The Line We Crossed
The Silencing and Criminalisation of Environmental Defenders in the UK
I just finished making my latest feature documentary, The Line We Crossed. Like a child I have nurtured for many years, now I must slowly introduce it to the world as we navigate the distribution phase together and then prepare myself to let it go completely as it takes on a life of its own and starts to interact with people unknown to me.
If the world is so polarised how are we going to solve the biggest existential crisis humanity has ever faced: the climate and ecological crisis?
When I started out on this project I didn’t know that this was the film I would end up making. In 2021, I had finished I Am Gen Z, and that film had scratched the surface of so many issues that are challenging society today. I wanted to dig deeper. The question I set out to explore was this: if the world is so polarised how are we going to solve the biggest existential crisis humanity has ever faced: the climate and ecological crisis?
It will not surprise you to hear that this was too big a topic for a single feature documentary, and pretty quickly it morphed into multiple films. It will most likely spawn many more too. The Line We Crossed is the second film that has come from that initial question. I also spent time on a road trip across America in a bid to understand why so many middle aged women had adopted the MAGA mantra and were living in an alternate reality in conspiracyland. That became the film The Conspiracists.
But back to The Line We Crossed. It was 2022, a group of climate activists in the UK, Just Stop Oil, were getting a lot of press for their protest actions. They were hugely polarising. This was polarisation and the climate crisis all wrapped up in one, so I went to find out more.
It was still a relatively nascent organisation at the time, but it was rooted in earlier iterations of climate activism spanning many years. They had a solid understanding of civil resistance and direct action and had already built an impressively cohesive community around their cause
Nonviolence is central to their ethos and that is why what I observed and documented is so disturbing.
In the press they were being depicted as eco-zealots and eco-terrorists and often accused of being a bunch of trustafarians with nothing better to do with daddy’s money.
“A reporter was despatched to the scene to interview some dopey trustafarian in an orange hi-viz jacket, who threatened to keep blocking the streets until the North Sea oil and gas industry was switched off for good.” Daily Mail - Richard Littlejohn 26 April 2023
My first face-to-face interaction was a day of nonviolence training. The people I met there were nothing like those depicted in the press. Yes, there was a higher percentage of vegans than society at large and pronouns were a thing, but they definitely weren’t terrorists and they came from a broad socio-economic set. Nonviolence is central to their ethos, which makes what I observed and documented all the more disturbing. The extent to which the UK Government is criminalising peaceful citizens, and the resources they are pouring in to trying to silence them, points to an agenda that I can only surmise is to protect powerful vested interests. Also, Just Stop Oil was a convenient target for stoking the culture wars driving the current wave of populism.
Our prisons are so severely overcrowded that the Government is having to release criminals early, yet it is throwing peaceful environmental defenders in jail for long periods of time. Along with long custodial sentences the Government is using remand as a tool to punish them. They are being held in prison, sometimes for as long as 6 months before trial. Not only is that cruel, but it takes up critical prison space. According to the Government, it costs on average £47,834 a year to imprison someone in the UK, which begs the question: are these people that much of a threat to society that it makes sense to spend money the Treasury doesn’t have on incarcerating them? In so doing, they are also removing them from the tax paying workforce. I heard so many people shout “get a job!” at them, but - spoiler alert - the majority of them do have jobs.
Before I started this project I had faith in the British judiciary system and I trusted the Police. Now, I have neither faith nor trust in either.
These activists were being instructed by the judge that they were not allowed to explain to the jury why they did what they did.
The first pieces I filmed for The Line We Crossed took place outside The Inner London Crown Court. Environmental Defenders from a group known as Insulate Britain were on trial for their actions blocking roads. They took part in somewhat hair-raising actions and yes, they caused disruption, but as UN Rapporteur Michel Forst confirmed to me in my interview with him, civil disobedience is a legitimate form of protest that is protected under laws, and it is critical that we protect that right.
“[In] the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it clearly says, in article 21, that the right to protest covers also civil disobedience.” Michel Forst, UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhuss Convention, 5th July 2024
Nevertheless, these activists were being told by the judge that they were not allowed to explain to the jury why they did what they did. I had previously thought that, if I ever found myself in the dock, I would be able to tell the jury my story. Not so if you are a climate activist who is unlucky to end up with a judge who chooses to play that card. In that same interview Michel Forst made the point that the UK Goverment is a signatory to the Aarhus Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which protect the right to a fair trial. This poses the serious question of whether the UK Government is now in breach of those conventions?
I also learnt about the concept of “jury equity”. That is the right for a jury to acquit someone on their conscience. It can lead to perverse outcomes where a judge may have directed a jury to find someone guilty based on legal principles, but where a jury will acquit them nevertheless. It’s a tension that has existed in courtrooms since its introduction in the 1670s. Judges will not explicitly tell jurors about that principle, but it is nevertheless enshrined in a plaque inside Britain’s Central Criminal Court, The Old Bailey. It was on my fourth day of filming that Trudi Warner was arrested for silently holding a placard outside The Inner London Crown with the same message that is on that plaque in The Old Bailey. I filmed her later that day as she skipped out of the court buildings, relieved to be in the air after a day incarcerated in the cells. Little did we know that this would begin a journey that became Trudi Warner versus The State as this ordinary - but extraordinary - individual faced a potential prison sentence of 2 years for contempt of court. The State tried, unsuccessfully, to use this opportunity to remove the principle of jury equity from our legal system.
The right to protest and a free and independent press are two fundamental pillars of a well-functioning democracy, and both of those pillars are looking very wobbly right now in the UK.
I lost my faith in the Police as well. I gained an insight into why minority groups that are targeted by the police have little trust in them. I witnessed these nonviolent protesters being handcuffed and whisked away in police “pixie” vans so many times, and often after just minutes of nonviolent protest. I was also arrested, detained and in handcuffs myself. It happened at The Coronation just days after The New Public Order Act had received royal assent. The act introduced new powers for the Police to arrest people, including one straight out of Minority Report: Breach of the Peace, Prevent. I was dosing peacefully under a tree, my camera rig on my knees, ready to document what would happen when the protesters peacefully revealed their Just Stop Oil T shirts. But, the police swooped in on them before they had even shown their T shirts. They were arrested for wearing a T shirt. I was arrested too, despite clearly being a member of the press - I wasn’t even “committing the heinous crime” of wearing a protest T shirt under my top. I was arrested for “Breach of the Peace - Prevent”, a crime I might commit in the future that I had no intention to commit. With all the pre-emptive arrests that were made at The Coronation The UK strayed into sinister Orwellian lands that day. None of the charges stuck and eventually all of those arrested around me received “no further action” letters. I was fortunate to be released that same day with no further action, but the chilling effect of this is that I was denied my rights as a journalist to film protest. The right to protest and a free and independent press are two fundamental pillars of a well-functioning democracy, and both of those pillars are looking very wobbly right now in the UK.
My little brush with the Police pales in comparison with what I witnessed the environmental defenders experiencing. The repression visibly increased during the period I followed them, and when compressed into the 110 minutes of the film, it is striking to watch. The film charts the experience of Marcus Decker who, at that time, along with his co-defendant, was given the longest ever sentence for peaceful protest in the UK: 2 years 7 months and 3 years respectively. By the end of the film this had been eclipsed by The Whole Truth Five who received sentences of 4 and 5 years. I highly recommend reading the Realmedia.press article about what went on inside the courtroom during that trial.
Each and everyone of them told me that they do what they do because they see what is coming down the line and they cannot just sit back and do nothing.
As I reflect on my journey through the making of this film, I am left wondering about our ability as humans and citizens to see beyond the minutiae of our daily grind and to operate outside of personal and vested interests. In the context of the climate and ecological crisis, we seem unwilling to accept that our actions today, bred out of a form of self-destructive short-termism, will lead to greater suffering for ourselves and future generations later down the line. If you live in Valencia or were the victim of the recent storms “Bert” and “Darragh” in the UK, that future I am referring to may not seem so far away anymore. The majority of the British public are very concerned about the climate crisis, but we seem to be in a state of paralysis that is preventing us from doing enough, quickly enough, to mitigate its worst effects. Even though the effects of the climate crisis have now arrived on our doorstep in Europe, we still seem unwilling to make the mental leap to connect the dots and demand change, and be part of that change. There is however, one extraordinary group of ordinary people who have been able to make that mental leap, and I met them while making The Line We Crossed. These environmental defenders are not doing their actions for personal gain, quite the contrary, their actions are having a detrimental effect on their lives and livelihoods. They are acting because they have somehow found that capacity to look forward into the future, and the future they see is grim. Each and everyone of them told me, in their own words, that they do what they do because they see what is coming down the line and they cannot just sit back and do nothing. People on the streets and on social media tell them to go and protest outside Parliament, but when they protest outside Parliament they get arrested. People tell them that they sympathise with their message but they don’t agree with their tactics. They tell them to become politicians or approach the issue through legal channels. There are individuals who are doing that, but most ordinary people don’t have access to the political or legal system. If they are to be heard, the only option left to them is to protest on the roads or take part in bold actions that will get media attention. It’s unfortunate that in so doing they annoy the hell out of the people who are inconvenienced by their protests, but it is the only option they have open to them to raise the alarm and say, “this is not OK”. If the Government continues to pass more and more repressive laws to make protest ineffective we will no longer be living in a democracy.
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This article was originally published on 11 December 2024 on my previous Substack account.