An Insulate Britain activist sentenced to four months’ prison has lifted the lid on ‘horrible’ prison life. Oliver Rock, 41, said he felt no fear, only relief when the judge handed him a prison sentence that would see him incarcerated at Thameside Prison in Greenwich.
After watching his friends being sentenced, Rock knew he was bound for prison. The Insulate Britain activist felt his “heavy punishment” was down to him being made an example of.
The sentence followed the activists breaking a government injunction. They also blockaded the M25 in protest over Britain’s leaky homes and climate change disaster.
As reported by BerkshireLive, a sense of calm washed over the self-employed carpenter as he was led away by guards to the basement cell ready to be processed before being hauled into a prison van.
“There was almost a weird sense of relief because we are doing this protest because we are desperate to get the government to act. It’s horrible going out on the streets and getting arrested, getting abused and getting attacked in the media.
“And then going out and doing it all over again. And getting threatened by government ministers and having injunctions taped on your door, getting threatened with unlimited fines, and to seize your assets.
"That’s really stressful and a load of uncertainty. So you have to think ‘ok, I know what I’m dealing with now’.”
It was only when the van pulled up outside the prison gates that the realisation of what could come hit Oliver. He admits it was “pretty scary”.
Oliver was taken to Thameside Prison in Greenwich. The Serco private-run prison opened in 2012, but was heavily criticised just a year later by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons.
A report highlighted critical levels of violence and a restrictive regime. It found that there was a high level of assaults and use of force, while 60% of prisoners were locked up during the working day.
Some inmates spent 23 hours a day in their cells. A 79-page report published earlier this month still criticises the prison for being “too slow to increase the amount of time that prisoners were unlocked, with those in the induction and drugs wing spending little more than half an hour a day out of their cells”.
Moreover, “remand prisoners were locked up for up to 23.5 hours a day with very few activities on offer”. Although it did praise staff for doing “excellent work” for providing support to prisoners.
The category B prison mainly holds those on remand or who are about to be released, with a capacity for more than 1,000 inmates. The 2022 report also raised concerns about staff being unfriendly, something that Oliver attests to when he first arrived at the prison and accused some of being “extremely unpleasant to us”.
Oliver was put in a cell with barred windows with a fellow Insulate Britain activist “which helped”. That first night, he says, was “pretty bleak”.
Oliver said: “You go from a normal world into a prison cell. For two people it’s pretty cramped.
"Everything in there is designed so it can’t be broken by a very strong angry person. Everything is a bit crappy, the mattress is really thin, the sheets you get are sort of clean, it was a shock.”
One of the first things he remembers is that there was a built-in “grey, indestructible” filthy-looking toilet and that “a lot of things in the prison were just broken”. As for his fellow lags, they were left bemused by the fact Oliver was inside for carrying out a “peaceful protest”.
“They said, ‘you shouldn’t be in here’,” Oliver says, “and some of them said ‘I will look out for you’. A lot of them had seen the protests on television so it was almost like a bit of a novelty.
"Most of the prisoners were fine with me. I had no issues with them at all.”
Oliver would serve half of his four-month sentence before he was released. So how would he sum up his short stretch behind bars?
“Horrible,” he says, bluntly, “by design, the environment is very unpleasant. It’s very underfunded, and the staff are unashamedly overworked.
"And a lot of s**t things just happen that’s a part of it." Those “s**t things” include not having a toothbrush for three days; the computer system breaking so you can’t get your weekly shop; getting transferred without warning; being served the “meat option” at dinner when you’re a vegetarian; not having a towel for 10 days when it doesn’t come back with your washing.
Oliver admits he “didn’t want to go to prison in the first place and I don’t want to again”, although he’s realistic there’s a likelihood he will. “I feel there’s an inevitability about it,” he says, as he predicts a bleak future for the next generation.
“Because I’m not going to stop. We haven’t sorted out this climate crisis.
"The situation is really f****d up. I feel like I’m committed to civil disobedience now.
"If we don’t sort this out the next generation is completely f****d.” Boris Johnson previously branded Insulate Britain protesters as “irresponsible crusties”.
"There are some people who call those people legitimate protesters – they are not,” the Prime Minister said in October 2021 on the eve of home secretary Priti Patel announcing new powers for courts to stop disruptive activists. “I think they are irresponsible crusties who are basically trying to stop people going about their day’s work and doing considerable damage to the economy.”
Not that those words bother Oliver too much. When asked whether the threat of another prison sentence would put him off protesting again after his experience, Oliver said: “I guess it’s made me realise… it’s given me a certain amount of respect for prisoners of punishment, it’s not something to take lightly.
"But people need to understand that we are literally facing the end of the world in a generation. It’s something worth going to prison for.”
The love and support of his family help Oliver too, who grew up in Berkshire village, Twyford. His father, Hugh, is fully behind the cause and understands why his son is taking part in the protests.
His sister, Isabel, raised £9,450 for her sibling through a crowdfunder to help cover her “kind-hearted, generous, morally upstanding” brother’s rent while he was in jail. “They are proud of me for making a sacrifice in my life to try and make a liveable future for the planet,” Oliver says.
“My dad said he was proud of me.” Oliver hasn’t ruled out the Extinction Rebellion offshoot group blocking Britain's busiest motorways again, although he says he will “take it easy for a bit”.
As for those that see him and the group as a nuisance for disrupting their day, he says: “I encourage people to look at the science and where we are heading as a society with climate change.
"I know it’s ‘boring’, but look at the most recent [United Nations] IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. It says we’ve got a small window of opportunity to secure a liveable planet.”
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