The environmental activist Marcus Decker has been warned he will lose all privileges if he talks to the media from prison, where he is serving one of the longest sentences ever passed for a non-violent protest in British history.
Four days into his jail term, Decker was visited by prison officials and told to remain silent, according to his partner. The warning came as lawyers for Decker consider an appeal against his sentence of two years and seven months for causing a public nuisance with his direct-action protest.
In the annals of climate activism, Decker has made history. His protest in October last year, with fellow campaigner Morgan Trowland, was one of the most dramatic of the campaign by members of the climate protest movement to press for an end to further fossil fuel exploration and for urgent action to tackle global heating.
At 3am on 17 October, the men scaled 60 metres (200ft) up the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge in Dartford, Kent, sitting astride the cables of the bridge struts to inch their way to the top before releasing a Just Stop Oil banner. Decker and Trowland remained in place in hammocks for almost 40 hours before being removed by police.
Their eye-catching protest received a similarly dramatic response after they were convicted by a jury at Southend crown court of causing a public nuisance. Passing down the longest sentences in UK history for non-violent direct action, Judge Shane Collery said he wanted to deter others from copycat actions. The men, he said, had caused a very important road to be closed, and disrupted travel for many tens of thousands of people.
Speaking from her home in Tottenham, north London, Decker’s partner, Holly, who did not want her full name to be used, recalled the moment the judge handed down the sentence. “He looked at the reporters as he said to both of them ‘You plainly believed you knew better than everyone else … In short, to hell with everyone else.’”
Holly said she felt the judge’s comments were seriously misguided. “Marcus didn’t do this action on a whim. He would have considered every aspect of it. He is very, very knowledgable about previous protest movements. I think he did this for humanity, he did this because the situation with the climate crisis is so dire and so many people are affected by it right now. There are people dying in other parts of the world all the time, and there are people dying here from air pollution.
“He is very sorry that it came to the point that we have to do actions like that which cause a lot of disruption. But they were very, very careful to make sure it caused the minimal amount of disruption possible, and as minimal harm as possible. While they proved in court that they were incredibly safe, of course, to any normal person looking at them they look so vulnerable. They are in hammocks in the wind. And during the night people shot fireworks at them.”
Holly, a musician, who met Decker during lockdown in 2020 when they both worked on online protest singing workshops for Extinction Rebellion, knew nothing of the details of his plan, but suspected he was considering something different from the moderate actions he had taken since joining the movement in 2018. “I first saw it on the news,” said Holly. “I knew that he felt after years of trying so many other things that something bigger needed to be done. And I obviously knew that he had very adept climbing skills. But he has always been really careful to protect me and the kids. So he didn’t tell me actually what he was doing.”
Prosecution witnesses brought before the trial gave evidence of the disruption the protest had caused in their lives, including a missed funeral and a missed hospital appointment. “So the jury were able to see a handful of people who’d had a very bad time and there were some very upset people. But what the jury was not able to see or hear of first-hand were the families of the children who died in floods in Pakistan just weeks before the action, or the children that are starving in Somalia right now. I really, truly believe that if they were able to see that in front of their noses, they would have been a different verdict,” she said.
The long sentences were handed down amid controversy over what critics say are deeply concerning restrictions on climate action defendants in court cases. Defendants at some trials have been prevented from mentioning the motivations for their protests, and some have been jailed for contempt of court for talking about the climate crisis in their evidence.
Throughout the year climate activists have been filing into English courtrooms every week, despite long delays in English courtrooms for serious offences including rape, as the gridlocked court system struggles to deal with a backlog of 62,766 outstanding cases.
Decker and Trowland were charged with the new offence of public nuisance in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 for their protest It is one of two new pieces of legislation dealing with public order and protest introduced by the Conservative government after Priti Patel, as home secretary, made clear she wanted tougher action against non-violent climate protesters.
MPs and peers on the joint committee on human rights say the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental right in a healthy democracy, which must be championed and protected. They have warned the expansion of police powers to control or restrict protest can have a “chilling effect” of discouraging individuals from exercising their rights to free expression and assembly.
Holly said she believed the judge’s stiff sentence would not be a deterrent for those in the climate movement. “I think it’s an absurd prison sentence. I don’t think these men should be imprisoned at all. community service would have been much more appropriate,” she said.
“The only people for whom that sentence is a deterrent are people who would never in a million years have done anything like that themselves. For those considering that kind of action, they will not be deterred by a prison sentence.”
Decker, who spent six months on remand in prison before being tried and convicted, began his sentence at Chelmsford prison this week, where Holly was due to visit him on Thursday. In a brief interview with LBC on Monday, Decker said he was sorry for the disruption the action had caused and that the length of the prison sentence had surprised him.
“But at the same time the situation is so serious and action is so urgent, and we have to act now,” he said. “I would rather be in prison for two years and seven months than know about all the children and people who are dying around the world and not do anything about it.”
The short conversation brought a reprimand from the prison authorities.
For Holly the sentence will also be long. Music, which drew the couple together, is a support during the months Decker is in prison.
She recalled as he was brought down by police from the bridge, with the TV cameras rolling, he sang the verses of the protest song On this Good Green Earth:
We are the tongue that speaks the truth
We are the song upon the wind
We are the courage to stand forth
We are the change that now begins
On this good green earth we will take our stand
With an open heart and a healing hand
“So that was his message,” said Holly. “That’s who he is.”
