A New Zealand man who caused mass disruption during a UK climate change protest has been sentenced to years in prison in what is reportedly one of the longest sentences for a peaceful protest in British history.
Actually, he wasn’t sentenced for protesting, as we’ll see.
Morgan Trowland, a 40-year-old civil engineer from Ashburton, tied himself to the top of a busy bridge forcing its closure for nearly two days in protest against new government gas and oil licences.
Trowland was sentenced to three years in prison alongside another man, Marcus Decker, who received two years and seven months. Spokespeople from the activist group Just Stop Oil which the pair were a part of said these were the longest sentences for peaceful climate protest in British history.
[…] On October 17, 2022, the pair used ropes to scale the busy Queen Elizabeth II bridge in Dartford. The two men then unrolled a Just Stop Oil-branded banner.
The bridge was closed for the duration of the protest before police used a crane to bring the pair down the following day.
[…] Prosecutors said the closure caused “gridlock for miles around” and delayed almost 565,000 drivers, the court notes said.
There were personal accounts of more than one funeral of friends or close relatives missed, missed medical appointments leading to continued pain and lost revenue from businesses.
“By your actions you caused this very important road to be closed for 40 hours. This of course as you knew obstructed many tens of thousands indeed hundreds of thousands of members of the public some very significantly,” Judge Collery KC said.
[…] “You have to be punished both for the chaos you caused and to deter others from seeking to copy you in that next protest,” Judge Collery KC said.
Note the words “for the chaos you caused”.
Trowland posted on social media that it feels “much calmer” to watch the world dying from the safety of a prison cell.
“A year ago I accepted spending time in prison. I cannot enjoy liberty in a society that makes plans to kill people on a massive scale, not with oil and gas, not with any means. I will not be complicit in that,” he wrote.
Good.
This isn’t about freedom of speech or freedom of protest or whatever. The guy and his mate could have acted in a way that didn’t cause disruption and still got their ‘message’ across.
People are sick to death of entitled activist groups causing crap and they aren’t standing for it anymore.
Oh, and Newshub chose to put this article under “climate change”. Make of that what you will.