On 28 April 2022, Just Stop Oil supporters blocked the entrances to Clacket Lane Services on the M25 by sitting in the road with Just Stop Oil banners. They also decommissioned the petrol pumps by breaking the display glass and covering it with spray paint. This action was taken in support of their demand for the UK government to end all new oil and gas projects in the country.
In a unanimous verdict delivered today by a jury at Guildford Crown Court, Just Stop Oil supporters Nathan McGovern, Rosa Sharkey, and Louis Hawkins were found not guilty of causing criminal damage.
Any jury may consider that the law itself is unjust. It is an important principle and indicates public opposition to aspects of law, in this case, the ‘lawful’ behaviour of fossil fuel corporations.
This should be a claxon in the ears of the ruling class that they are facing dire consequences in the near future if they don’t change shit like yesterday.
Jury nullification is powerful partly because you need to get a group of 12 strangers together who have been vetted to remove bias, to all unanimously agree to say, in effect, “fuck the law”. The more people realise this is an option, the more it will happen, and the more it happens the more it will become obvious that we are being screwed and our oppressors want it to happen. They should be shitting themselves right now.
Instead nobody’s reporting on it, not even the centrist style conservatives, and the very wealthy have clogged their ears with reactionary rhetoric that will stop them hearing the alarm until it’s far too late.