British environmentalists jailed

British environmentalists jailed

Seven environmentalists, including Simon Fairlie, one of the editors of the Ecologist, were jailed for 28 days on July 23 for breaching a High Court injunction preventing them from protesting against the construction of a motorway through Twyford Down near Winchester in southern England. Their protests had been entirely peaceful.

None of those sentenced denied breaking the injunction but, as Simon Fairlie commented before being taken to Pentonville Prison, "We've done this not out of contempt for the law but out of revulsion at the road industry's contempt for democracy. The public inquiry system is blatantly rigged to the advantage of the road lobby. I'm being jailed for walking across Twyford Down, whilst the Department of Transport has been allowed to tear it apart with bulldozers in open defiance of EC law."

EC law requires that full environmental impact assessments be carried out on all road schemes and that non-technical summaries of them be published. The British government failed to comply with this law.

The prisoners have contended that the injunction barring them from Twyford Down is in breach of civil liberties guaranteed under the European Human Rights Commission.

Using public money, the Department of Transport has hired private security forces to monitor, videotape and evict Twyford Down protesters and to tap their telephones.

From GLW issue 109