Alert: Update on Extinction Rebellion: UK Central Legal Defence Fund

Last month 6 brave rebels who stood up to Shell in April 2019, received not guilty verdicts from a jury of their peers. This week we celebrate the news that, following a landmark ruling, Shell is being forced to slash global emissions by 45% by 2030. There is still a long way to go, but we are starting to see change through our courts.  This is what justice looks like; rulings against the criminals who pollute our planet and absolution for those who are doing all in their power to prevent disaster. Thanks to your generous support, we are able to continue to support XR defendants and we hope we will see more breakthrough decisions.

We want to celebrate that landmark ruling by sharing some of the statements that were delivered by the Shell XR activists in Crown Court last month. They defended themselves with great courage and flair, but thanks to your generosity XR was able to provide legal support and advice throughout the trial from a leading protest law firm.

Below are extracts from closing statements addressed to the jury from two of the six Shell 7 defendants. The defendants connected with the jury on a human level, and this decision signifies that when presented with the evidence the public understand the implications of the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

“Dear members of the jury

As I said before, thank you for being here; thank you for all the attention you have given us especially when so much of what has been talked about is so upsetting. I am sorry we have had to share it with you in this way rather than in more sympathetic circumstances.   

I had not appreciated what a ‘jury of your peers’ really means until you all walked in here, and I have to say that I am glad that a verdict  on what we did is entrusted to you.  You are our community, and I am glad of it. It may sound unlikely standing here in the Crown Court but there is nowhere I would rather be, sharing with you what Polly Higgins, the lawyer behind the ecocide campaign, called the great work of our time. I feel confidence – not about your verdict, which is for you alone – but confidence in sharing this crisis with you.

 

For that is what this is. We are sharing this crisis with you. By undertaking an action that would result in our being judged by a jury, we are seeking justice not from the law but a verdict from our community – were we right or wrong, was our action justified or not? If the climate emergency is what we believe it is, and neither the judge nor the prosecution has raised any dispute about the mass of evidence on the climate emergency we have imposed upon you, what then should we do? Were we wrong to think that we are being failed by government, by business and the media, and – in this specific crisis – also being failed by the law? And if not, if we are right, then what can we all, as ordinary people, do together to remedy that?  We are not here to insist we know best; we are here to share this question with you…

…I hope you agree that the overwhelming scientific agreement on the climate emergency and the chorus of eminently reasonable voices crying out for action, constitute not just a personal belief but a stark and terrible reality.  This stuff is real; it is really happening: we need government and business to tell the truth and act as if the truth is real. 

Members of the jury, we are all here together in a moment of history. Last year, we saw what an emergency looked like and what a government can do, spending billions to protect the population. The climate emergency is covid to the power of ten, of a hundred, a thousand.  The warnings are all around us. We are living in a pivotal moment, everything is falling apart. This plane we are all on is coming down: do we nosedive or do we seek ways to prolong the glide and find some way to crash land and save as many lives as possible?…”  

Read David Lambert’s full statement here

As stated above and in my defence, we know we have to do the right thing in life, or in a moment, by acting in line with our conscience. I knew that I had to try as hard as I could to ask Shell to stop the everyday harm, the everyday death that Shell are responsible for, in the most powerful way that I could. Now I ask that you members of the jury, please act to do what you can do to help. Decades of campaigning, marching, petitioning have not resulted in governments heeding the science. This is not about my political philosophy, this is way beyond politics, this is about avoiding a collective catastrophe. I felt compelled to act, I had to act, to take collective action, the ‘legal avenues’ open to me had not worked, and history demonstrates that disruptive peaceful direct action would achieve results. As it so clearly has done in this case, by the declaration of climate emergency and the normalisation of ecocide as a concept like genocide.   

What was once illegal is now legal, the conscientious objectors who refused to bear arms, who were imprisoned and shot in the first world war according to the law, resulted in the law being changed, indeed it was the precursor of the universal declaration of human rights. The Suffragettes who were imprisoned and ridiculed, ensured the law was changed to enable women to vote, enabling women to take their place in civil society, indeed in this court today prosecuting me!

So, members of the jury, I put it to you. When your grandchildren ask you: why didn’t your generation do more, to stop our planet being destroyed? What do you want to say? Or when people in fifty or a hundred years look back at us, like we look back at the Suffragettes, or at the people who resisted slavery, which side will they see as being the right side of this argument? And when history considers us, which side do would you like to be on?

Members of the jury, at this moment of consequence, where we risk losing everything we cherish, when no one is coming to save us, please trust to your conscience as we have trusted to ours. I believe that I am not guilty, and I believe that my co-defendants are not guilty. We acted to save life, if you find us not guilty, you too will be acting with the same simple purpose”

Read Sid Saunders’ full statement here

In solidarity

The XR Legal Funds Team