A retired vicar vowed to carry on protesting despite being jailed for taking part in a climate change demonstration which brought the City of London to a standstill. Former Vicar of Rochdale the Rev Mark Coleman was sentenced to five weeks in prison for his part in October's Insulate Britain roadblock.
The 63-year-old was one of a number of protesters who sat in the road at the Bishopsgate junction during a two hour protest calling for homes are insulated to be low energy by 2030. But a defiant Mr Coleman vowed the sentence wouldn't stop him taking part in future 'civil disobedience'.
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He said: "I want to state that I acted to protect human life, to draw attention to the death and destruction caused by rising emissions and the impacts of cold damp homes on the health of the citizens of our country. I had learned of the effects of fuel poverty when I worked for the charity Age Concern in the 1980s. Later, in the Liverpool and Rochdale parishes where I served as parish priest, I saw the misery caused by these uninsulated homes and the fuel poverty and debt that often ensues. “
"In the ordination service priests are told that they should ‘resist evil, support the weak, defend the poor, and intercede for all in need’. For me of course it has moral authority. Poor people are more likely to die prematurely. I have tried to be true to my ordination vows. I see it as part of my vocation as a priest, to continue to resist until the government acts. I expect that this civil resistance will involve sitting on the public highway again."
The Daily Mail reports David Matthew, prosecuting, told inner London Crown Court, 'thousands of people' were affected by the protest. He said: "If the court does not maintain the right of the public to use a public road it would be a failure and rightly resented by the public.
"This was aimed to cause disruption. It aimed to seek publicity. It is clear that thousands of vehicles were affected.
'Thousands of people were affected including thousands on buses, which were delayed or diverted. This is the effect that this court has to deal with.
"The block at Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street lasted in excess of two hours. There is always a risk in causing heavy congestion. It could affect the use of emergency vehicles."
Mr Coleman, who was sentenced alongside fellow protesters Daphne Jackson, 72, Beatrice Pooley, 65, and Stephanie Aylett, 28, for causing a public nuisance, was also ordered to pay £3,500 prosecution costs.
He was ordained in 2000 and moved to Rochdale in 2014 where he was made vicar and Borough Dean. He retired in February last year due to ill health.
Since stepping down he's become a prominent environmental activist, dubbed the 'Rochdale rebel'. In September last year he was jailed after breaking an injunction by blockading the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire.
In September 2021 Mr Coleman, of Rochdale, was among dozens of environmental activists who staged a roadblock on the M25. Five months earlier he was cleared of criminal damage after being accused of vandalising Heywood and Middleton MP Chris Clarkson's constituency office by spraying it with graffiti calling for action on climate change.
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