Britain’s political prisoners

Free Britain's political prisoners

by Tim Crosland and Paddy Friend, Defend Our Juries

On Thursday 24 October, hundreds of protestors from the Free Political Prisoners campaign staged an exhibition of images of the 40+ political prisoners from Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil who are currently in prison. 

They have been locked away in our country’s prisons for taking action to protect life. The exhibition, staged outside the office of the Attorney Genral Richard Hermer, also featured pictures of political prisoners from around the world at different points in history.

We did this because we cannot stand by as people are jailed for telling the truth and taking action to stop the genocide in Gaza and the continued extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal.

We need to begin to understand this as a major problem for our political and legal systems.  There is an unavoidable contradiction in government right now between the prosecution and jailing of people of conscience and the civil service code of conduct and international law.  Civil servants cannot be made complicit in breaches of international law and in attacks on the rule of law in this country. 

Defend Our Juries, along with 2000 cultural figures and 67,000 members of the public, has written to the Attorney General Richard Hermer, calling for a public meeting with him to discuss the jailing of political prisoners in the UK and the interference in the criminal justice process by industry lobbyists. Given the circumstances, we think this is a reasonable demand.

In a letter dated 4 October,2 the Attorney General refused to meet with us. We have so far received no reply to a letter clarifying an apparent confusion on the Attorney General’s part concerning the proposed scope of the meeting.

We therefore had no choice but to take to the public highway again, and to bring our exhibition to the doorstep of the institution responsible for this harm, for the prosecution and imprisonment of those who take action to prevent mass loss of life: the office of the Attorney General.

Our demand to meet the Attorney General remains.  We need to urgently discuss with him the rapid rise in political prisoners, in addition to the contradiction  between International law, the Civil Service Code and the imprisonment of life defenders.   this is indicated by recent developments:

  1. The High Court’s ruling on the FDA union’s legal challenge to the Conservative government’s Rwanda bill in June of this year, which held that the Civil Service Code includes a commitment to international law that can only be derogated by express language from Parliament. Put simply, Civil Servants do have a duty to uphold international law.
  2. The Public and Commercial Services union’s policy to defend members who refuse to breach the civil service code in relation to Rwanda deportations and on policies that breach the government’s climate commitments in international law
  3. That Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur, has stated publicly and unequivocally, that the current persecution and imprisonment of environmental defenders violates the UK’s legal obligations under Article 3(8) of the Aarhus Convention. The jailing of political prisoners is thus not only a moral aberration but a breach of international law
  4. The motion passed with 75% support at the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) conference on 12 October 2024, which recognised the ‘increasing number’ of people being sentenced to custody in the UK, even first-time offenders, for peaceful protest. The motion further recognises that for such political prisoners, standard risk assessment tools over ‘repeat offending’ and ‘rehabilitation’ are inappropriate. 

The criminal justice system has created an unconscionable situation. We are now in a position in which public employees and citizens are forced to ask ourselves: What did I do as British weapons rained down on people in Gaza and as the burning of Fossil Fuels condemned vast regions of the world and countless human lives to ruin? What did I do when the rule of law was threatened and those trying to defend it were being imprisoned?

We ask you to consider acting on your conscience, collectively, and with courage.