Jurors have sided with protestors yet again. Is this why Lammy wants to scrap them?
The courts have become a key battleground for democracy – no wonder our politicians are eager to control what happens in them.
In 2023 I was one of nine women acquitted by a jury for causing £500,000 worth of damage to HSBC’s headquarters. This week six medical professionals were acquitted of causing similar damage to JPMorgan.
Their verdict, close on the heels of acquittals for six of the Filton 24 earlier this month (and now it seems all 24, with the CPS presenting no evidence against the rest), is part of a slew of heartening decisions that seriously undermines the government’s anti-democratic agenda.
The Labour government’s desire to do away with juries is just the latest attempt to use the courts to tip the scales back in their favour. Since 2019 there have been at least 22 not guilty verdicts delivered by juries for Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, Palestine Action, Animal Rising, Black Lives Matter and Just Stop Oil. When the first of Extinction Rebellion’s cases was acquitted, the jury made headlines for delivering a so-called ‘perverse’ verdict, one which went against the judge’s instructions that the men and women of the ‘Shell 7’ had no defence in law.
Not guilty
This week, the last of Extinction Rebellion’s crown court trials for the six medics – who broke the windows of JPMorgan to “let the light in” on the bank’s massive funding of fossil fuel projects – reached the same conclusion: not guilty. In the years in between, juries have been steadily returning not guilty verdicts that have no doubt left the political and judicial establishment shaken up.
If you read the closing statements of some of the Health-for-XR medics, you can see why the jury reached their verdict. These were people acting out of professional duties of care, with love for all beings, especially the children affected by climate collapse.
If it seems far-fetched to think these acquittals have led a lawyer like David Lammy to rethink the 800 year old institution of juries, you haven’t been paying attention. Although courts have always been vulnerable to manipulation, their use as a political tool has become increasingly transparent in recent years.
Free speech?
To start with, it is now commonplace for a judge to gag climate protesters in court. With the threat of immediate imprisonment, many judges are preventing defendants from speaking to their motivation in court if that motivation was to raise the alarm about climate breakdown. In contrast, during my own trial – as in many of the other acquittals – we were permitted to speak almost freely about the climate and ecological emergency which drove our actions. This is now rarely the case.
In fact, several climate protestors have been charged with contempt of court for attempting to tell juries the whole truth about the climate crisis, a farce being performed both inside and outside the court. The case of Trudi Warner, arrested and prosecuted for holding a sign outside Inner London Crown Court for 30 minutes, exposes just how much disdain many judges have for their juries, and how political these cases truly are. Trudi’s sign read:
“Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”
Based on conscience
It is a 300 year old legal principle which is also written on a gold plaque on the walls of the Old Bailey. Trudi’s case was pursued doggedly by Judge Silas Reid who claimed it was an illegal attempt to “influence a jury”. It was Reid, too, who threatened jurors themselves in February 2024, telling them that they would be committing a criminal offence if they reached a verdict using anything other than the evidence – like their conscience. This direction led to Quaker Amy Pritchard being sentenced to 12 months in prison for nonviolent climate protest.
As well as severely limiting what jurors are allowed to hear or to know about their own rights, the judiciary has also been on a crusade to remove any legal defence protestors might rely on as part of their case, no doubt encouraged by their counterparts in Whitehall. In November 2023, I was acquitted using the ‘belief in consent’ defence, relied on by previous protest groups. Our success using the defence drove the Attorney General to immediately begin campaigning for its removal; and in March 2024 the Court of Appeal ruled that it could no longer be used by protestors in criminal damage cases.
And then there’s the politically-motivated persecution of Palestine Action. The court has for now upheld what any reasonable person can see: that the group are not terrorists, nor are the thousands of people like me who have been arrested for holding signs in their defence. Perhaps that is why Palestine Action members have been acquitted by juries in six separate cases in as many years.
Yvette Cooper’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation has been ruled “unlawful”. Rather than accept their heinous error, the now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, contradicting the very findings of the court, is pursuing a desperate appeal.
Infallible – and human
Juries are imperfect and fallible, just like any truly democratic, deeply human process. But the evidence suggests that when they are allowed to function as they should, to hear all the relevant information and apply their conscience and their life experiences to the question, they tend to return verdicts that vindicate their fellow citizens’ protests against both climate destruction and genocide.
That, not “court backlogs” or “cost” is the real reason David Lammy is trying to remove the UK public’s right to a jury trial. The government doesn't want ordinary people to protest their weak, unjust, immoral actions and to be held accountable by their peers and fellow citizens.
As a vital safeguard against an increasingly authoritarian state and a key battleground in today’s fight for freedom and democracy, it's in the best interests of the people – not the government – that we retain juries. Remove them and the balance will start to tip decisively against us.
This Saturday 21st Feb 12-3pm: Oz Sucks
An open studio event exploring free speech and creative dissent: Paris68Redux poster printing, Right To Protest exhibition and performance from The Bookshop Band, supported by Pete Townshend, and inspired by the Oz magazine archives at the V&A. Free entry, just come along.
Elsewhere in Absurdity...
We’ve seen the new social abbreviation ai;dr which, in a way, is why we called ourselves TheAI in the first place... to prepare for the onslaught in a way that reminded us that there are always other intelligences, including the absurd.
So as well as fighting the AI Slop, it’s been another busy week for the crew:
Ten years in the making for Maddy was the Florence and The Machine gig on Monday just gone.
David went to the launch of the new UCL Centre for Responsible Innovation: their promise is traction with Big Tech engineers, although such good intentions could be crushed to pave the road to hell.
On Wednesday Clare, Alex and our most wonderful ally Nick Anim attended the screening from the BFI archives of the innovator of cultural studies Stuart Hall, and his impact on media, television and wider popular culture still today.
And tonight Charlie’s off to the 100 Club tonight to see Hard Artist Andrew O’Neill’s History of Punk, with a post-gig discussion with several Chumbawambas.
