A five-year sentence for peaceful protest – does it go too far?

Amnesty International has expressed “alarm” at the four- and five-year sentences imposed on five Just Stop Oil protesters, which are thought to be the longest ever handed down for a peaceful demonstration.
Roger Hallam, a co-founder of Just Stop Oil, was given a five-year prison sentence for his part in organising a protest in which 45 activists climbed gantries on the M25, disrupting traffic for five days. Four of his co-defendants were sentenced to four years in prison because they had also taken part in the Zoom meeting in which the protest was organised.
The sentences are longer than the three-year term imposed on Just Stop Oil protesters who scaled the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge on the Dartford Crossing two years ago.
Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK’s law and human rights adviser, warned against “the ongoing crackdown against peaceful protest in this country, which violates all our human rights”. The joint committee on human rights of the House of Commons and House of Lords raised concern in more moderate language that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 will “have a chilling effect on the right to protest in England and Wales”.
But Hallam and his co-defendants were found guilty of offences under two acts. One was the 2022 act, drafted by Priti Patel as home secretary in Boris Johnson’s government. But the Just Stop Oil five were also found guilty of breaking Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, so the severe sentences were not necessarily the product of recent Conservative legislation. (Indeed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act actually reduced the maximum sentence for public nuisance offences from life imprisonment to 10 years.)
It would seem that the long sentences reflect the frustration of judges, who see severe punishment for “conspiracy” as a way to deter people from organising disruptive protests in the first place.
It is a paradox that the court should have handed down such long sentences at the very time the prisons are so full that the new government is taking emergency action to ease overcrowding. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has announced that some categories of offenders will be released after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, instead of the usual 50 per cent (assuming “good behaviour”).
So Hallam could expect to serve two years and his co-defendants 19 months, if this “temporary” measure is still in force by then.
The Labour manifesto does not mention the right to protest. Keir Starmer has expressed his opposition to the tactics of groups such as Just Stop Oil in forceful terms, describing them as “contemptible”.
He may have used such strong language because Dale Vince, the founder of green electricity company Ecotricity, has donated to both Just Stop Oil and the Labour Party. This led to attacks in the Conservative press accusing Labour of supporting the disruption tactics of JSO, Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace.
So we should not expect the Labour government to do anything that would suggest it is “soft” on disruptive protest, which is unpopular with most voters, even if public opinion does sympathise with some of the goals of environmental campaigns.
On the other hand, Labour has an incentive to encourage the courts to hand down more community sentences in order to ease the overcrowding crisis in prisons. The question is whether judges would regard non-custodial sentences as a sufficient deterrent to stop seriously disruptive protests.