Just Stop Oil protesters receive record jail terms for disrupting M25

The five defendants shouted 'We love you' when they were given their sentences.

Five Just Stop Oil protesters have been jailed for planning to block the M25 motorway.

The protesters – Roger Hallam, 58, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22 – agreed to cause traffic chaos by climbing over the gantries for days on end in November 2022.

The five defendants shouted ‘We love you’ when they were given their sentences.

Hallam, one of the co-founders of Just Stop Oil, has been sentenced to five years in jail.

The other four were given four year sentences by Judge Christopher Hehir.

He said: ‘The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.

‘You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change.’

45 people ended up climbing onto the gantries which cost the Metropolitan Police more than £1.1million to deal with, prosecutors said.

This impacted around 700,000 vehicles and meant that the M25 grinded to a halt for more than 120 hours.

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