Speaker 1: Westervelt and this is Drilled the Real free Speech Threat.
Speaker 7: My name is Isabella Kaminski, and I'm a freelance journalist
Speaker 7: based in the UK who specializes in environment and climate change.
Speaker 1: So, Isabella, from your reporting and also just from kind
Speaker 1: of watching things unfold from Afar, it seems to me
Speaker 1: like there's been a pretty significant shift in the UK
Speaker 1: government's approach to protests in a fairly short amount of time.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious if that dives with what you found
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I think it's worth going back to two
Speaker 7: thousand and eight, when energy firm Ion was trying to
Speaker 7: build the UK's first new core fired power station in
Speaker 7: twenty years, and it wanted to do that at Kings
Speaker 7: North in the south of England, because there was already
Speaker 7: an old power station there and that became the follow
Speaker 7: called focal point for climate activists at the time. And
Speaker 7: so one day that year, six Greenpeace activists climbed up
Speaker 7: one of the station's smokestacks, these these two hundred meters
Speaker 7: high chimneys, and tried to shut it down by occupying
Speaker 7: it and painting on it. So they were arrested and
Speaker 7: they had to go to court where they made this
Speaker 7: really novel argument that they had a lawful.
Speaker 6: Excuse for what they'd done because.
Speaker 7: The damage caused protect other people's property from the effects
Speaker 7: of climate change, and the jury acquitted them. That at
Speaker 7: the time made the New York Times' list of top
Speaker 7: influential ideas for the year. It helped the government firm
Speaker 7: its climate commitments. Later that same year, the UK passed
Speaker 7: into law the Climate Change Act. You know, you can't
Speaker 7: necessarily make a direct link, but everything's helped shift the conversation.
Speaker 7: Eon then also abandoned the plan to build more coal.
Speaker 7: King's North was actually demolished, and the UK now generates
Speaker 7: only a tiny proportion of its actristy from coal, but
Speaker 7: a decade later, government and action on climate change was stalling.
Speaker 6: An activist that started talking to.
Speaker 7: Each other more and looking really intensively at how they
Speaker 7: could harness this idea of nonviolent direct action to change
Speaker 7: the conversation, and out of that, Extinction Rebellion was born.
Speaker 3: I'm doctor Gail Bradbrook. I'm one of the co founders
Speaker 3: of Extinction Rebellion.
Speaker 1: Before co founding Extinction Rebellion in twenty eighteen, Bradbrook had
Speaker 1: spent several years getting involved in various environmental and social
Speaker 1: justice fights. Isabella visited her at her home in Stroud,
Speaker 1: a small town in the picture as Cotswolds Hills in
Speaker 1: southern England, in the fall of twenty twenty three to
Speaker 1: get more of her story.
Speaker 3: It was part of the Animal Riots group at university.
Speaker 3: I sort of got involved in green politics as well,
Speaker 3: but have to add it, you know, my dad's a
Speaker 3: coal miners from the working class background, sort of bounced
Speaker 3: off the middle class by without realizing that's what was
Speaker 3: going off for me, no disrespect.
Speaker 6: To the people.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Bradbrook got her PhD in malch biology. She says
Speaker 1: she found it difficult to be a working class woman
Speaker 1: in science and ultimately made her way back to social
Speaker 1: justice work, mostly working with NGOs, and it was.
Speaker 3: Really helpful and that it helped me to learn about
Speaker 3: strategy and partnerships and fundraising and a whole cletter of like,
Speaker 3: you know, program delivery type stuff. And at the same
Speaker 3: time it makes it quite clear that you know, NGOs
Speaker 3: are generally part of the problem more than part.
Speaker 6: Of the solution.
Speaker 3: And then I did some cal street school economics. Is
Speaker 3: a video still a wreckicking round of that. I was
Speaker 3: trying to teach people economics on the streets because I
Speaker 3: think we're all kept ignorant eomics.
Speaker 1: And yes, we did find that video. Here's a little
Speaker 1: bit from it. This is from twenty thirteen and bradbrook
Speaker 1: is standing in front of a bunch of handmade science.
Speaker 1: One of them reads, remember the Golden Rule. Those with
Speaker 1: the gold make the rules.
Speaker 3: I feel really honored to share this evening with you.
Speaker 3: My concern is economic literacy. What do we know and
Speaker 3: understand about economics? And so tonight I want to do
Speaker 3: two things. Really to talk about economics, and for me,
Speaker 3: that's about showing the connection between different issues and maybe
Speaker 3: things that you already know about, like debt or inequality
Speaker 3: or you know, peak oil or whatever. But how do
Speaker 3: these things link up. That's the thing that I felt
Speaker 3: confused about and wanted some clarity around. So I wanted
Speaker 3: to share where I've got to on that. And then
Speaker 3: the second thing is to talk about talking about economics,
Speaker 3: so you know, I really believe we can't leave economics
Speaker 3: to economists.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, Bradbrook was working with the
Speaker 1: Tax Justice movement and participating in mass actions around wealth inequality,
Speaker 1: mostly tax strikes, and then she had an experience. It
Speaker 1: put her on the path to connecting with Roger Hallam,
Speaker 1: an organic farmer whose land had been destroyed by extreme weather.
Speaker 1: Hallam was studying for a PhD at King's College, London,
Speaker 1: researching social change and the history of social movements. Their
Speaker 1: meeting has sort of become the stuff of legends in
Speaker 1: climate spieces.
Speaker 3: You probably know this sort of slightly weird story of
Speaker 3: going off and praying with psychedelics. That did happen, and
Speaker 3: it was all very profound. Wasn't the first time I
Speaker 3: worked with those medicines that there was a depth there
Speaker 3: and the prayers were answered. I met Roger Hallam. He
Speaker 3: was doing similar and different research that was complimentary, and
Speaker 3: we had this big meeting and then started gathering energy
Speaker 3: around you know, social change movement, which originally was called
Speaker 3: Compassionate Revolution rebranded Rising Up and then Xile was a
Speaker 3: campaign of that.
Speaker 7: So is it fair to say that that was about
Speaker 7: something broader than climate?
Speaker 3: Oh? Definitely, So it can send you the Rising Up original.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I remember reading about it that since
Speaker 7: when when did climate become the sort of the focus then?
Speaker 6: Has it never been entirely?
Speaker 3: No? Because for me, it's just it's all part of it.
Speaker 3: It's just it's a you know, a symptom of a
Speaker 3: wider manaise. It's not the thing. And that is such
Speaker 3: a problem in climate activism because obviously people come in
Speaker 3: and want to solve climate change and you can't solve
Speaker 3: climate change because that's not the problem.
Speaker 8: They choose the symptom.
Speaker 1: Bradbrough and Hallam didn't just relate to each other. They
Speaker 1: were also very compelling for a lot of young activists
Speaker 1: who were fed up with the stalled progress on climate
Speaker 1: in the UK. And initially they had some really big wins.
Speaker 1: Here's Isabella again.
Speaker 7: So it had a huge positive impact in about sort
Speaker 7: of less than a year after the activists started having
Speaker 7: these conversations, they managed to succeed in getting thousands of
Speaker 7: people onto the streets of London in this really really
Speaker 7: unprecedented display of climate solidarity. You know, some people were arrested,
Speaker 7: but the actions also changed the public and political mood
Speaker 7: around climate change. You know, polls show that concern grew.
Speaker 7: Parliament later declared climate emergency and the UK set its
Speaker 7: first net SERTI and that was all in the twelve
Speaker 7: months after Extinction Rebellion launch, and it also sparked further
Speaker 7: protests around the world as well, under the banner of
Speaker 7: Extinction Rebellion and through other sort of climate activist groups.
Speaker 1: Bradbrooke said she thought that super successful first year was
Speaker 1: because Extinction Rebellion's approach was so different, not in terms
Speaker 1: of using direct action per se, but something a little
Speaker 1: more ephemeroal what I.
Speaker 3: Believe created the success into twenty nineteen and it was limited,
Speaker 3: but we did smash in climate denial. There was a
Speaker 3: spirit that was created. It's off the right hemisphere that
Speaker 3: that's the playful side of humanity. That's the side of humanity.
Speaker 3: It's visionary and collaborative and together and believes.
Speaker 7: In itself, but at the same time it sparked this backlash.
Speaker 7: So the same year that the government set that net
Speaker 7: zero target, a group called Policy Exchange put out a
Speaker 7: report and they called it Extreme Asm Rebellion, and that
Speaker 7: report warn that extinction rebellion was a major threat and
Speaker 7: so the government had to do something to crack down
Speaker 7: on this type of protest.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to this series all along, that
Speaker 1: name Policy Exchange might sound familiar. We've mentioned this organization
Speaker 1: before because it's an ATLAS Network member think tank. Here
Speaker 1: is Richard Walton, a former senior policy fellow at Policy
Speaker 1: Exchange and the lead author of the report that Isabella
Speaker 1: just mentioned, talking on a podcast shortly after the release
Speaker 1: of the report. You'll hear the host first and then Walton.
Speaker 2: Mis Walton, thanks for coming on the show. Now. One,
Speaker 2: I may support many of their motives. I can't support
Speaker 2: the way they act. But they're not really the mafia,
Speaker 2: are they. They can't be called an organized crime gang.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Good morning, Nick Well.
Speaker 9: I mean, there's certainly the behavior that we've seen is
Speaker 9: rather typical, but they are certainly engaged in organized criminality
Speaker 9: on their LAS scale, and the tactics is one of
Speaker 9: civil resistance. Civil resistance model that is based on illegal action.
Speaker 9: So I think what we saw of the weekend with
Speaker 9: the blockading of the various news print outlets was was
Speaker 9: a form of anarchism effectively, it was you know, rather typical.
Speaker 9: This is a group that you rejects democracy and the
Speaker 9: liberal free mark economy and explicitly seeks to overturn both.
Speaker 1: This is something we've talked about in this season too,
Speaker 1: this framing of climate activists and particularly those engaging in
Speaker 1: direct action as being these scary anarchists. Definitely, that's something
Speaker 1: that Atlas Network think tanks in particular have been pushing. Isabella.
Speaker 1: Did you see the UK media kind of amplifying that
Speaker 1: message too, or any politicians sort of picking up that
Speaker 1: threat and running with it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely they started to certainly certain sections of the
Speaker 7: media started to repeat the kind of language that was
Speaker 7: being you used, and the framing of.
Speaker 6: These groups as.
Speaker 7: A threat rather than trying to draw attention to a
Speaker 7: serious issue. And then it wasn't too much longer before
Speaker 7: the UK began actually putting some of this stuff into legislation.
Speaker 7: So in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, the UK
Speaker 7: Parliament passed two really significant pieces of law which gave
Speaker 7: law enforcement agencies much greater powers to stop protest tactics
Speaker 7: that were considered to be disruptive. Certain aspects of those
Speaker 7: laws as they were being developed in parliament, which were
Speaker 7: struck down. The government later sort of pushed through through
Speaker 7: secondary regulation to try and bypass the parliamentary process. So
Speaker 7: these pieces of law have really made it harder for
Speaker 7: people to protest and given enforcement authorities, given the police
Speaker 7: much greater power to stop it before.
Speaker 8: It happens and while people are protesting.
Speaker 7: We also know that in the summer of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 7: at a policy exchange Garden Party Prime Minister Rishie Sunak
Speaker 7: thank the organization for its help with these legislative changes.
Speaker 1: I love that it was at a garden party. That
Speaker 1: why that makes it so much I don't know, makes
Speaker 1: it land so much more so. You wrote in your
Speaker 1: story also about not only how these laws have led
Speaker 1: to more arrests, but how they've impacted activist core proceedings,
Speaker 1: which I think is really really interesting. Can I just
Speaker 1: have you kind of walk us through what you found
Speaker 1: out on that front?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Sure, So I've been speaking to locked of activists who
Speaker 7: have been arrested and have been through the court system,
Speaker 7: And the really key thing is here that activists, when
Speaker 7: they get to court, whatever the crime they're accused of is,
Speaker 7: they want to be able to explain their motivations for
Speaker 7: why they did what they did. And for some that's
Speaker 7: about getting the issue on the record but talking about
Speaker 7: climate change, for example. For others, it's about trying to
Speaker 7: persuade the jury that what they did was proportionate and
Speaker 7: that they couldn't be convicted. But judges have discretion in
Speaker 7: how they run particular trials in their courts, and that's
Speaker 7: led to this really wide variety of.
Speaker 8: Different outcomes for protesters.
Speaker 7: So in some courts, activists have been given pretty free
Speaker 7: reign to explain their motivations for what they did. In
Speaker 7: some they've been allowed to use particular legal defenses, so
Speaker 7: for example, a necessity that's saying that what they did
Speaker 7: was necessary to avoid a greater harm to the planet.
Speaker 7: But in others they've been really strictly barred from even
Speaker 7: mentioning climate change at all. So I've heard activists describe
Speaker 7: this as a justice lottery, with some people being convicted
Speaker 7: and going to prison and others found not guilty and
Speaker 7: allowed to go home. But at the same time, juries
Speaker 7: vary quite a lot, and in many cases they've been
Speaker 7: acquitting activists for a whole range of eventss whether or
Speaker 7: not they've managed to explain their motivations. So the result
Speaker 7: is that not all judges or politicians are very happy
Speaker 7: with that situation. And so there's been this growing tension
Speaker 7: about how to deal with climate protests in a proportionate way.
Speaker 7: And meanwhile climate protesters are quite frustrated that they're being
Speaker 7: handled so differently in different parts of the country and
Speaker 7: in different courts, even within the same city.
Speaker 1: Is there anyone kind of working on just specifically that is,
Speaker 1: you like, the inconsistency of things being applied, I mean
Speaker 1: that could go well or poorly for activists. I would
Speaker 1: guess that, you know, if someone's like, the judges should
Speaker 1: all be implementing this to the letter of the law,
Speaker 1: or we should come up with something that's more unifying.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It strikes me as like the classics thing that court
Speaker 1: cases exist to do, right is figure out this kind
Speaker 1: of inconsistency.
Speaker 7: That there are people and I know people who are
Speaker 7: tracking with spreadsheets you know what's happening to different people
Speaker 7: and different courts, and so some of them have figures
Speaker 7: for about half of protesters, for example, being acquitted compared
Speaker 7: to the other half found guilty by jewelies. You're right though,
Speaker 7: that absolutely could fire because you could end up in
Speaker 7: a situation where the courts actually look and say, well,
Speaker 7: we want to apply the strict sentences.
Speaker 8: To everybody rather than the most lenient.
Speaker 6: So there's two things going on here.
Speaker 7: It's protesters feeling that the sentences being handed down to
Speaker 7: them are too strong because in some cases the jail
Speaker 7: sentences have been hand down have been significantly bigger than
Speaker 7: they have been in previous protest trials. That's something actually
Speaker 7: the UN is looking at because there is concern about
Speaker 7: how the courts have applied this. But in other cases
Speaker 7: they're talking about the inconsistency. So there's the tougher sentences
Speaker 7: on one hand, and on the others, the lack of
Speaker 7: kind of clear guidelines for how to treat these cases.
Speaker 7: I think some of these cases are going to the
Speaker 7: Court of Appeal, so there might be higher courts deciding
Speaker 7: how it can be applied to the lower ones.
Speaker 8: But so far there isn't any any guidance on that.
Speaker 10: We don't know exactly what discussions have been had, exactly
Speaker 10: what pressures have been but we can see that change
Speaker 10: in charging decisions.
Speaker 7: Dr Graham Hayes is a researcher in social movements at
Speaker 7: Aston University.
Speaker 10: As soon as those changes happen, the ability to defend
Speaker 10: yourself in court is much lesser and the penalties are
Speaker 10: much greater.
Speaker 1: Hayes and his colleague, doctor Stephen Camis, who's an associate
Speaker 1: law professor at the University of Birmingham, have been tracking
Speaker 1: what's happening in the courts ever since the UK passed
Speaker 1: its new protest laws in twenty nineteen. Doctor Gail Bradbrooke,
Speaker 1: the Extinction Rebellion co founder that you heard from earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, was arrested for breaking a window in
Speaker 1: a government building during a protest. She just went to
Speaker 1: trial in twenty twenty three, and the judge in her
Speaker 1: trial refused to let her explain why she was protesting
Speaker 1: in the first place. The judge repeatedly warned her to
Speaker 1: stop speaking when she disobeyed that order, and told the
Speaker 1: jury to disregard what she was saying.
Speaker 11: So in that context, thinking about Gail Bradbroock's stile and
Speaker 11: the judges warning that if she continued to overstep the
Speaker 11: bounds that he'd set, that he could move to a
Speaker 11: judge only trial.
Speaker 6: I mean, am I right that that.
Speaker 11: Provision was designed to address jury intimidation sort of in
Speaker 11: the context of serious organized trick crime.
Speaker 7: Is that why that was developed in the first place?
Speaker 3: These two free criminal justice actor exactly and it was
Speaker 3: finally contentious of the time.
Speaker 1: And another thing that came up in your piece that
Speaker 1: was new to me as a non UK listener was
Speaker 1: this idea of jury nullification. And I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: sort of the role that this concept is playing in
Speaker 1: these cases and especially around the car proceedings. Can I
Speaker 1: have you kind of define that for folks who are
Speaker 1: tuning in from outside the UK.
Speaker 7: Sure, this is a really fascinating idea. So it refers
Speaker 7: to this key legal idea which actually dates back at
Speaker 7: five hundred years and in sixteen seventy, jurors in a
Speaker 7: particular case were ordered by a judge to find two
Speaker 7: Quakers guilty of illegal preaching. So the jury, led by
Speaker 7: a man called Edward Bushell, refused and they were jailed
Speaker 7: and fined until a court eventually cleared them. That case
Speaker 7: has now become the sort of celebrated principle of religious
Speaker 7: and political freedom, and the resulting principle is known as
Speaker 7: during nullification. The idea is that juries can clear people
Speaker 7: based on their consciences. And in fact, in the Old Bailey,
Speaker 7: which is the central criminal court of England and Wales
Speaker 7: in London, it's actually engraved onto our marble plaque there.
Speaker 8: That's how important this idea is.
Speaker 7: But in response to what's been happening in some of
Speaker 7: the cases against climate protesters in court, a sixty eight
Speaker 7: year old woman stood outside one of the courts and
Speaker 7: she'd written this principle of during nullification onto a cardboard sign.
Speaker 7: So she wrote, jurors, you have an absolute right to
Speaker 7: a quit a defendant according to your conscience. The judge
Speaker 7: in that case, where he was taking a trial of
Speaker 7: some climate protesters, was not happy. He felt that the
Speaker 7: lady Trudy Warner was trying to interfere with the jury,
Speaker 7: and he referred her for contempt of court, essentially that
Speaker 7: she was trying to sway the jury into making a
Speaker 7: particular kind of decision.
Speaker 6: So when Trudy next went back to court.
Speaker 7: He ordered her to be arrested, and she was later
Speaker 7: charged with contempt of court. Trudy's arrest then sparked lots
Speaker 7: of other people to do similar things, so they started
Speaker 7: standing outside court with very similar signs reminding.
Speaker 6: Juries that they have to acquit.
Speaker 7: There's been a sort of series of escalating protests, from
Speaker 7: a handful of people to over two hundred, and at
Speaker 7: the latest count in December, more than five hundred people
Speaker 7: stood outside around fifty courts in the UK holding up
Speaker 7: very similar signs reminding juries of this key legal principle.
Speaker 7: A couple of people have also been charged, but most
Speaker 7: of those protesters have not had any kind of haven't
Speaker 7: had their details taken, and haven't had any.
Speaker 8: Kind of legal consequences for doing that.
Speaker 7: But it's led to this growing row about what is proportionate.
Speaker 10: I think until we get ruling in the Trudy Warner case,
Speaker 10: we won't exactly know how this will be dealt with
Speaker 10: from there onwards. I just think we have probably have
Speaker 10: to wait and see. I think what I would say
Speaker 10: is that judges have different personalities and they use contempt
Speaker 10: of the threat of contempt of the threat of imprisonment
Speaker 10: in order to demonstrate their authority in the courtroom, and
Speaker 10: you regularly see some judges threaten prison to defendants to
Speaker 10: keep them in.
Speaker 7: Light, so that people who have had legal repercussions are
Speaker 7: truly warner. And two young women, all of them are
Speaker 7: being charged with contempt. I haven't spoken to them directly
Speaker 7: on the record because they're going through this legal process.
Speaker 7: I have spoken to three generations of one family who
Speaker 7: were some of the protesters outside one of the courts.
Speaker 7: They were very passionate about why they were doing this.
Speaker 7: For them, it was about much more than climate change,
Speaker 7: although that was super important. This was about a really
Speaker 7: important fundamental principle of essentially freedom of speech.
Speaker 6: So what is your name?
Speaker 5: I'm real Lais Slater, I'm Sarah McDonald, I'm Vivia McDonald,
Speaker 5: and your three generations of the same family, right, and
Speaker 5: so why have you come to Bristol Crown Court today?
Speaker 5: Really to stand up for the rights of life? Actually
Speaker 5: that's for me, to stand up for life. I've done
Speaker 5: a lot of climate activism and I've taken part in
Speaker 5: the actions against the aggressive police Crime Sentencing Bill.
Speaker 6: What concerns you about those bills?
Speaker 11: I think a lot of things per finding about those bills.
Speaker 12: I think the plump down on protests really reflects how
Speaker 12: the government is trying to and what direction our country
Speaker 12: is being taken in in a way to repress people
Speaker 12: expressing their opinions and to repress assembly, which has been
Speaker 12: throughout history, or way to cultivate change, and I think
Speaker 12: clamping down on that really reflects their opinions on not
Speaker 12: just the private protest, but like historical protests as well,
Speaker 12: and how they have manifested and been brought forwards in
Speaker 12: the tradition of cultivating change. It's more important than ever
Speaker 12: to continue protesting and to continue fighting for change in
Speaker 12: light of how the.
Speaker 8: Government is trying to repress it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing that strikes me the most about
Speaker 1: the court preceding stuff is just how you know whether
Speaker 1: climate is an issue of that you care about or not,
Speaker 1: or whether you think these protesters are justified or not
Speaker 1: is sort of beside the point. Anytime you're curtailing people's
Speaker 1: ability to defend themselves or curtailing what they're allowed to
Speaker 1: say in their defense, it seems like potentially something that
Speaker 1: folks might be concerned about.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, and that's one of the points that protesters are making,
Speaker 7: although obviously they want to draw attention to climate change
Speaker 7: and for people who've been involved in various kinds of
Speaker 7: activism to not go to prison and to be found
Speaker 7: not guilt. This is a really fundamental point about allowing
Speaker 7: people to express their motivations and giving juries as a
Speaker 7: kind of representative example of the public the ability to
Speaker 7: make informed decisions about people's actions and about essentially what
Speaker 7: is right and wrong. Otherwise you're giving all that power
Speaker 7: to a judge, into the judiciary, rather than the people themselves.
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff that you've been talking about
Speaker 1: kind of played into Gail Bradbrooks's case as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So Gail had two trials, and the first trial,
Speaker 7: which was earlier in twenty twenty three, had to be
Speaker 7: aborted because she kept talking about her motivations for her actions,
Speaker 7: and the judge was really unhappy about that. He basically
Speaker 7: refused to let her do so, accused her of tampering
Speaker 7: with the jury, and said that the trial would come
Speaker 7: to an end and would start again later. In between
Speaker 7: her two trials, there were various hearings where she was
Speaker 7: trying to negotiate what she was allowed to say. The
Speaker 7: extent with which she was allowed to describe her motivations
Speaker 7: and talk about climate change, and the judge was really
Speaker 7: pushing back on that. He was incredibly limited in how
Speaker 7: he allowed her to frame her defense and was basically
Speaker 7: striking down any kind of legal defense that she had
Speaker 7: to make. So by the time of the second trial,
Speaker 7: where there was a fresh jury, she was very technically
Speaker 7: restricted and she was defending herself as well. During the
Speaker 7: actual case though, she managed to sort of push back
Speaker 7: on quite a bit of it, and the judge was
Speaker 7: repeatedly stopping her from talking and reminding her of his
Speaker 7: previous rulings, but she did manage to in various ways
Speaker 7: get across most of what she wanted to the jury.
Speaker 7: The re was well, was not really what she wanted
Speaker 7: because she was found guilty. She told me that she
Speaker 7: was happy because she had managed to at least explain herself,
Speaker 7: which the judge hadn't really wanted her to do in
Speaker 7: that case as well. Coming into the court in the morning,
Speaker 7: there were many people sitting outside with the jury nullification
Speaker 7: slogans on their placards, which the judge told the jury
Speaker 7: that they should sort of, you know, take with a
Speaker 7: bit of pitch of salt so that all these factors
Speaker 7: were coming together in this trial of an Extinction Rebellion.
Speaker 1: Founder bradbrook was sentenced to fifteen months in jail, but
Speaker 1: the judge immediately suspended that sentence. She was also given
Speaker 1: a twelvemonth supervision order and one hundred and fifty hours
Speaker 1: of community service. Once the sentencing ended, Bradbrooke released her
Speaker 1: seventy five page dossier of evidence, all the stuff the
Speaker 1: judge had said she couldn't use to defend herself, and
Speaker 1: she criticized the judicial system for both its inconsistency and
Speaker 1: for curtailing people's ability to defend themselves. In a press
Speaker 1: statement that Extinction Rebellion sent out, Bradbrokes said, quote, our
Speaker 1: so called justice system is a lottery for climate defenders
Speaker 1: and not fit for purpose when it comes to tackling
Speaker 1: the climate and nature crisis. Meanwhile, several other climate activists
Speaker 1: are either in jail or awaiting trial in the UK.
Speaker 7: Next year there are going to be quite a few
Speaker 7: more trials of climate protesters, some of them accused of
Speaker 7: quite significant damage, so it'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 7: the courts treat them, whether they become even tougher make
Speaker 7: it even harder for activists to make defenses and whether
Speaker 7: the sentences are going to be even less lenient. I
Speaker 7: understand that some activists are going to be making formal
Speaker 7: complaints about the UK government, that it's acting disproportionately and
Speaker 7: possibly violating some international laws about the right to free
Speaker 7: speech and the right to protest. So I think that
Speaker 7: will be a really important thing to look out for.
Speaker 7: The UK government is aware of its image on the
Speaker 7: wider stage, and so that kind of action might help
Speaker 7: to show it up as being somewhere which likes to
Speaker 7: present itself as a climate leader and a bastion of
Speaker 7: free speech, but isn't necessarily living up to that reputation
Speaker 7: right now.
Speaker 1: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was
Speaker 1: reported by Isabella Kamensky and written by me Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 13: Our senior editor for the series is Ellen Brown.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Martin Zold's Astwig.
Speaker 3: Sound design and scoring also by Martin zoltz Ostwik, who
Speaker 3: composed much of the music in this episode.
Speaker 13: Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is but in the hand by four known.
Speaker 13: Fact checking by Rudan Jan.
Speaker 1: Al Atwick is by Matt Fleming. Our first them in
Speaker 1: my Attorney is James whet.
Speaker 13: The show was created by Amy Westerveldt.
Speaker 1: You can find a companion web story to this episode
Speaker 1: on our website at drilled dot Media. You can also
Speaker 1: subscribe to our newsletter there. It comes out once a
Speaker 1: week and includes a little bit of analysis on what's
Speaker 1: happening in climate, plus a roundup of the top five
Speaker 1: stories or studies to check out each week. It's never
Speaker 1: more than a ten minute read, and people tell us
Speaker 1: it helps them stay on top of all things climate.
Speaker 1: If you want to support our work, you can also
Speaker 1: leave us a rating or review. It genuinely helps us
Speaker 1: find new listeners. And finally, if you would like to
Speaker 1: fund more climate accountability reporting, you can sign up for
Speaker 1: a paid subscription to either the newsletter or the podcast.
Speaker 1: A subscription gets you access to ad free episodes, bonus
Speaker 1: and early content, and every dollar you contribute goes toward
Speaker 1: more reporting and more stories. Thank you for that support.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time and we'll see you next week.