“The law by which we have set out is the primacy of action.” That was the creed by which Lothar Kreyssig, a German judge, lived. In 1940, he was asked to sign off an ever-increasing number of death certificates for people with mental disabilities. Kreyssig suspected the German government of carrying out “mercy killings” of these “persons unworthy of living”.

Kreyssig could have done the easy thing: closed both eyes, furthered his career and done what was asked of him. He could have claimed that he knew of nothing and was just doing his job. Instead, he decided that to stay passive in the face of such evil would be intolerable. He refused to facilitate the euthanasia of innocent people and filed a murder charge against a high-ranking party official. His action cost him his job. Today, he is remembered as one of the very few judges that resisted the crimes of the Nazi regime.

Fast forward to 2025 and the most basic right to life of millions of people is still being treated with disdain. Tens of thousands of people have now been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of whom are civilians. This killing is in flagrant violation of international law and yet, for over a year, it has continued day after day. Meanwhile, national governments have shown a complete unwillingness to decouple the burning of fossil fuels and pillage of ecosystems from their economies, silently signing the death sentences of millions who cannot grow food on their land or breathe the air around them.

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What is a British person, with a basic sense of right and wrong, supposed to do, when the laws that are supposed to protect life are faltering left, right and centre? Can they physically block the companies that are causing the suffering? Take part in symbolic actions to inspire the public imagination? Or cause disruption so it becomes impossible to ignore what is happening?

According to the courts, the answer is that you cannot do any of these things without ending up in prison. Our judiciary turns the primacy of action on its head - the primacy of passivity and maintenance of the status quo seem to have become our highest judicial principles, no matter what the human cost.

An unprecedented number of peaceful activists are currently in British prisons. The number currently totals 33, made up of both Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action supporters. That's in the same British prisons which are so overcrowded that thousands of prisoners had to be released last year, to avert a meltdown of the prison system.

The ‘Lord’ Walney 16 are the latest group of conscientious people to experience the primacy of passivity first-hand. They are 16 people, from all walks of life, who made a common-sense observation - the UK government kept issuing licences for new fossil fuel projects against all advice and reason.

Someone had to stop them. So they joined Just Stop Oil. Together, they took part in some of the most daring protests in UK history, generating a flood of media coverage about the continued burning of oil and gas. Under the Labour government, their demand became policy and new fossil fuel licences have been banished to the past. Just Stop Oil achieved their goal. But at a high price.

The ‘Lord’ Walney 16 are four sets of activists from four separate court cases, all of whom were handed lengthy prison sentences.

The Whole Truth Five – Roger Hallam, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw, and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu – received five- and four-year sentences for planning disruption on the M25. Their judge, Judge Hehir, told them that “each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

Hehir ruled that neither the nonviolence of the protest nor the conscientious motivation behind it afforded any mitigation or reason for leniency in sentencing.

Five people who took part in that disruption - George Simonson, Theresa Higginson, Paul Bell, Gaie Delap, and Paul - received between 20 months and two years, for climbing onto gantries over the M25, resulting in tailbacks.

Then there are Larch Maxey, Chris Bennett, Samuel Johnson, and Joe Howlett who received sentences of between 15 months and three years for occupying tunnels dug under the road leading to the Navigator Oil Terminal in Essex. The aim of the protest was to cause terminal operations to be paused until the four could be removed from the tunnels.

Unfortunately, the tunnelers’ safety was disregarded and the oil terminal’s operations continued, meaning the action caused minimal disruption. That didn’t stop Judge Graham from basing their sentences on the disruption which they could have caused, not the disruption actually caused, and imposing lengthy sentences.

Finally, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland famously threw soup at the protective glass screen covering Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, without harming the painting in any way. Judge Hehir bizarrely ruled that this action was no different from a violent assault on a person and sentenced them to two years and 20 months, respectively.

These sentences are not normal. To put this in relation, the highest prison sentence ever imposed on suffragettes whose tactics included arson was three months. But we don’t have to look as far back as that.

In 2018, three anti-fracking protesters went to prison for 15 to 18 months for blocking a road outside a fracking site. The court of appeal quashed these sentences straight away, labelling them “excessive and extraordinary”, and the Frack Free Three walked free.

Much has changed in Britain’s criminal legal system since 2018. Policy Exchange, a private lobby firm masquerading as a charitable ‘think tank’ and sponsored by fossil fuel companies, drafted the Policing, Crime and Sentencing Bill, which then became law, dramatically increasing the sentences that could be handed out against activists. John Woodcock, also known as the disgraced ‘Lord’ Walney, was appointed as the Government's independent adviser on political violence and disruption.

Woodcock called incessantly for members of Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil to be treated as organised criminals and for their organisations to be banned. He was not as vocal about his business links with oil and arms companies, the Purpose Defence Coalition, BP, and Glencore. This interference of private interests with law-making is currently commonplace and legal. And it is protected by our courts.

The Mass Appeal into the sentencing of the ‘Lord’ Walney 16 was heard over 29th-30th January and on 7th March, the court delivered its judgement. It is tempting to focus on the good news in these bleak times. The Whole Truth Five received sentence reductions, meaning they are all eligible for release from prison now, many months earlier than expected.

The joy and relief this has brought to their families cannot be overstated. However, the broader picture has not been redrawn. Currently, according to our High Court, it is right to send large numbers of nonviolent protesters to prison for as long as four years. Ten of the 16 left the Royal Courts of Justice without any reductions to their sentences. And even though a glimmer of sanity prevailed when it was ruled nonviolent to throw soup at an inanimate object, a 2-year sentence was still deemed proportionate for such an action.

We need not feel sorry for the ‘Lord’ Walney 16. These are people who had the courage to act in line with their consciences at a time of grotesque, unchallenged evil. We who are left on the other side of prison bars should ask ourselves what it means for us to act in such times. What are we doing to repair a criminal justice system that has been permeated by corporate interests, that defends lifeless corporations over the future of its own living and breathing citizens?

It is so easy to follow the endless sludge of news from the US and get caught in the paralysis of despondency and cynicism. But what we do matters. And when we do nothing, we play our part in maintaining the status quo.

On 14th February 2025, after a thousand people organised by Defend Our Juries sat in the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice, ‘Lord’ Walney was finally sacked from his role as not-so-independent advisor. Change is possible when we come together, organise collectively and make action our primacy.

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The author - Frieda Lurken