Nearly 650 Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested in a month as campaigners hit out at the police’s “staggering and shocking” use of new anti-protest legislation.
A demonstration was held outside the Metropolitan Police’s New Scotland Yard headquarters on Saturday afternoon.
JSO, which has carried out a string of recent “slow marches” in central London, billed it as a “mass march in solidarity with the innocent climate prisoners”.
The force revealed it arrested eco-warriors on 649 occasions, with 338 charged, since the “start of their latest campaign of disruption” on October 30.
Police are using section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023 to target any action that “interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure”.
But the Guardian reports a 23-year-old arrested within five minutes of joining a demonstration on November 13 was held for 56 hours in custody.
The newspaper claimed a 19-year-old student was detained for three nights in a London prison despite being given bail by a magistrates’ court. They are considering a case of false imprisonment.
Jun Pang, a policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “We all have the right to make our voices heard on the issues that matter to us.
“The staggering number of people arrested in recent weeks, many under this new legislation, shows just how sweeping and dangerous these powers are. It’s shocking to see hundreds of young protesters criminalised simply for standing up for what they believe in.”
But Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Valentine added: “We will continue to recognise the right to protest however that must be done lawfully.”
Scotland Yard said: “We know some people have asked why JSO activists can be arrested so quickly in comparison to other groups.
“New legislation, under Section 7 of the Public Order Act, provides officers with specific powers to arrest where groups are intentionally going out to disproportionately interfere with key national infrastructure, which includes ‘road transport infrastructure’.”
