Remember the names of the nine jailed Insulate Britain protesters – they are all heroes

He was wrong. An Insulate Britain climate protector told the High Court judge last week, at his sentencing with the “Insulate Britain 9” for breaking an injunction, that if she jailed them, another 10 protectors would take each of their places; and if they arrested them, 100 would in turn take their places, until such time as the state acted to protect us from climate catastrophe.

Four days later, 124 climate protectors were arrested for breaking the same injunction by sitting on Lambeth Bridge and Vauxhall Cross. So, it was 13, not 10, new arrestees for each of the imprisoned Insulate Britain 9. They were protesting the imprisonment of the Insulate Britain 9 for breaking the injunction forbidding protests on all major roads across Britain.

It seems to me that the one – the only – climate promise the UK government has faithfully kept is their promise to crack down hard on climate protests. The authoritarian police and crime bill, demanded by Cressida Dick, head of the Metropolitan Police, to punitively punish a swathe of peaceful direct actions, was delayed following the outcry over the heavy-handed policing of the Sarah Everard vigil.

From what I can tell, the bill de facto equates peaceful direct actions with many terrorist offences, with draconian 10-year penalties for the new Orwellian crime of being “seriously annoying”. The definition of “seriously annoying” is to be defined by Priti Patel, not parliament.

Instead of tempering the bill following the Sarah Everard outrage, the government has doubled down. Last week, it added new punitive measures to the bill, including making it a criminal offence to possess superglue “with intent” to glue oneself in a way that causes impact to more than one person. This incurs a year’s imprisonment.

More chillingly, there is a new offence of using the internet to inform people about, or to help organise, a peaceful disruptive action, if the person has been guilty of participating in two such previous actions. Criminalising climate protectors from informing people or organising future peaceful direct actions is what you would expect in Putin’s Russia or communist China, not in a supposed liberal democracy.

The demonisation of the peaceful Insulate Britain protectors by sections of the media has been shocking. For weeks there have been headlines screaming “Tarquins”, “eco nutjobs”, “crusties” and so on. The reality, of course, is that they are a bunch of decent people from all walks of life. The Insulate Britain 9 are:

Roman Paluch, 28, warehouse operator; Emma Smart, 44, ecologist; James Thomas, 47, architect; Dr Ben Buse, 36, university lecturer (geology); Oliver Roc, 41, carpenter; Louis McKechnie, 21, engineering student; Tim Speers, 36, unemployed; Ana Heyatawin, 58, retired; Ben Taylor, 27, community volunteer

From the hysteria, you would swear all 11,000 of London’s junctions were being blocked on a daily basis, instead of just one or two. The M25 protests did affect more drivers. But the M25, as one of the UK’s busiest fossil-fuelled motorways, is a legitimate climate target, being a toxic weapon of mass climate destruction.

The media pile-on egged on some pretty ugly scenes, with peaceful protesters being physically attacked by irate drivers. Their calm peacefulness in the face of these attacks was humbling. With tabloids baying for action, the government and the Mayor of London bypassed existing laws on highway blocking and got a High Court injunction banning Insulate Britain protests on all major roads.

Contempt of court is a punitive tool used by governments by which they can threaten imprisonment and unlimited fines, bypassing the Magna Carta right to a jury trial. In my view, Sadiq Khan and Grant Shapps’s use of contempt of court to try to shut down peaceful protests is redolent of the worst protest suppression in Russia or Hong Kong.

Young people around the world are in despair and grief after the disastrous failure of Cop26, which instead of agreeing to the 45 per cent emission cuts needed, submitted plans which are predicted to lead to a rise of 16 per cent. This desperation is leading more protectors to take direct actions to save humanity from civilisational collapse.

The response all over the industrialised world, however, increasingly involves governments imposing punitive prison sentences on protectors. In poorer countries, meanwhile, they are often literally being killed by those seeking to exploit fossil fuel reserves and the remaining rainforests.

This pattern reflects so many major human rights movements in the past. In the face of governmental refusal to act, movements have always been forced into peaceful, disruptive direct actions, whether it was the Suffragists, the black rights movement or the Gandhi movement in India.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter by clicking here

As peaceful direct actions have to be disruptive in order to be effective, parts of the media usually screams outrage and demand punitive action. Governments usually oblige, just like Priti Patel, Cressida Dick and Sadiq Khan are doing right now. Scores, if not thousands of peaceful protesters, end up paying the price in jail. Then, eventually, justice prevails and governments act. The tragedy is that it now looks as if, following the disastrous failure of Cop26, thousands more young and not-so-young people across the world will have to pay the price of imprisonment.

I was at the High Court sentencing for the Insulate Britain 9, where I witnessed parents and partners in floods of tears as they said goodbye to them, before they were led away to jail. How many more tears will be shed by such families around the world, before our governments, media and banks stop destroying our climate? Or will this suppression succeed in destroying the climate movement and with it our last hope for a future for our kids?