Actors and academics criticise UK over climate ‘madness’ and limits on protest

Letter says government pushing ahead with new fossil fuel projects while criminalising activists who raise alarm

Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and Ben Okri have joined the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and leading climate scientists to highlight what they describe as a “collective act of madness” that is driving “the destruction of life on Earth”.

A letter signed by more than 100 actors, authors, scientists and academics says the UK government is ignoring the scientific reality of the climate and ecological crisis, pushing ahead with new fossil fuel developments and criminalising peaceful protesters who raise the alarm.

“Rather than listening to reason or scientific fact, the UK government continues to hand out contracts for oil exploration in the name of false ‘energy security’ while steering the UK towards authoritarianism,” the letter states. “In Britain today, it is verging on illegal to urgently and effectively protest for the right of life to survive.”

The intervention, which is also signed by Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, and Prof James Hansen, who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s, comes amid growing concern about the crackdown on peaceful protest in the UK.

Michel Forst, the UN rapporteur on environmental defenders, last month described the situation in the UK as “terrifying”, with protesters having to navigate a draconian new legal environment that includes significant limits on the right to protest.

In one of the most controversial recent cases, two Just Stop Oil activists, Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, were given jail terms of three years and two years respectively for blocking a motorway bridge in east London. Trowland’s is thought to be the longest jail term handed down by a British judge for non-violent protest.

This week Ian Fry, the UN’s rapporteur for climate change and human rights, said the lengthy sentences were a potential breach of international law and risked silencing public concerns about the environment.

The letter, published on Friay, says that while banks and fossil fuel companies appear to face no legal sanction for making billions in profits from the destruction of life on Earth, governments are using all the powers at their disposal to crack down on peaceful protesters.

“Rounding up people of conscience instead of charging the real criminals is the response of a political and legal system in steep decline, unable to cope or envision a way out of this urgent crisis,” it says.

The signatories applaud a jury’s decision last week to clear nine women of causing £500,000 worth of criminal damage to windows at the headquarters of HSBC in London. The women sang and chanted as they shattered the glass windows in April 2021 and placed stickers on the building reading: “£80bn into fossil fuels in the last five years”.

The letter says: “Women throughout history have always gathered to resist in the name of life and love. Now, as money and power steer us on a path towards total climate and ecological collapse, protests like this are a rational response to the greatest crime humanity has ever faced. These women believed, as we do, that they are duty bound to resist a violent system that is risking the survival of everything we know and love.”

Photograph: Guy Bell/Shutterstock