Cambridge family of Just Stop Oil protester Louise Lancaster speak of ‘shock’ at four-year jail term for M25 protest
The family of a Just Stop Oil protester from Grantchester who was jailed after conspiring to hold up traffic on the M25 have spoken about their “shock” at her four-year sentence - and said they are “immensely proud” of her.
Former teacher Louise Lancaster, a mother of three, was one of the five protesters given what are thought to be the longest sentences ever for peaceful protest in the UK.
The 58-year-old is now being held in a category A prison alongside serious offenders. She is likely to miss her daughter’s wedding and the family has learned that an appeal may cost £100,000, but they staunchly support her actions for the fossil fuel protest group.
More than 1,200 artists, athletes and academics have now condemned the “injustice” of sentences handed to the activists. In a letter to Attorney General Richard Hermer KC, the high-profile figures backed millionaire Labour donor Dale Vince and naturalist Chris Packham’s call for an urgent meeting to discuss “the jailing of truth tellers and their silencing in court”.
Speaking after visiting her in prison on Monday, her son Theo, 19, who is a medical student, told the Cambridge Independent: “I was incredibly shocked. I was aware that Mum was likely to get prison time.
“But as the trial went on, I was just consistently being surprised with the increasing figure, and then the fact that it’s ended on four years - I was genuinely stunned. And I think a lot of people have been stunned, in the public in general, because at least to me, it seems like such a disgusting breach of justice and fair treatment of these people in terms of, what people are given for other things and violent crimes, like assault.”
It was the first time he had been able to see his mother since the trial.
“I think my main concern with her is just that she doesn’t take the time to look after herself and make sure she’s OK,” he said. “She just spent so much time trying to do stuff for other people, trying to be really committed to all of this stuff. But I’m immensely proud of what she’s done, and I’ve always been proud of the self sacrifice that she’s able to put herself through.
“When all the protesting started to happen with my family, I think I was a bit confused at first, because I was quite a lot younger at the time, and I was like, ‘this seems quite extreme’. But I know for a fact that this is what my mum wants to do, and this is what she feels is right to do, and I agree with her, and therefore I don’t regret any of it, because I know that it’s what she feels that she wants to do, and she feels is necessary, and I think it’s important she’s able to do that.
“Obviously, it would be lovely if my mum wasn’t in prison for such an obscenely long time, but I’m aware that that is something that she’s accepted is a cost of what she’s doing, and so I’m willing to support her through that.”
He added: “It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen her, because she went away to do the trial, and then obviously was put on remand. I wasn’t able to see her for the last month or so. It was really nice to see her today (Monday) and see that she’s doing OK. I knew that she’d should be doing all right, because she’s such a resilient person, and she believes that this is the best thing that she can do to help the cause that she believes in. She’s got amazing commitment to it.”
Louise, Roger Hallam, 58, from Wales, Daniel Shaw, 38, from Northampton, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 34, from Derby, and former University of Cambridge student Cressida Gethin, 22, from Hereford, were all found guilty of planning to disrupt the M25 in November 2022. The plan involved climbing up a number of gantries that cross over the motorway to demand an end to the licensing of new oil and gas.
Hallam, co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while the remaining four defendants were each handed four years’ behind bars.
Prosecutors alleged the M25 protests, during which 45 people climbed up on to the gantries, led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1m. They also said it caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delays, affecting more than 700,000 vehicles, and left the M25 “compromised” for more than 120 hours.
Louise’s former husband, Tim Lancaster, joined his sons Tristan, 27, and Theo on the prison visit this week. Their daughter, Verity, who is a midwife, was unable to be there.
Tim said: “Verity says she’s getting waves of emotion where you kind of forget about it, and then you suddenly remember again, and then it hits you again. I think that certainly happened to me while the trial was going on. And it’s happened to me since, but you gradually get used to it.
“Today was an important step where we took her clothes, because she wasn’t expecting to be put on remand, or she was expecting to have some time at home between the conviction and the sentence, but the judge put them on remand and I couldn’t really understand why. It just seemed vindictive, really. But as a consequence, she didn’t have any clothes with her when she went in, she just had what she was wearing.
“She’s sharing a cell, so you don’t know what she can’t say when she’s speaking on the phone. It’s a very full prison, and it’s also a category A prison. So there are people who’ve done some quite gruesome things in there. It was good to see that she was looking positive regardless.”
His visit was partly to discuss plans for an appeal against the conviction and the sentence, but he fears the predicted cost may be too high for the family to manage.
He said: ” I was asking her about what she wanted to do as far as appeals were concerned, because she’s got 28 days in which to potentially appeal either the conviction or the sentence or both. And each individual prisoner has a choice about what they do. So although the five of them went in together, actually there might be five separate appeals or even 10 appeals, if they appeal everything.
So she’s she’s thinking about that at the moment. Her view is it’s important to coordinate that with the other people. So I’ve said I won’t do anything until I hear from her. We have been contacted by lawyers and other people offering free assistance. So that’s useful. But at the same time I was told this morning that to retain people for a successful appeal that costs about £100,000 so it’s not a cheap process. There’s a crowdfunder going on at the moment, which had reached £50,000 yesterday, but that would be across the five people, so it’s still a lot of money.
“It’s a big hill to climb, and it’s, it’s a lot of cash to find so I think if it were to be that expensive, and unless there was a good way that it fitted with everybody else, I don’t think she personally would decide to do it.”
The defendants were convicted by a jury of conspiracy intentionally to cause a public nuisance, contrary to section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, on July 11.
All five defendants had joined a Zoom call on November 2 2022 in which discussions were held about the planned protests, the court heard. A journalist from The Sun newspaper recorded some of the call and passed the recordings on to the police.
Tim explained that his former wife had been motivated to take part in the protests because she had already signed petitions and written letters about climate change and was frustrated by their lack of impact.
He said: “There are plenty of people who questioned the M25 stoppages, and asked ‘Why aren’t you writing to your MP, signing a petition, or, protesting outside Parliament?’ And in fact, Louise had done all of those things, and none of them had had any effect. But what’s really clear is that the sort of protests that they did on the M25 - although a lot of people didn’t like the idea of delaying people - were effective at drawing attention to the cause.
“Louise just isn’t the sort of person who would ever have done anything extreme. If I wound the clock back five years, there’s no way she’d ever have got in trouble for anything. And, step by step, she has gone further into this just because she was really concerned about what was happening and she couldn’t see another way.”
He suggested the turning point for Louise was in January 2020 when she attended an Insulate Britain meeting.
Tim says: “Roger Hallam was arguing, look, we need to have a very focused campaign of disruption in order to get the government to insulate homes. And it’s a very simple thing. It’s one of the easiest things the government can do in order to reduce carbon emissions, because a lot of carbon is burnt through heating homes. It also saves a lot of people every winter. Around 10,000 people die every winter from the cold in the UK. And as Louise put it, it’s a no brainer. So they had this focus campaign of roadblocks in order to draw attention to that.
“At that point we had a conversation about it. She said, ‘I really feel I should do this’. And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think I can do this, because I’ll lose my job’. And there was a kind of recognition that she had she was able to do it. She said, ‘I know I’m going to get arrested for this, you know, but I think it’s the right thing to do’.”
Asked whether the protest was worth all the consequences their family has since suffered, Tim said: “Our daughter Verity is actually engaged to be married next summer. And one of the unfortunate things with this is that Louise will miss the wedding. Verity obviously upset that Lou is in prison and has been thinking about whether to postpone the wedding because of that. But it’s unclear about how long Louise will be in prison for, and Louise said to Verity ‘Look, please don’t postpone this for me. I really want you to go ahead and and do it, and I’ll be thinking of you’.
“That’s typical Louise. Everybody would have expected that she would say that, because she she never wants to take anything for herself. That’s the sort of person she is.”
He added that getting the climate message out to the public was worth all the disruption on the M25.
Tim said: “Obviously, people were concerned. They’re really not the sort of people who are blase about causing harm to other people. Most of these people are deeply conscientious. They really care about other people. That’s why they’re doing it. But I think the the eventual answer to that has to be, unfortunately, about numbers.
“How many people are going to be going to die because of climate change, or are dying already because of extreme heat waves and floods and other things? We know an awful lot of lot of people are. That’s going to get worse and worse and worse if we don’t take action. Now, you say, well, if, if this awful thing were to happen, would it be justified? Nothing justifies killing people, but you’re not choosing to kill them. It’s a possible effect. And even so, you bounce it against the numbers that you know will die otherwise and are dying. Clearly if you’ve got to take that decision then you go with trying to save the greater number.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has faced calls to intervene in the case while UN human rights commissioner Volker Turk described the sentences as “deeply troubling”.
Artist Dame Tracey Emin, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, film director Danny Boyle, author Sir Philip Pullman, singer Annie Lennox and actor Toby Jones were among those who signed an open letter in support of Mr Dale and Mr Packham, who called for the meeting with the Attorney General last week.
Others who put their name down included top human rights lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams - who is master of Magdalene College, Cambridge - and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The letter said: “With prisons at breaking point and the new government acting urgently to address this, how can these sentences be seen as anything other than insanity?”
