LONDON (Reuters) - Environmental activists accused of criminal damage cannot rely on their political or philosophical beliefs as a defence, London’s Court of Appeal ruled on Monday, raising the prospect of more protesters being convicted for direct action.
Various groups have targeted companies and political parties in Britain, causing damage to property in order to raise awareness of climate-change issues.
The rise in the use of direct action has prompted a wider crackdown on protest movements in Britain and across Europe, particularly in relation to environmental groups.
Monday’s ruling effectively prevents environmental protesters from relying on their beliefs about the dangers of climate change as a defence to criminal damage.
Yes this is unfortunately the risk of direct action. Protests that aren’t inconvenient will rarely have an impact. And inconvenient protests are often illegal in some way. Seeing the state try to stop dissent by enforcing the laws is not a surprise and the protestors likely knew this could happen.
Instead this kind of coverage should make people angry and encourage more protests. It’ll be difficult to prosecute thousands for trespassing and other minor crimes and that’s when protesting really starts to have an affect.
Also, in civil rights movements the point is to be arrested for breaking an unjust law. Then your group publicizes it so people can see how unjust the law is.
The problem is, you need to break a law that is actually unjust. Laws against trespassing and vandalism aren’t really controversial, so being arrested for breaking them isn’t a shock to anyone.
Should anyone be allowed to go wherever and paint whatever slogans anywhere? If it’s legal, people you disagree with are going to do it too.
The problem is that they are protesting the lack of laws and regulation. So they can’t break laws to show they are unjust. They can take direct action against those that are most responsible for climate change, and people have been doing that. They are also frequently charged, penalized, fined, and imprisoned. They are bringing attention to a problem and hoping enough people notice.