Britain’s Political Prisoners, Paddy Friend, David Whyte and Guy Silberman, Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, May 2026, 52pp
This report, published in conjunction with Defend Our Juries, explores the ramping up of state repression against Palestine protesters and climate activists. The report empirically shows the escalation of sentencing, the punitive use of remand, and the use of contempt of court to secure imprisonment.
The report examines 256 cases involving Palestine and climate protesters which resulted in 136 years of total prison time, with an average imprisonment period of 28 weeks. One in three protesters (34%) were held for six months or more; one in five (21%) for a period exceeding a year. In 40% of cases the rationale for imprisonment was contempt of court, making this the most common scenario. For example, in a February 2023 trial, Just Stop Oil activists were jailed for contempt for mentioning ‘fuel poverty’ and ‘climate crisis’ against the orders of the judge. In September 2022, 51 activists were remanded in custody after breaching an injunction at Kingsbury Oil Depot and for contempt after reading political statements in court. In 60% of cases the final sentences were more lenient than time already spent in custody, with Palestine protesters facing particularly lengthy periods on remand.
The report dissects the granular level of state repression that is waged in the courtroom by the British state, revealing the unprecedented gagging orders placed upon the Filton 6 during their trial in May 2026. Justice Jeremy Johnson, the presiding judge, ruled the following evidence inadmissible: defendant reasons for joining Palestine Action; their beliefs about Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza; their views about the actions of Israel in Gaza; and their purposes in causing damage to weapons at the factory. They were barred from mentioning the jury’s right to acquit based on its conscience, as well as any mention of their own belief they had a ‘lawful excuse’ as to the charge of criminal damage. Following an earlier trial for the same case, Judge Johnson is pursuing the lead barrister Rajiv Menon KC for contempt of court for putting forward his client’s conscience based defence to the jury after being ordered not to by the judge.
Britain’s Political Prisoners accurately diagnoses that:
[R]emand is used indiscriminately and recklessly as the first line of attack. The effect of this is to chill protest and civil disobedience and to send a message that the arbitrary power of the state can be used to lock up anyone who dares to protest, and often for very long periods indeed.
The proscription of Palestine Action under terrorism legislation is presented as ‘perhaps the most serious attack on civil liberties in Britain in a generation’. The report also does well to explain how contempt of court ‘as a mechanism for securing imprisonment has been cynically used to protect corporate interests, to silence defendants and to circumvent criminal process’. This is applied purely by judges without jury scrutiny. Vitally, the shrinking of the democratic right to a jury trial, under so-called cost cutting measures, is another prong in the vicious attack.
An additional prong is the use of injunctions and bail conditions effectively removing people from being able to protest. The report states that the forces that produced this outcome are ‘the political class that relies on the police to secure the interests of the fossil fuel and arms industries’. It is abundantly clear that the unflinching punitive response from the British state in these cases is because activists are targeting industries which are crucial for British imperialism. It is British imperialism that requires direct action, mass movements, and disruption to business as usual to be crushed, and examples to be set to the rest of the working class that if they try to throw a spanner into the cogs of the capitalist machinery, they will quickly find themselves incarcerated for increasing periods of time. British imperialist interests in West Asia require unwavering support for the Zionist state. No avenue of profit can be left undefended while British capital sinks deeper into crisis.
It is therefore our duty as anti-imperialists to meet this repression with fierce resistance. We must organise political defence campaigns around every case of repression; we must support protesters at the police station, at the courts, and in the streets. We must fight to repeal legislation like the Terrorism Act. We must mobilise on these questions, and make them a central pillar of any movement. If we fight, we can win!
Glenn Gilmore
