Suffragette's great-granddaughter says climate protest sentences were 'disproportionate'
The great-granddaughter of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst described the sentences given to several climate protesters as "heavy-handed and disproportionate".
Helen Pankhurst was speaking ahead of the Court of Appeal hearing challenges against the sentences handed down to 16 activists.
They were jailed for between five years and 15 months for their involvement in four climate protests.
Adding her support to the appeal bids, Ms Pankhurst said: "The suffragettes are looked up to because they fought tooth and nail and refused to be silenced and give up on their cause, the universal suffrage now taken for granted in all democracies.
"Environmental activists today stand in the same tradition. I have no doubt future generations around the world will thank them for their campaigns.
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"The heavy-handed and disproportionate custodial sentences given in the UK to peaceful environmental activists speaking truth to power is worrying in the extreme.
"A repeal is the only just outcome here."
Environmental campaign groups Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace UK have been allowed to intervene in the case of a group of five protesters nicknamed the "", with FoE claiming the sentences were of "unprecedented length related to peaceful protest".
The challenges are set to be heard at the Court of Appeal in London over two days.
They were jailed in July last year for agreeing to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb on to gantries over the M25 for four successive days in November 2022.
Roger Hallam, co-founder of environmental campaign groups and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin each received four-year jail terms.
FoE and Greenpeace UK said their submissions supporting the five would also assist others involved in linked appeals.
George Simonson, Theresa Higginson, Paul Bell, and Paul Sousek were jailed for their involvement in protests on the M25, during which they climbed on to gantries over the motorway.
Simonson and Higginson were jailed for two years, Bell for 22 months, and Delap and Sousek for 20 months last August.
Larch Maxey, Chris Bennett, Samuel Johnson and Joe Howlett all received prison terms of between three years and 15 months, after occupying tunnels dug under the road leading to the Navigator Oil Terminal in Thurrock, Essex.
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed in September 2024 after almost "destroying" Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers by throwing soup on its protective glass at London's National Gallery.
Plummer was sentenced to two years behind bars and Holland 20 months.
Katie de Kauwe, senior lawyer at FoE, said: "Instead of further burdening our overcrowded prison system by criminalising those trying to push the climate and nature emergencies up the political agenda out of sheer desperation, the government should be accelerating efforts to deliver fair and meaningful action on the environment."
Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "These long sentences for peaceful protest make it difficult to see modern Britain as the kind of mature, tolerant culture our parents and grandparents enjoyed."
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