The hi-vis jackets, banners and pumping adrenaline that fuelled their attention-grabbing actions have gone. Instead the climate activists of Insulate Britain are filing into English courtrooms day after day, taking part in what some have likened to a cat and mouse game in which the stakes – personal, financial and emotional – are high.
Their mass-arrest actions, which brought serious disruption to rush hour traffic on the M25 and around the south-east, are playing out their end stages in a criminal justice system beset by delays for most cases, but surprisingly efficient at putting non-violent demonstrators in front of magistrates and judges.
Alongside a slew of magistrates court trials – at least 30 activists are due in court in Chelmsford this year alone – the Crown Prosecution Service has charged 56 supporters of Insulate Britain to answer at least 201 counts of causing a public nuisance. All have pleaded not guilty and since November one London court has held a trial each week of the group’s supporters. The trials stretch out on the court lists there, and in cameos at several other courts, until at least December this year.
In the scruffy yet imposing and implacable wood-panelled surroundings of Inner London crown court, where most will take place, the strain on activists was this week beginning to show.
“The whole system seems so unfair,” said Helen Redfern, 58, who had come to watch from the public gallery as four more stood trial. She faces a potential jail sentence herself after she was convicted at the same court in February.
“It has been an absolute trauma,” she said. “Firstly deciding to do the action then taking part was the most mentally and physically exhausting, then going though the trial was so stressful and exhausting.
“The one thing I find the hardest to take is when people say: you are right. Caitlin Moran in the Times said we are right. And we are right. We are on the right side of history. But while people say we are right we are facing jail for doing what is right.”
There is also a heavy financial burden. Emma Smart was convicted of causing a public nuisance in February. She and her co-defendants had been ordered to pay £90,000 costs. A judge had halved that, leaving each with a £5,000 bill, which they had agreed to pay off at a rate of about £5 a month. Now they have been ordered to pay a further £3,000 after the government made a renewed application.
“They’ve sent me through forms, I was supposed to do them yesterday, I just haven’t,” Smart said. “I’m just so upset that I’m just like: Fuck you. I’m just going to fill out the form with ‘fuck you’ in every box. And that’s not good.”
As well as the heavy fines, Smart is waiting for another trial later this year and also waiting to see if she will face further charges, including a possible charge of conspiracy, after the house she was staying in was raided by police last August.
Among the activist community there was a strong support network, Smart said. But they are trying to hold each other together in the face of what many perceived as a crackdown by the government – and for some, wellbeing is beginning to fray.
“The kind of individual who’s willing to sit on a motorway is the kind of person who’s very emotionally charged and also potentially more vulnerable, as well,” Smart said. “So there are a lot of vulnerable people in our community, you know? People who are suffering with depression or anxiety. We’ve got a disproportionate amount of people amongst activists who do already suffer with that.”
“Also we haven’t had a win,” Smart said. “I think that that’s a big thing. There’s nothing that we can go: yes, we’ve achieved this. There’s no sense of everything we’ve done has been worth it because the government have insulated homes: there’s none of that. So everything we’re doing, going through feels [like] that sort of sense of we’re losing, they’re winning. That’s really strong.
“That’s certainly how I feel. I feel like we’re fighting a huge monster and the monster is winning. And what do you do? We’re not seeing more numbers of people coming. It’s the same small group of exhausted burnt-out people.”
A feature of the legal process that weighs heavy on the Insulate Britain defendants is the strict legal restrictions on what they can say to jurors. In a number of the cases held already, where the charge is public nuisance, the defendants have been instructed not to mention the climate crisis or any other motivation. One of their number has already been jailed for eight weeks for contempt after he gave a speech to jurors explaining how he was driven by the pace of climate change to take the action.
Oliver Rock, 42, from south London, was convicted of causing a public nuisance in February. He said he pleaded not guilty to the latest charge, expecting he would be able to use his day in court to mention climate breakdown, even if the judge told jurors to disregard his remarks.
“If you take climate change out of the picture, then yeah, we’re guilty,” Rock said. “Yeah, I obviously intentionally caused a traffic jam. Like, this is just absurd, to completely remove that [defence].”
Rock, who was jailed in 2021 for breaking an injunction banning protests on the M25, and also has been ordered to pay thousands of pounds in costs, faces three more public nuisance trials this year, for various actions. He, like most of the defendants, is representing himself in court, adding to the burden of dealing with the legal process.
“You have that time in court, plus a plea hearing for each one, which you have to go to court for,” he said. “Plus admin, and trial preparation days and stuff, is an enormous amount of time and energy, which goes into this bureaucracy.
“I’m really bad at admin. But you kind of have to keep on top of it, because you could potentially go to prison again if you don’t keep on top of it – accidentally.”
Insulate Britain’s members are not the only ones facing trials. Hundreds of charges have been laid against the activists of Just Stop Oil, too. Unlike Insulate Britain, that campaign also includes a large contingent of young people. “The pressure is huge, especially on young people; the criminal record is obviously something that’s really damaging to career prospects,” Smart said. Nonetheless, many were becoming involved, some choosing to quit university.
Rock said criticisms of Just Stop Oil for tempting young people into direct actions with potentially severe legal consequences had weight, but equally were unhelpful. “I’ve spent time around these young people and I think that they are so amazing: their care for other people, and their dedication and their understanding of what the near future means – they have such a strong sense of it. And it is heartbreaking to see what they’re up against. And they’re really committed to the struggle.
“What my suggestion for other people would be [is], instead of criticising Just Stop Oil, you should raise up your level of what you’re doing in this struggle. Because just criticising Just Stop Oil, and then not really doing anything effective, is also or just as much betrayal of young people.”
