A carpenter from Herne Hill has been slapped with a guilty verdict after he stopped traffic outside Heathrow Airport.
Oliver Rock, 42, was found guilty of causing a public nuisance, alongside three others, after blocking Cranford Parkway during an Insulate Britain protest on October 1, 2021.
Fellow Southwark resident and Insulate Britain protestor Christian Rowe recently escaped a conviction for his role in the exact same protest.
Fresh from the guilty verdict on Wednesday, January 18, Oliver Rock said: “As the climate and ecological crisis accelerates, the attempts by the state to ignore our perilous situation become increasingly absurd and authoritarian.
“I am extremely grateful to my co-defendants for their courage and dignity throughout these proceedings, and for the wonderful support we have experienced.”
He, Ruth Cook, Roman Paluch and Stephen Pritchard will be sentenced on March 10. The maximum sentence for causing a public nuisance is life imprisonment.
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It is the fifth trial over Insulate Britain protests but the first to result in a guilty verdict.
Southwark resident Christian Rowe, 25, was found not guilty of causing a public nuisance on January 11, 2023, despite participating in the exact same protest.
The jury reportedly took four hours to deliver a not-guilty unanimous verdict.
Christian Rowe, who represented himself in court, said: “It must have required tremendous insight and trust for the jury to see through the obtuse impositions of the law, through our constrained defence to the truth of the imminent danger the climate crisis places us all in. I am extremely grateful to each of them for that.”
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New laws designed to prevent disruptive protests are currently being considered by the House of Lords after MPs voted in favour of them back in May 2022.
The amendment to the Public Order Bill would mean police don’t have to wait for disruption to take place before shutting down protestors.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also said police will have more clarity over what constitutes “serious disruption”.
Insulate Britain protestor Christie Rowe said his not guilty verdict shouldn’t make protestors “complacent”.
“It just means that the police and the prosecutors will adapt their tactics, and the government their laws, for ensuring the punishment of future protesters, whom this government is intent on silencing,” he said.
The Crown Prosecution Service plans to summon 56 Insulate Britain supporters to court this year, with the last trial scheduled to begin on December 4, 2023.
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