New book ‘Rebel Verdict’ is a must-read for anyone concerned by the UK’s increasing attempts to curb protest

Commonweal Trustee Paul Rogers wrote this [slightly edited] column for Open Democracy earlier this year. It seems timely to repost as the Met Police launch major pre-emptive strike against climate protestors who are taking action to coincide with the start of COP27.

Just as the government is following multiple routes to curb the right to protest, juries keep acquitting activists accused of nonviolent actions.

The current government has little interest in preventing climate breakdown, whatever it may claim – and environmental protesters simply will not give up.

I first wrote about the so-called ‘perverse’ juries – as the government and right-wing media circles are wont to call them – for openDemocracy in January. The growing problem for the government is that there are getting to be rather too many of them.

Curbing protest is part of a wider move to control dissent and limit political accountability, and even extends to imposing constraints on the voting process itself. Legislation being embodied in a range of bills covering elections, nationality and borders, sentencing and judicial review all help to limit individual rights.

Moreover, the whole process is in the context of this week’s move to “clarify” the UK’s involvement in the European Convention on Human Rights. Even if the UK was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Convention in 1954 and the European Court of Human Rights five years later, the aim now is to limit its relevance in the UK.

‘Perverse’ or rebel juries?

The extent of the government’s success in curbing protest will be determined by the chances of more ‘perverse’ jury decisions.

In broader historical terms, there have been occasional examples of these ‘perverse’ juries, including the 1985 acquittal of civil servant Clive Ponting for leaking information about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser, the General Belgrano, in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War. More recent examples have been the Hawk Ploughshares case in 1996 and Trident Ploughshares three years later.

But a new book provides exemplary reading and insight into one particular case for anyone concerned with the issue.

I have previously reviewed Martin Levy’s biography of Michael Randle, a remarkable peace activist and academic researcher on nonviolent social change. (I should say that I have known Michael and Anne Randle for 40 years and have long admired their work.)

Michael and his fellow peace activist, the late Pat Pottle, were the defendants in a remarkable trial at the Old Bailey in 1991, accused of aiding a prison escape 35 years earlier. It is this case, which ended in their acquittal, that Michael has written about in a new book, ‘Rebel Verdict’.

Back in the early 1960s, Michael and fellow activist Pat spent a year in jail for a direct action against nuclear weapons. In Wormwood Scrubs prison in London, they met the double agent, George Blake, who was serving a long sentence for espionage. Four years later, they, together with Anne and a former inmate, Séan Bourke, concocted an escape plan for Blake, successfully freed him from jail and smuggled him to East Germany.

The primary motive was most decidedly not sympathy for the Soviet Union – Michael had been vigorously opposed to Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, especially the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Rather, the motive arose from Blake’s own position in jail, facing what was essentially a life sentence.

After his original arrest, Blake cooperated with the authorities and his team had anticipated a long but not excessive sentence. In the event, he was found guilty on three charges and given 12 years for each. The usual practice would have been for this to run concurrently but the judge made the sentences consecutive, hence the extraordinary 42-year term.

The escape itself was at times hair-raising and is chronicled in a book, ‘The Blake Escape’, that Michael and Pat wrote in 1989 but there are two very different factors that set ‘Rebel Verdict’ apart.

The first is the level of detail. Michael concentrates on the trial and provides a finely detailed account of the whole process. This includes many direct extracts from the court speeches and is supplemented by a useful set of appendices but he makes the book highly readable, providing a rare analysis of a legal process that ended up with their acquittal on all counts.

As well as being interesting for the general reader, this makes the book very useful reading for anyone in the legal profession concerned with jury behaviour at a time when the government is likely to seek many more trials of nonviolent climate activists. It is, of course, also highly relevant for any actual or would-be activist.

The second and perhaps more significant point, is Michael’s view that the decision was not reached by a ‘perverse’ jury but rather by a rebel jury. In other words, it was a rare example of ordinary people accepting the value of moral arguments and serves as a reminder that on issues of common justice, political establishments do not always get their own way.

Professor Rachel Julian, Trustee of Commonweal reflects on COP26 and the action needed

…Glasgow was the site of the international decision making meeting to prevent widespread climate collapse COP26 – the intergovernmental meeting to agree new targets for restricting carbon dioxide worldwide.

…BUT we cannot just leaving it to the governments – there was a huge gathering of people power demanding that their actions, good ideas, efforts and behaviour changes are recognised and governments commit to investing in the future.

Tackling the climate crisis is going to take effort from every sector of society. You may have read about ‘big technical’ solutions, or some of the many new technological programmes (solar powered clearing of plastic from the sea, renewable energy, etc), and there are global programmes such as ‘Drawdown’ or ‘Green New Deal’. However there are many ideas that you can look at, to start learning how you can mitigate and adapt in this era of climate emergency.

The ‘Transition’ movement has been working for years on understanding and practicing how communities will adapt to a ‘post-oil’ world – basically how we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. See if there is a Transition Town near you, or ideas you can adapt

Or, look at ‘local food’ networks who are learning to design systems that reduce the need for global supply systems, and how food production might adapt to changing climate. Try the Leeds City Farm in Meanwood  or look at Incredible Edible

These movements recognise that addressing the climate crisis will take individual action (recycle, and use public transport), community action (supporting housing, food production or community support in an area), national action (funding, targets, policies, energy generation), and international action (global commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, tackle global systems, and support political actions). Just as climate is a complex system, as is the system for ensuring we adapt our lives, deal with the challenges and mitigating the impacts.

In practice, this means that we need mass public support for national and international action – including at COP26 – mass public action is needed to ensure the political systems are pressured into making commitments to reduce CO2 across the world.

If you already cycle, recycle, reuse, buy local, turn your thermostat down, use a reusable coffee mug, then your actions are helping, but the reality is we need the politicians to change.

We need them to invest in renewable energy and house insulation, we need a wonderful public transport system and a business strategy that rewards environmental protection… etc.

There are many wonderful projects, efforts, theories and actions that are already helping to prevent catastrophic climate collapse – and they’re all calling for the political change.

The Conversation Climate Fight podcast

The official website of COP26 

The COP26 Coalition (climate justice)

The reality is that the predicted changes to the climate will result in new extreme weather events, changes to global food production, changing housing and transport, and probably many other aspects of life. It is important to remember that we know how to deal with it – hundreds of thousands of people are already working on hundreds of projects that show how the change is possible. They talk of the need for imagination, creativity and courage to step forward. Climate change is going to affect our lives. The more we start acting and having a say in which adaptations and mitigations we choose, the sooner we start acting, the more control we will have on how our lives will change.

Take the opportunity to learn more about what climate change is predicted, start choosing the actions you want to take, and imagining a vision you want for the future.

Visiting Commonweal online or the physical Commonweal Collection in Bradford might give you the inspiration by learning about people who have been organising for huge social change in the past.

When George W Bush won race for the White House in November 2000 his team immediately began to change US foreign and security policies to usher in the much-vaunted New American Century.   The United States would now go its own way and provide global leadership as the world’s only superpower, ensuring a new era of peace and stability modelled on the American neoliberal free market model.

With this in the background the 9/11 attacks came as an appalling shock and were seen to challenge direclty the very idea of an “American century”.   That added to the decision to go to war against al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan.

Within a few months this expanded into a war on terror against an “axis of evil” of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, Iraq being the immediate target.   The results over the past twenty years have been little short of catastrophic with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, many more maimed for life and millions of refugees fleeing their homes, all stemming from four failed wars:

1. Afghanistan is in the headlines as the Taliban take control, but we easily forget about the other wars.
2. In Iraq there remains deep insecurity and violence stemming from the original western occupation back in 2003.
3. In North Africa the 2011 Franco-British operation to terminate the Gaddafi regime in Libya appeared to succeed but Libya is now little more than a deeply insecure failing state that has acted as a conduit for arms and paramilitaries through the Sahara and further south.
4. Finally, there was the 2014-18 US-led air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, where armed drones and strike aircraft used 100,000 missiles and “smart” bombs, killing at least 60,000 people, and seeming initially to have defeated ISIS.

Since then, ISIS is reported to still  have at least 10,000 fighters still in Iraq and Syria but even more significant is the rise of extreme paramilitary groups linked to ISIS or al-Qaida elsewhere, especially in Africa.   Right across the Sahel from Mauretania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, extreme violent groups are active, frequently recruiting from the hundreds of thousands of marginalised young people, mostly men, as they expand their areas of control.

To the east, others are active in Somalia and across the Red Sea in Yemen, and to the south more paramilitary groups are active in the DRC and northern Mozambique.   Western states respond with armed drones, special forces and local militias in scarcely reported ongoing wars.  To make matters worse, ISIS is already active in Afghanistan, and has links with groups elsewhere, not least in southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

It is all such a long way from those apparent successes in Afghanistan and Iraq and it further supports the alternative approach that the response to 9/11 should not have been a war on terror since that was just what the extreme movements wanted.  Instead, the attacks should have been seen as appalling acts of transnational criminal activity.   The response should have been to bring those behind the attacks to justice.   It might have taken a decade or more but would have had far more world-wide public support and cooperation than wars that followed.

Even more important would have been to undercut the development of the extreme movements by learning why they got so much support in the first place and how to undermine and countering that support.

It was an approach that was argued by just a handful of people at the time but got nowhere in the headlong rush to war.   It was eloquently put by Walden Bello of the Philippines in an Oxford Research Group analysis just after 9/11 that argued against going to war, when he said:

The only response that will really contribute to global security and peace is for
Washington to address not the symptoms but the roots of terrorism. It is for the
United States to re-examine and substantially change its policies in the Middle
East and the Third World, supporting for a change, arrangements that will not
stand in the way of the achievement of equity, justice and genuine national
sovereignty for currently marginalized peoples. Any other way leads to endless
war.

And endless war is what we now have.

Paul Rogers, August 2021