Two Just Stop Oil protesters who scaled the bridge at the Dartford crossing, closing it to traffic for more than a day and a half, have been refused permission to appeal against their sentences.
Morgan Trowland was jailed for three years and Marcus Decker for two years and seven months after they used ropes to climb the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, which links the M25 in Essex and Kent, last October, causing long traffic jams.
The protesters’ lawyers had made an attempt to challenge the “extraordinary length” of their sentences, arguing they were unprecedented and disproportionate for non-violent protest. In a ruling handed down on Monday, Lady Justice Carr, leading a panel of three appeal court judges, disagreed.
“This protest was of a wholly different nature and scale to the many non-violent protests of conscientious activists up and down the country exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly on a daily basis,” Carr said.
Carr admitted the sentences were severe. “But we have concluded that they were not manifestly excessive; nor did they amount to a disproportionate interference with their rights of freedom of expression and assembly.”
“This was very serious offending by repeat protest offenders who were trespassers (and on bail) at the time; whilst the protest was non-violent as such, it had extreme consequences for many, many members of the public.”
She said the sentences met the “legitimate” aim of deterring others from such offending.
At a hearing last Wednesday, Daniel Friedman KC, representing Trowland and Decker, had said their jail terms were “the longest ever handed down in a case of non-violent protest in this country in modern times”.
He told the court they had spent nine months in jail since their arrest last October, which amounted to the “longest sentence ever served in living memory” for someone convicted over a “peaceful protest”. The sentences were, Friedman had argued, a “disproportionate interference” with the activists’ rights to free speech and protest, and were likely to have “a chilling effect” on all protest.
Tom Little KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, had opposed the two men’s appeal bids, saying there would “be cases in which it is necessary to deter people from offending and further law-breaking”.
At their trial in April, Trowland, a structural engineer from Islington, north London, and Decker, a private tutor, of no fixed address, had denied causing a public nuisance, arguing it was a protest.
They were found guilty by a jury who heard how drivers had missed funerals, hospital appointments and shifts at work, and businesses lost thousands of pounds in revenue, after police shut the bridge from 4am on 17 October until 9pm the next day.
“You have to be punished both for the chaos you caused and to deter others from seeking to copy you in the next protest,” said judge Shane Collery KC, as he passed sentence.
Just Stop Oil has said Decker, a German citizen, faces deportation after serving his sentence.
