My editing retreat was a sweaty one. No I wasn’t indulging in hot yoga, I was just tapping keys on a computer. It was 41 degrees outside for many of the days I was there. I am back there again now, this time on holiday. On my return I discovered that my attempt to re-wild part of the garden had ended up with plants so dry they look charred. 120km away the worst ever recorded wildfires in France are burning.

_{My attempt at re-wilding the garden}

And yet, as this catastrophe stares us in the face, a large swathe of humans think it is a good idea to roll back on our net zero pledges and keep drilling in the North Sea. The reason often cited for this is energy security and jobs. The relative tea cup’s worth of fossil fuels we’ll get from Rosebank and Jackdaw aren’t going to give us energy security. How about we just keep it in the ground and focus our political energy on finding other ways to power the UK and support those who might lose their jobs as we transition?

While I retreated into a quiet space, the world of UK protest rights, the climate emergency, digital tech and asylum seeking - areas my work covers - have been anything but quiet.

The battle as to whether Palestine Action should have been proscribed or not continues. The “they-are-terrorists, no-they’re-not, yes-they-are” debacle now finds itself on the way to the Supreme Court for judgment in November. Meanwhile, more than 3,500 arrests have been made for terrorism in what has become one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the UK. Their crime: quietly holding a sign with the words, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. As Requiem For Protest shows, it is blindingly obvious that these peaceful protesters are not terrorists and it is a massive waste of police and court resources arresting them.

_{Image: Requiem For Protest Installation}

The sentencing of four Palestine Action activists in June to include a “terrorist connection” was chilling. Being tried and found guilty for one crime, but sentenced under the guidelines of a different crime - a more serious one - is dystopia. The jury of their peers who passed the verdict were unaware they would be sentenced with a “terrorist connection”. Would that have changed their verdict? We cannot know, but it does throw up an important moral question. Their sentencing with a terror connection is however perfectly legal. Since the early noughties the legal framework allowing this to happen has been being put in place. Andy Meinke explains this in this article in Freedom. I was talking to a Greenham Common activist I met in Manchester and I asked her about how this compared to those times. She remarked that the difference now is there is the legal framework in place to enable the state to crack down on non-violent protest. This just underlines how important it is to campaign for the repeal of the anti-protest laws if we want to keep our democracy intact. God forbid how those laws might be used if we get a far right government next.

There is an uncomfortable truth in the sentencing of these four young Palestine Action activists: had they smashed up the property in a mindless act of hooliganism, the judge would not have been able to make the terrorism connection. They would have been out on parole a lot sooner and without the 15 years of onerous reporting requirements that come with a terrorism sentence. It was precisely their stated mission to save lives that opened up this door to a harsher punishment.

We’ve heard many cries since the proscription of Palestine Action that The Suffragettes and the Trident Ploughshare activists would also have been classed as terrorists today. I was fascinated to find this 26 year old article from Angie Zelter, one of the Ploughshare activists who was acquitted. These were different times. The Sheriff - the Scottish equivalent of a judge in English courts - even directed the jury to acquit. One of her reasons was that the defendants genuinely believed they were acting to prevent a greater crime. Different times indeed.

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A further five Palestine Action activists face a similar fate at their sentencing this September. Their crime? Spraying red paint and ‘splintering’ some windows at a branch of Barclays. Being able to include damage to property in the definition of terrorism only became possible when the Terrorism Act was passed in 2000. That there is now little distinction between damage to property and the killing of humans is a rather telling indictment of the times we live in.

Something that has been bothering me with the recent trials of activists who engaged in civil disobedience, whether that was to raise the alarm about the climate emergency or the genocide in Gaza, is the moving of the goal posts. The punishments they might have expected to receive at the time of their actions were far less severe than at the time of their trials. Would they have taken part in those actions had they anticipated such harsh punishments, or if they had known they would be victims of the systemic abuse of remand? The goal post moving has been enabled by changes in the law so technically speaking it is legal, but is it moral? It certainly feels cruel.

_{Image: The Line We Crossed - slow marchers arrested under section 7}

As documented in The Line We Crossed, in 2023 hundreds of climate activists were arrested under section 7 for slow marching down major roads. Two and a half years later some are now being tried for that action. At the beginning of July, seven Just Stop Oil supporters were found not guilty for the Waterloo Bridge slow march. They are the second group now to be acquitted for this same action. I have been told by a court supporter that the jury were outraged that this was even brought to court and thought it a tremendous waste of money. The trial lasted a week. Only 16 people have been tried for this so far, hundreds more await their turn. And, because the courts are overwhelmed, most of the remaining trials aren’t scheduled until 2027 or 2028. One way of reducing the backlog would be to throw out pointless cases like these.

Incidentally, none of the mainstream press who revelled in reporting how annoying these climate activists were when they did their action thought it worth reporting their acquittals. Perhaps, as they were sweltering at their desks, the thought went through their minds that those climate campaigners had a point and it would be better to keep quiet about the fact that two successive juries have now acquitted them.

_{Image: The Line We Crossed - A moment of relief as Sam is released from 3 weeks on remand in Wandsworth Prison after being charged under section 7 for slow marching}

And coming back to where this piece started, my film Nowhere To Go. I have been watching the news about the scenes in Ceuta this week. In Nowhere To Go we document what happened in Poland when Belarus decided to use desperate people as political pawns. They laid on charter flights to Minsk for them and actively encouraged people to pass through the Belarus / Polish border. The Belarusian border guards helped people cross by taking them to areas where the Polish border guard were less present. The guards cut the fences for them to let them through. The unfortunate ones who were found by the Polish and pushed back discovered that those same Belarusian border guards weren’t so friendly when they tried to go back. They were beaten, starved and left to try and survive in freezing temperatures. It was a political game, just as Ceuta is a political game being played by Morocco to annoy Spain. But those pawns in this political game of chess are human beings. Human beings who are driven by the hope of finding a safe place to live where they can prosper. Hope is all they have.

_{Image: Nowhere To Go - forest on the Polish Belarus border}

Another recent major policy announcement was the UK ban of social media for under 16s. It has many critics, some saying it is impossible to police, others saying that it will remove a lifeline for young people who might not now be able to find supportive communities. I welcome the ban, if only because of the statement it makes. It de-legitimises it as something safe for young people. When I was researching for I Am Gen Z, my overwhelming feeling was thank heavens I am not a 15 year old girl today. I think I would have really struggled to thrive as a 15 year in the social media age. At least with the ban it will allow young people who don’t want the pressure of social media in their lives to not feel they have to be on it. When you’re the only one not on it, you are excluded, but if a bunch of you aren’t, then that problem goes away. It will also help parents who are trying to keep their kids off social media for as long as they can. One friend of mine told me when she finally allowed her daughter a smartphone with access to what’s app she was mortified when she spotted the name of the group her friends had set up: “[daughter’s name] finally gets what’s app”. She was the last in her friend group to be allowed to use it. No parent wants their child to be the excluded one. This ban may help a little.

The ban is not going to single-handedly solve the toxic effects of social media, but it is an important recognition from our government that it can be harmful. For those of you who have been able to come to screenings of The Conspiracists, you may also agree with me that it should be banned from conspiracy theorists too!

_{Image: The Conspiracists - dead bug at the truck stop}

We’re not going to solve the energy crisis, and the linked cost of living crisis, by drilling another tea cup of fossil fuel out of the North Sea. We’re not going to “smash the gangs” or “stop the boats” by putting harsher and harsher deterrents in place. We’re not going to eradicate the dangers of social media by banning it for under 16s. We’re very busy treating symptoms not the causes, obstinately looking the other way while the world burns (literally and metaphorically). The only way we are going to get to energy security is through clean energy we can control. The only way we will smash the gangs and stop the boats is by putting our money and effort into making life viable for people so they don’t need to leave their home countries in the first place, and by providing safe and legal routes for those who are left with no other choice. The only way we will remove the toxic effects of social media is by making the people who design and run those platforms accountable. And under-pinning all those efforts is an overwhelming need to act on the climate emergency. Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday. Otherwise we are set to lose a hell of a lot more than salad.

In July we premiered our installation Requiem For Protest at Friend’s Meeting House in Manchester. A big shout out to Steve, Kevin, Mary, Liz and the team at the Manchester Quakers who have given me so much support and helped make it happen. We are now actively seeking other venues and community groups to host the installation. Please spread the word! Find out more on the website.

Simultaneously we kicked off our completion fundraiser for Nowhere To Go. We need to raise £30,000 by the end of the year if we are to be ready for a Spring 2027 release. We’ve got off to a strong start and I am super energised by the support. Everyone who donates gets a thank you in the end credits. Personally I want that to be a very long list as that will make a big statement in its own right. Click here to go to the donation page and please tell everyone about it!

On 26 October we are going to parliament! Clive Lewis MP is sponsoring a screening event for the The Line We Crossed. This presents an incredible opportunity to advocate for policy change on protest rights and the climate emergency. If you want your MP to attend get in touch, and together let’s see if we can get them to commit to come along. The format will be clips followed by panel discussions. Each panel will include a participant in the film.

Last week I was filming in Dunkirk for my upcoming film Nowhere To Go. I rode along with a team from Human Rights Observers (HRO) whose job it is to monitor the police when they evict ‘people on the move’ in the Calais and Dunkirk area. The term refugee has become so stigmatised that the observers prefer to use the term ‘people on the move’.

What I witnessed was inhumane.

It was also totally and utterly pointless.

The district council - the “prefecture” - prefer to call these evictions “sheltering operations”. It sounds more humane after all. They justify this by the fact that they lay on buses to take people to reception centres (CAES) that are, intentionally, far from the coast. When you are received at a CAES you can stay for up to 1 month to see if you can claim asylum. This is a farce because everyone knows that most ‘people on the move’ in Calais and Dunkirk are there for one reason only: to attempt to cross to the UK.

In November 2025 the UK government published their policy paper on their asylum and returns policy. The Home Secretary writes,

“Many now ‘asylum shop’ their way across the continent, in search of the most attractive place to seek refuge”

This language that would be more fitting for people looking for a good deal on a package holiday is so divorced from reality. It trivialises the really desperate situations ‘people on the move’ are fleeing from. She goes on to state

We have become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world.

She outlines what she determines are the “pull factors” :

First, the generosity of refugee protection in the UK compared to other countries. Second, the extent of the support provided to asylum seekers, including accommodation, while people await a decision on their claim. Third, the ease with which people are entering the illegal economy in the UK, thereby sustaining a life here without a legal right to live or work.

None of these are “pull factors” I have heard when I’ve been on the ground in northern France talking to ‘people on the move’ and the humanitarian groups who provide them with vital support.

There are many reasons why people fleeing their country want to try to get to the UK. Family and cultural ties are a strong draw, for example. But one reason is the simple fact that they are not able to claim asylum in France or Europe. It is an irony of Brexit, a campaign fought on an anti-immigration platform with the promise to take back control of our borders, that it has had the opposite effect. Brexit took us out of The Dublin Agreement, which means if you are denied asylum in one EU country you cannot apply in another. The asylum process is precarious and inconsistent across the European Union and in the UK, evidenced by the fact that failed claims are often reversed on appeal. Your chances of success depend on your nationality, your legal representation, the country hearing your claim and what evidence you can present. If you are unsuccessful in the European Union, crossing that 31km of water between France and the UK gives you hope and a second chance.

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The observers told me they have recently noticed a rise in the numbers of German speaking Syrians in Calais and Dunkirk. The loquacious police officer - you will meet him later in this story - made mention of the fact that many in the camps speak German. This uptick correlates to a change in German policy. Since regime change, Germany has deemed Syria a safe country and are now planning to return Syrians. Despite this designation of Syria being a ‘safe country’, it remains hostile and dangerous to some, and so they find themselves with nowehere to go, except perhaps the UK.

In her report The Home Secretary says

We are aware that the nature of accommodation, as well as its provision, can be a pull factor.

I have never once heard someone who was planning to cross the channel say that they were coming because they will get to stay in a hotel and be given £9.95 per week to live off. What I have heard many times is that they are looking for somewhere where they can finally feel safe and build a new life. I have heard them say that we have a good human rights record.

If we follow the Home Secretary’s logic that we need to address the pull factors then she should be adding re-entering the European Union to her list. But with Brexit too divisive a topic, that is conveniently ignored. Also ignoring this fact is the architect of Brexit himself, Nigel Farage, who continues to campaign hard on his anti-immigration soap box.

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I met up with two Human Rights Observers very early on a Tuesday morning on a deserted street in Calais. Our destination was Dunkirk. On our trip we passed through swathes of open land that had previously been wooded. The trees had mostly been cut down, so they would no longer be attractive spaces to pitch up a tent. Wooded areas afford some level of privacy and protection from the wind and rain for ‘people on the move’. Cutting down trees and churning up the ground has become a widely used tactic. I saw walls and fences everywhere. They showed me a concrete wall that had been built in the winter at the British tax payers expense.

We sped along the roads chatting about the situation. The landscape industrial and uninviting. Along one road we passed “the shops”, a set of informal shacks put up to sell goods to ‘people on the move’. Suddenly my companions launched into a volley of French-accented expletives: A large convoy of police vans and white vans were sweeping past us in the other direction. Today was going to be another eviction day.

An eviction team can comprise of CRS police (the scary ones in France who have big guns), some local police, border force police (PAF), and “cleaning teams”. There are also representatives from Afeji, a state funded organisation with a mission to support vulnerable people.

As we approached a site that had just been evicted we happened across a family of six stranded in a grassy area near an informal living site. With them was a single shopping trolley stuffed full of their belongings. Take a moment to try and imagine fitting your life for your family of six in a single shopping trolley. The children looked to be between 5 and 12 years old. Three of the children were sat quietly next to the trolley while the parents spoke to us with the help of their eldest son who acted as translator. His English was remarkably good for a child of that age, and with it came an enormous burden to be a support line for his family.

The police told us that when they arrive in the camps they tell the people they can take their things with them, including their tents. The story the boy and his parents recounted was quite different. Here is the transcript from our conversation with them.

HRO: When the police came they say wake up, leave! And if you say I keep my tent, they said no?

Boy: Pistol

Father: [They say] No

HRO: They said pistol?

Father: Yeah. Woah! Woah! Woah! (gesticulating that the police were shooing them away)

Mother: Go! Go! Nicht gut. No good.

Me: No time to keep your tent? And they had a gun?

Father: Yeah. Hur! Hur!

A slashing noise comes from the mother’s mouth as she mimics slashing with her hands.

Me: They slashed your tent?

Mother and Father: Yeah.

…

Boy: [They said] when you no wake up, we will kill you, like, with a pistol.

Me: And they speak in English to you?

Boy: Yeah. And also when [they] speak in French like really loud.

…

Boy: [The police] stayed here like 30 minutes. When nobody goes, the police say, go! Go! And, that man said no, the police, make you like this big pistol.

[HRO] I’m sorry you have had to see this.

[Boy] And they killed one chicken.

[HRO & me] They took your chicken?

[Boy] They killed chicken.

[HRO & me] They killed your chicken!

I asked the family how long they had been in Dunkirk and they said 2 months. I did not ask where they were from, but given that the mother used the words “nicht gut”, I wonder whether they may be one of those Syrian families from Germany now in search of a new safe haven.

After giving them some advice as to where they could get a new family tent, we moved onto another living site that was being evicted. The police had created a perimeter around the site and we watched on as the “cleaning team” systematically removed tent after tent, dragging each one along the floor, piling them up.

With the site evicted and the tents removed, the police and cleaning team left, taking the tents with them. ‘People on the move’ then returned to the site to rifle through what was left.

On this site, while the CRS and the cleaning team had left, some local police remained. The ‘people on the move’ were allowed back in. In a refreshingly frank conversation with a loquacious local police officer we found common ground in the absurdity of the circus we were witnessing. Every week they remove the tents from these sites, often damaging them in the process. The Afeji - a state funded organisation - then mend the tents that have been removed and damaged by the state funded police and cleaning teams. They then give the reconditioned tents back to ‘people on the move’, only to take them away again in the next eviction. The Afeji doesn’t give out tents on eviction days, so if you are not lucky enough to get a new tent from one of the humanitarian organisations you are going to end up spending that night under the stars.

Here is a segment of our conversation with the police officer:

HRO: C’est un peu absurde comme politique de venir toutes les semaines de faire ca alors que les gens [reviennent]

HRO: It’s kind of absurd policy-wise to come and do this every week when people keep returning anyway.

Police Officer: Appelez ce qui nous sert de président ou qui vous voulez, parce qu’on ne fait pas le même boulot, on ne pense pas la même chose, c’est toujours le même cirque.

Police Officer: Call whoever it is that serves as our president, or whoever you want, because he is not doing the same job as us, he doesn’t think the same thing, it’s always the same circus.

Image: Human Rights Observers talking with the local police immediately after an eviction, while a man searches for his belongings. The tents have been removed by “the cleaning team” and the remaining items have been left scattered.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, what I was witnessing was not only inhumane, but also totally and utterly pointless.

About a quarter of the £662 million is to be performance related. A chunk of it has been assigned to building and servicing a “removal centre”. The focus is for the detention and deportation of people from the 10 countries whose nationals top the list of people who try to cross the channel in small boats. They are people from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen. While asylum grant rates for Afghans and Syrians has decreased recently, most of these countries have traditionally been places of origin with high acceptance rates. It follows that if these countries have high asylum acceptance rates it is because these are the people most in need of asylum. So in another cruel twist, the UK government appears to be incentivising the French to deter the people who are most in need of asylum.

With these deterrence measures the government is treating the symptom not the cause. These measures are not stopping people from attempting to cross the channel using an ‘irregular routes’. These measures just make it more dangerous for them. Just prior to my arrival in Dunkirk two young Sudanese women had suffocated to death on a small boat. It was packed full with more than 80 people. The smugglers only get paid when someone successfully makes it to the UK. Previously boats would typically have 40 to 50 people on them, but as more boats are now being intercepted by the French, to keep up their success rate, the smugglers are now cramming more people into each boat.

These deterrence measures are not going to stop the gangs either, they are just creating a very lucrative income stream for them.

I am left wondering what the outcome would have been if we had chosen to put the £662 million, the £700 million we wasted on the Rwanda scheme, the millions spent on deterrence since the first Le Touquet Agreement, into treating the cause rather than the symptom? And if you can indulge me in a brief moment of utopic thinking, what would happen if we were to stop spending trillions on warfare and put that money into welfare instead? Maybe then no one would need to cross the channel in a small boat, maybe no one would be left in a situation where the only place they could turn to is a people smuggler who sees an opportunity to profit from their misfortune.

The Dunkirk filming was for my next feature documentary Nowhere To Go. It is planned for cinema release in spring 2027. In September we will be running fundraising events in London and Manchester where I will be showing preview clips from the film and taking part in a discussion panel. If you are interested in coming to one of these events please drop us a note at info@page75productions.com

This week both The Line We Crossed and The Conspiracists have London cinema screenings.

The Line We Crossed will be showing at BLOC cinema in Bethnal Green on Wednesday, 27 May at 5 PM. It will be followed by a panel discussion organised by Queen Mary University London. The panel includes Angela Sherwood, Jeremy Corbyn, Paddy Friend, Rosa Hicks and myself. Tickets.

If you missed the opening week of the London screenings of The Conspiracists in April, there’s another opportunity to watch it at the wonderful (and air-conditioned) Bertha DocHouse this Saturday 30th May at 14:00. Tickets.

To keep up to date with other screenings of The Line We Crossed, or to find out how to stream it you can visit linktr.ee/thelinewecrossed.

We will soon be adding more screenings of The Conspiracists to the schedule. Keep up to date on linktr.ee/theconspiracists.

The London Conversations week of screenings of The Conspiracists generated some interesting articles about the film. Hardeep Matharu wrote an in depth piece in The ByLine Times. Marina Cantacuzino of The Forgiveness Project has just published an article about it on her Substack. And Noelle Cook and I were interviewed on BBC Radio for The World Tonight and The World Service.

The U-turn is interesting. I don’t think many people think arresting thousands for peacefully sitting holding signs is a good use of police resources. I suspect many in the police do not think so either. Prior to the judicial review the police could reason that they were just doing their job and arresting people because that is what the law required. But, with the proscription judged unlawful, they had the perfect excuse to stop these resource-intensive arrests. And indeed, that was their first decision. But then someone somewhere in the upper echelons of the police gave the order to continue with the arrests. The police are supposed to be operationally independent, they are meant to be answerable to the law and not their political masters. We do not know that they were subject to political interference but given the U-turn, in an Occam’s razor kind of way, the decision to continue with arrests suggests that this may have been the case.

And so, along with my musical collaborator Kim Halliday, I found myself making the fourth episode in my series of shorts Requiem For Protest that documents the Lift The Ban campaign.

In this film, you get an idea of the astounding numbers of police officers drafted in to police these protests. Some were wearing bibs with Heddlu Police which means they had been bussed in from Wales. Alongside The Met police there were units from multiple other branches too. You also see yet more defiant sitters and their dogged determination to fight this. The peaceful vigil in confrontation with state violence makes for a powerful statement. While the action - sitting down with a placard - is easy to take, the consequences can be life changing. These are brave people.

For anyone who finds it hard to see beyond the keffiyahs and identity politics, I urge you to look at this film without that lens: arresting grandmas as terrorists - or anyone for that matter -for peacefully holding a placard is utter utter madness.

523 people were arrested on 11 April in Trafalgar Square and a further 7 were arrested in Hastings. In Truro however people holding the same signs were not. It seems someone in charge of operations at Devon & Cornwall police determined there were better ways to use their police time. There is hope yet.

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While I was filming, an American tourist asked what was going on. I took a deep breath and explained. He looked confused. I made a comment that there was some bad stuff going down in the US too, referencing ICE. His reply? “Yes, but at least we can still protest in America.”

I worry that the absurd is becoming normalised. I’ve witnessed so many kind and gentle people be manhandled and carried off by the police that I am no longer shocked by it. I heard shock and concern in the voices of passing tourists who did not understand what they were seeing. On witnessing five police officers carrying an elderly lady who had gone floppy they assumed she must be ill and in need of care. I wonder if they went back home and told their friends that we don’t have paramedics and ambulance services in the UK? The sight was so incomprehensible to them that this was the only conclusion they could come to. I wonder what they would have thought if I had turned to them and said, “no, the person they are carrying off is a terrorist.”

I remember reading absurdist dystopian novels as a student, I never imagined that 30 years later I would actually be a character in one.

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Can we stop arresting harmless humans please?

Can we take a ‘time out’ to reflect and reset our priorities please?

This protest happened in the same week that the leader of the free world announced he wanted to destroy a whole civilisation.

Just an idea, but perhaps we could stop killing harmless humans instead?

Talking of the absurd becoming normalised, next week (21 - 28 April) The Conspiracists - London Conversations kicks off.

For 7 evenings across 8 nights I will be in cinemas for screenings and Q&As of my latest feature film, The Conspiracists. Noelle Cook is visiting from the US to join me at the Q&As. As well as featuring in the film, Noelle is the writer of the book The Conspiracists, a great accompaniment to the film, and brings her expertise in what drives women into extremism and conspiracism.

Each evening we have a different Q&A host who will bring their own perspective to the world of conspiracism including Hardeep Matharu (Byline Times), Deborah Frances-White (The Guilty Feminist), Jennifer Nadel (Compassion in Politics), Liz Pendleton (Media Revolution), Saskia Lux (Amnesty Feminists), Pragna Patel (Project Resist) and Marina Cantacuzino (The Forgiveness Project.)

The Conspiracists Trailer

Opening night at Bertha DocHouse is now sold out but, at the time of writing, tickets are still available for Curzon Soho (22 April), The Lexi (23 April), The Castle (24 April), Act One (26 April), The Phoenix (27 April) and Forest Cinema (28 April).

If you are in London, I hope you can join us for one of these special curated events.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the independent cinema programmers who book my films and open up these opportunities to show them in these beautiful spaces so we can come together to watch and discuss. I want to thank all the people and the Q&A hosts who support my work by coming to the screenings. And, all the people who appear in the films, along with the team of incredible people around me who put so much time, effort and craft into making them. These films take years to make, so it is always a very special moment when I get to watch them in a cinema with you.

The final phase of making a film cinema and broadcast ready is really satisfying. This stage involves incredibly detailed finessing work at an online post production house. You work with a colourist and spend time meticulously getting every shot looking just right. Sometimes it is about making that shot across the Thames look as beautiful as possible. Other times it is subtle effects like adding that extra bit of exposure on a face to draw the eye. You also work with a sound mixer. I love the sound mix phase. Those little moments where you dial up an important sound, or add in layers and effects that make the film richer. In The Line We Crossed I always listen out for the horse’s winnow when we cut back to the Old Bailey. This finessing is not just about making the film well balanced to the eye and the ear, it also plays a part in telling the story. This painstaking work can transform a film and it is why I encourage anyone who can, to watch the film in the cinema. That is where those subtelties get to be appreciated to their full. I have had people say to me they thought the cinema cut was better, when the reality was the cut was no different to the one they had watched on their screen at home. The bonus of a cinema or community screening is also the opportunity to watch it with others and the group discussion that can follow.

Since June last year The Line We Crossed has screened over 70 times in cinemas and community venues. Most have been followed by post-film discussions. At the screening last Tuesday night at the magical Sands Film Club it struck me how those discussions have changed over the last nine months.

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In spring 2025, at the moment when the final finessing of the film was taking place, Just Stop Oil announced they were “hanging up their hi-vis”. In the UK the stakes for taking part in civil disobedience as a form of protest had gotten a hell of a lot higher. Many of the people leading the charge were in prison, and the deterrent effect of the harsh sentences and the criminalisation of climate protestors was playing a role. It was in that context in June 2025 we began our tour with the film. The dominating question then was “what now?” and “what next?”. It was a time of pause and reflection for the climate movement.

Then the prosciption of Palestine Action happened and the tone changed to “WTF!?”. The campaigning group Defend Our Juries lept into action and began the Lift The Ban campaign. Now The Line We Crossed had an added layer to it for the film charts the emergence of Defend Our Juries around Trudi Warner’s story. This grassroots campaigning group were suddenly headline news as thousands of peaceful sign-holding protesters were carried off by the police accused of terrorism. Some of those arrested and charged with terrorism were featured in the film and when I watch it now, I do so knowing what is to come. The introduction of terrorism charges into the mix took the repression of our protest rights to a whole new level, and the post-screening discussions moved on accordingly.

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With time passing the “what now?” question dominates less. Grassroots action groups are organising again and are adapting to this new repressive protest environment. The energy has moved to a wider social justice struggle and a recognition that we are in an omni-crisis. Over these last nine months polarisation in Britain has increased further. What I am hearing now in post-screening discussions is “how can we bridge the gap?”, “how can we can we not alienate one another and work together?”.

This is a question I find really hard to answer. The answer most often proferred is of local community building, listening to each other, a move to a more participatory democracy or sortition. But, every day I feel like I am witnessing the hate and vitriol ramp up another notch making it hard to imagine a pathway back to civilised debate and policymaking. I vacillate between hope and despair. I think of the genius of human beings. Looking at the big picture it is, after all, quite remarkable what we have achieved as a species. I think, “surely we can use our ingenuity to fix this?”, and then someone goes and throws another very real bomb into the mix and grasping onto human ingenuity feels like grasping at straws. What I do hold on to though is this: in the UK we are still in a partially functioning democracy which means there is still a window of opportunity for us to change course. Now is definitely not the time to give up in despair. A positive course change is still possible, but it will not happen if we do not fight for it.

I wonder what the historians will make of The Line We Crossed when I, and the people in it, are long gone?

Upcoming in-person screenings of The Line We Crossed

📍 The Quaker Meeting House, London Euston

📅 Monday 23 March, 2pm

🎟️ https://www.tickettailor.com/events/londonquakers/2065583

💭 Q&A with Marcus Decker, Holly Cullen-Davies, Trudi Warner & Liz Smith

📍 Pavilion Cinema, Galashiels

📅 Sunday 29 March, 2pm

🎟️ https://galashiels.merlincinemas.co.uk/film/100050-the-line-we-crossed-plus-qa

💭 Q&A with Trudi Warner & Kate Prasher

📍 Showroom Cinema, Sheffield

📅 7 April, 7:30 pm

🎟️ https://showroomcinema.org.uk/film/perspectives-the-line-we-crossed-director-qa

💭 Q&A with Liz Smith & others TBA

If you can’t make it to a screening, The Line We Crossed is now available to stream.

Raid at NVDA training on 5 March. Image courtesy of Take Back Power.

The first time The Met raided the Quaker building “in living memory”, according to Paul Parker the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, was less than a year ago in March 2025. That day 20 uniformed police officers, some with tasers, broke open the door to the building and arrested a small group of young women who were attending a public meeting organised by Youth Demand. While the Quakers have no direct affiliation with Youth Demand or Take Back Power, nonviolent public protest is embedded in Quaker DNA which explains their willingness to hire out a room for such meetings. Their own press release about yesterday’s incident states:

“Whilst we take the planning of criminal acts very seriously, we believe that this incident is a deliberate targeting of committed young people who want to make our country a more equitable place. This raid is part of a systematic stifling of dissent.

“That this is the second time in a year that the police have raided our meeting house dramatically illuminates the broader trend in the UK of cracking down on those who disagree with the government. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy. It’s a key part of how people make their voices heard between elections.”

What is Non Violent Direct Action (NVDA) training? In 2022 when I began following climate activists for my documentary film The Line We Crossed I was able to observe a day of NVDA training organised by Just Stop Oil. I went along because I was curious. Back then, in 2022, it did not even cross my mind that the police may turn up and start arresting people on a training course. Now it seems de rigueur!

The early roots of NVDA go back as far as Thoreau in the mid 1800s. In his essay Civil Disobedience he argued that citizens should refuse unjust laws. NVDA was also central to Gandhi’s practice of nonviolent resistance, satyagraha, which means “truth-force”. The birth of modern NVDA training came about in the 1940’s and 50’s with the racial equality and pacificist movements. Their training prepared participants for actions such as the Freedom Rides and sit-ins. And then of course, NVDA was widely used in the sixties Civil Rights Movement and it was at the heart of The Greenham Common movement.

A 1982 protest at USAF Greenham Common in 1982 / CC 3.0: Rabbitspawphotos

Today’s NVDA training leans heavily on the training that was developed in 70s and 80s by the peace and anti-nuclear movements. While Just Stop Oil announced in March 2025 that it was stopping direct action, Take Back Power has spawned from its ashes, and so I assume that yesterday’s NVDA training will have been similar to that I witnessed.

Direct action groups normally make it a requirement to do NVDA training before taking part in a direct action. It helps maintain discipline and equips people with skills to remain nonviolent under assault. If a protest is able to remain nonviolent it is also far more likely to garner public support.

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The training involves thoughtful ethical and strategic discussion. It is also practical, with role-playing being a key part. Participants experience what it is like to have someone shout aggressively in their face and to try not to react; what it is like to be pushed and manhandled; and what it is like to “go floppy” and be carried away by five people. There is advice and exercises on de-escalation too. Trainees learn about their legal rights and how to prepare for arrests - a key principle of NVDA is that you should expect to be arrested and not try to avoid it. The training itself can form part of your decision making process as to whether you want to try direct action or not.

If you are attending NVDA training, and you are not the trainer, it implies you have probably not previously taken part in organised NVDA. If you had, you would not need to go on the training. It is likely therefore that some of those arrested yesterday may have been ‘newbies’ to direct action and far from hardened criminals. Arresting people doing NVDA training sounds like a policy of “let’s shut them down before they even start”, a form of state repression that smacks of authoritarian regimes. It is not surprising to hear therefore that, reportedly, one of the arrestees suffered a panic attack so severe an ambulance had to be called. They had gone there expecting to role-play a situation, not have it happen for real.

Attending the training does not mean you will definitely go on to take part in a direct action. At the training I witnessed, there were about 30 people in attendance but I only recall seeing two people from that group go on take part in a Just Stop Oil direct action. What these arrests demonstrate is the extent to which we have fallen into “anticipatory repression”. Harley Wishart talks to this concept eruditely in her recent article. We find ourselves in ‘Minority Report territory’ when UK citizens are arrested for future crimes they may - or may not - commit.

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The Met Police’s justification for yesterday’s arrests were that they had intelligence that Take Back Power were planning a campaign that would have seen them steal from high street supermarkets before redistributing the stolen goods elsewhere. Take Back Power are not denying that. They even said so in their own newsletter:

We are planning to redistribute food from supermarkets, but as they earn billions for their shareholders from the millions going hungry, who are the real thieves?

So here we get to the sticky question. When is it acceptable for the police to intervene? The act of attending NVDA training does not mean you are definitely going to be one of the future shoplifters, the act that is a criminal offence. Attending a training course should not be a criminal act, but these days it feels like the police can just stick the words “conspiracy to …” in front of anything they like to justify raiding meetings and arresting people.

And if you start policing for potential future crimes based on intelligence, what happens if the intelligence is wrong? That was the case at The Coronation. A number of Just Stop Oil protesters were arrested that day for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. After 6 months “under investigation” the charges against them were dropped because of “insufficient evidence.” They did not find evidence of the paint or the lock on devices they thought they might find when they arrested and searched them. All they discovered were the Just Stop Oil t-shirts they were wearing and some orange flags. Let it be noted, it is not yet a crime to wear a t-shirt - unless it has the name of a proscribed organisation on it - or to wave an orange flag.

Screenshot from the film The Line We Crossed.

On the morning of The Coronation in May 2023 a group of people attending NVDA training run by Animal Rising were also arrested on suspicion of causing a public nuisance. The flipboard was out, they were drinking coffee and were in a meeting room in Hackney about 5 miles away from where the royal procession was due to pass. One attendee commented that,

“My intention was to sit in an all-day training course learning about non-violent protests, meet some new people and avoid the coronation.”

It turned out that the farcicle Animal Rising Coronation arrests happened because they were using a room that had previously been used by Just Stop Oil. So much for the intelligence the police had that day.

Civil disobedience is covered by covenants that the UK government themselves are signatories to. In my interview with UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst he is quite clear about where the line is when it comes to civil disobedience.

[…] they have decided to use civil disobedience, which for me responds to four criteria: That people know pretty well they are breaking the law, that means that they are ready to face a tribunal. It should be, second criteria, public - to break the law in public. To protest against a sort of unjust law. It should be also done nonviolently. And the clause of nonviolence for me is very important. The international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, clearly says that the right to protest, covers civil disobedience.

One of the principles of NVDA is that you do it in public and own it. You understand that there will be consequences for your actions. This is why after someone sprays a monument with paint, or throws soup on a painting, you will see them stay at the scene and wait to be arrested. I do not know how, or if, Take Back Power, were planning to let themselves be arrested for the shoplifting but in their first two actions they have stuck to that principle.

Take Back Power activist after throwing apple crumble over a glass case displaying crown jewels.

The ability for the police to contain dissent in advance is possible because of the introduction of new anti-protest laws in recent years. Not only do they give the police more powers to arrest, but those laws are vague and thus open to abuse. The “conspiracy to cause a […]” laws are a case in point. Yesterday’s cohort were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit theft. In The Line We Crossed we witness multiple instances of people arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. By the end of the film, people are being picked up off the street by the police on conspiracy charges left right and centre. It is one thing to be arrested if you are caught red handed with an angle grinder and super glue at an airport perimeter fence (that did happen), but being arrested while out walking in the street, or having lunch with your mother, in anticipation that you might possibly be someone who could be conspiring to commit a future criminal offence to disrupt an airport is more problematic.

If you cannot organise, if you cannot meet with other dissenters to discuss civil disobedience, then a critical component of effective protest action is shut down. If you cannot protest effectively you are living in an authoritarian state and democracy has died.

And besides all that, it feels like a kind of dumb thing to do. If the aim of The Met is to shut down Take Back Power, raiding a Quaker meeting house not once, but twice, seems a foolish move. Raids like that get headlines and give the group oxygen. This article is a case in point: I would not have been writing about them today if the police had not made those arrests. While those arrests may deter some from getting involved in this new movement, I would not be surprised if the publicity, courtesy of The Met, will have the effect of increasing their support.

I would like to acknowledge Dr Lynne Jones’ book, Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency, as a helpful reference in writing this article:

THE LINE WE CROSSED

Screenings of The Line We Crossed with in-person Q&As are continuing in March and April.

On 10th March it is showing at Sands Film Club in Rotherhithe.

On 23rd March (rather appropriately given this article) it is screening at The Quakers Friends Meeting House in Euston.

On 29 March it is in the cinema at Pavilion in Galashiels.

And, hot off the press, we can now announce that it will be showing in the cinema at Showroom in Sheffield on 7 April.

🎟 Tickets and screening details:

The Line We Crossed Screenings: linktr.ee/thelinewecrossed

Want to watch it now? The film is now available to stream.

THE CONSPIRACISTS

The UK cinema tour for my documentary The Conspiracists has begun with a screening at the beautiful Hebden Bridge Picture House — the first stop in what will be a series of screenings and discussions around the country. Thank you to Su O’Brien for her in depth review of that film screening.

We are now preparing for our April London cinema release. I will be joined by author and participant in the film, Noelle Cook, for what is lining up to be a fascinating week-long series of screening and Q&As.

Already confirmed as Q&A hosts are Deborah Frances-White (The Guilty Feminist), Jennifer Nadel (Compassion in Politics) and Marina Cantacuzino (The Forgiveness Project).

🎟 Tickets and screening details:

The Conspiracists Screenings: linktr.ee/theconspiracists

Every ticket sold helps us keep making independent human rights documentaries. If you’re local to a screening, I’d love to meet you there — and if not, sharing the events with others who might be interested really helps.

“What am I going to do with 13 Twixes?” Those were the words of a Lift The Ban supporter who was outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday. She had come prepared with a bag of snacks ready to give out to people as they were released from far flung police stations later that evening. Those who were sitting with signs saying “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, were expecting to be arrested if the outcome of Friday’s judicial review was that the proscription of Palestine Action had been lawful. By 10 a.m. a crowd had gathered outside flanked by a large number of tripods, microphones and cameras. Soon after, the news started to ripple through the crowd: the judges had ruled the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful and were proposing “to make an order quashing the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action.” This was a crowd of people so used to feeling let down by the courts and who had little or no faith left in the UK justice system that they seemed unsure what to do with themselves. There was a collective sinking in moment, the cheering began and the smiles started to beam across a lot of very relieved faces.

The presence of the media at Palestine Action related cases has been underwhelming to say the least, but on Friday I couldn’t get my camera anywhere near the spokespeople as they were crowded out by cameras and reporters. I didn’t mind, I knew that there would be plenty of other outlets where people could watch those speeches from a better vantage point than I had. I have chosen instead to make the third film in what has now become my “Requiem For Protest” series. It has become a triptych of sorts as each film, scored by Kim Halliday, presents a progression of this story. This third film has changed from being a requiem to a fugue. Somehow a fugue seems appropriate: separate to its musical meaning it can also be defined as ‘a fleeting state’. It seems appropriate because I fear the decision made by the judges may itself be fleeting, but more on that later. This third film focuses on the joy and the relief of all those who have risked so much to fight this ban. This is a moment to applaud the sheer determination and the bravery of thousands of people who took the decision to sit quietly holding a sign that would lead them to a terrorism charge. This is a day to applaud their persistence, for they did not give up.

One of the proposed amendments to UK protest laws going through parliament at the moment is a ban on cumulative protests. On Friday there were many faces I’ve come to recognise over the months I’ve been covering this story. They kept coming out in a very ‘cumulative’ way. The Lift The Ban protest campaign has been effective, in part, because it was cumulative. If the amendment passes we will lose another crucial tactic that makes peaceful protest effective. Going on an organised march just one time is unlikely to effect change. Just ask the 1 million + somepeople in the UK who marched together in 2003 to try and stop the UK invading Iraq.

The Judgment

It has been reported that £700,000 (of our money) was spent by the government in their defence of the judicial review, and over £10 million policing the ban. That they are now appealing the decision on the surface seems an irresponsible waste of yet more money. But take a closer look at the judgment. I have read through it several times now and the grounds on which they found it unlawful are obscure. Even the judges themselves say its conclusion on the point that the Home Secretary did not follow her own procedure ‘may appear to rest on a very narrow basis’. Did they deliberately choose this narrow path so that it would fail at appeal? Craig Murray certainly thinks so. There are already a wealth of blogs from those in the legal profession, including those who come over as less aligned with the cause than Murray, who are in agreement with him that the ruling is flimsy. The illogical decision that the proscription should continue pending appeal, despite it being ruled unlawful, gives some credence to this theory.

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The second ground on which the proscription was found to be unlawful was its interference with freedom of speech and assembly. The Lift The Ban campaign clearly demonstrated that. By proscribing, instead of relying on existing adequate criminal laws to prosecute offenders, a whole cohort of peaceful protesters became swept up in this. The police were obliged to arrest them for “showing support for a proscribed organisation”. The judiciary were then obliged to process them through our courts, courts that are already bursting at the seams. The Lift The Ban campaign very cleverly showed up the absurdity of the proscription as thousands of peaceful people, that no one in their right mind could think were dangerous, were arrested and dragged off the streets for the crime of sitting quietly holding a sign. The absurdity continued in the court room as I recounted in my recent article Theatre of the Absurd.

One of the frustrations with the legal system is how easily it can become divorced from what really is at stake here. As the legal community now pour over the technicalities and prepare their arguments so that the next chapter in this saga can play out, the reason that Palestine Action exists in the first place is not taken into consideration. If the UK government stopped supporting a genocide then people would not feel they have to protest in this way. It is not controversial to call it a genocide, the UN have called it that themselves, so why is the British government so unwilling to uphold human rights and do the right thing and stop being part of the supply chain aiding those perpetrating the genocide? That is what Palestine Action supporters want to stop, and even if you disapprove of their tactics, it is a valid wish, a wish driven by compassion for human beings who are being slaughtered. Where is the compassion in all this? There are many compassionate people in the UK, the Lift The Ban sign holders are a good example of that, but the actions - and inaction - of those in power are failing us miserably on that count.

What next for the sign holders?

After many of the press had peeled off to go and file their reports the rain started to fall. Nevertheless a number of Lift The Ban protesters remained stubbornly sat with their signs. As the proscription was still in place, should the police arrest them? The police had a dilemma. The officer they spoke to could not confirm to them whether they were to be arrested or not. Eventually he walked away saying he was off to get a cup of tea. No one was arrested for holding a sign showing support for a proscribed organisation that day, but later on The Met released a statement saying,

“officers will continue to identify offences where support for Palestine Action is being expressed, but they will focus on gathering evidence of those offences and the people involved to provide opportunities for enforcement at a later date, rather than making arrests at the time.”

The plea hearings due to continue on the following Monday and Tuesday were subsequently postponed. There will be no theatre of the absurd at Westminster Magistrates court for a while at least.

There must have been a lot of internal relief for those with terrorism charges that they can now see a pathway to a future where their charges may get lifted, but this story is far from over. I look forward to the day when the only thing we have to worry about is what to do with 13 unrequired Twixes.

Here are the links to :

REQUIEM FOR PROTEST I and REQUIEM FOR PROTEST II

My feature film, The Line We Crossed, that led me into covering protest rights in the first place is now available to stream.

We are also continuing cinema and community screenings of The Line We Crossed with Q&As, which I can highly recommend. There will be screenings in March in Rotherhithe, London Euston and Galashiels. Marcus Decker, Holly Cullen-Davies, Trudi Warner and I are among the Q&A panelists at some of those screenings.

This weekend I am heading to Hebden Bridge for the first UK Cinema screening of my latest feature film The Conspiracists (21 February). Other screenings are being added all the time and tickets have gone on sale to the public today for the screening at Curzon Soho (April 22). That screening will be followed by a Q&A hosted by Deborah Frances-White (The Guilty Feminist) with Noelle Cook and I. Tickets are also now available for the screenings at The Lexi (April 23) and Act One Cinema (April 26). Both of those showings will be followed by a Q&A with Noelle Cook and I.

In the film I spend a week on a road trip across America with a self-styled conspiracy theorist called Yvonne. At one point on the journey she explains “adrenachrome” to me.

YVONNE: So adrenachrome is taken from our blood. And the younger and the more pure blood like children, the more potent it is. So when you’re terrified, your adrenaline glands pump adrenaline into your blood, and they drink the blood of terrified people. And that is what keeps them younger. And it also...

LIZ: Wait, who drinks the blood of terrified people?

YVONNE: These elite pedophiles. This is what human trafficking is all about.

Sounds absurd, right? And it is, except … what the Epstein files reveal is an elite set of powerful people who did not think there was anything wrong with cavorting around with a notorious child sex offender and a human trafficker. The files reveal an intricate web of relationships that stretch across MAGA and the US far right, the Silicon Valley tech bros and beyond into the European far right and bad actors in Russia. Its web is not limited to the political, financial and tech elite, but includes the academic elite too. None of these people can use the excuse that they did not know Epstein was a sexual predator because he was convicted and went to prison for “procuring a person under age for prostitution” in 2008. As more and more files have been released, what has become apparent is the extent to which so many of the rich and powerful were in his orbit. What is so disturbing is the extent to which they did not care, and were just willing to look the other away. It is the same attitude that is so well portrayed in Sarah Wynn-Williams book Careless People. It was not surprising to discover that the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel were among those who continued relationships with Epstein, but Noam Chomsky? That’s when you realise quite how entrenched this is. Reading through the most recent trove of emails, the “frat boy” casual use of language and the misogyny is gross. It reads as nauseating arrogance from people who believe they are above the law. Even if those who continued their relationships with Epstein had no direct involvement in the sexual abuse or trafficking of women, the fact that they continued to play ‘best buddies’ with him in a bid to advance themselves or simply for a kick, makes them complicit. The wide use of derogatory and objectifying language and their attitudes towards women who are reduced to vessels, or simply “p” or “pussy”, downplays the horror of what Epstein was involved in. In doing that they normalised it and gave it a sheen of acceptability.

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To add to the ‘mind-bending-ness’ of watching the film in this context, is the emergence of Epstein’s role in trying to influence the right-wing conspiracy theory machine. Epstein spotted early on the potential of platforms like 4Chan to be used to manipulate people. There is a thread that suggests he may have intentionally influenced the founder of 4Chan, Christopher Poole, who the day after they met reintroduced a board that he had previously shut down because it had become a breeding ground of hate. 4Chan fostered the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It now feels like a insidious strategy used by Epstein to hide in plain sight. I covered Pizzagate in my film I Am Gen Z, and the clip below explains it.

I Am Gen Z, made in 2019/2020, is also a different watch now in 2026. Statements that seemed outlandish when viewed on its release in 2021, today seem remarkably prescient. Pizzagate has been thoroughly debunked but the real world consequences of that conspiracy theory came into stark reality when a man, convinced of its veracity, went to the pizza parlour in question armed with a gun with intent to kill.

Unsurprisingly Pizzagate came up during my road trip in The Conspiracists too:

LIZ: Is this is all like the Pizzagate thing?

TARA: Yeah. Have you ever heard of QAnon?

LIZ: Yeah yeah, I’ve heard of that but I thought Pizzagate was just rubbish.

YVONNE: No. And it’s never been debunked.

LIZ: Oh really?

YVONNE: There’s a video that proves it’s never been debunked. So Pizzagate is actually very, very real and there’s more than enough evidence. And I can give you some videos to watch that will....

TARA: What always confused me about Pizzagate it talked about a basement and there’s no basement in that particular pizza place. I had been there a long time ago, so I always wondering, so what do you think that means?

YVONNE: I think there is, probably just don’t know that unless you’re in on it.

TARA: OK

YVONNE: you probably... They have a kill room in there.

The number of bizarre references to pizza in the Epstein emails suggests that the term may sometimes have been used among his pals to mean something other than a mundane desire to eat pizza.

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One of the moments that always gets a laugh in the film is when Tammy tells me that the Queen is a reptile and she trafficked children in Canada. The children disappeared and she thought that the Queen probably ate them. It is funny because it is absurd, but as more and more revelations come out about the Queen’s son’s relationship with Epstein, the harder it becomes to laugh at it. The problem with conspiracy theories is they often have a grain of truth. That grain of truth gets warped into nonsense, but Tammy was a little too uncomfortably close to home on that one, even in all its absurdity.

So what are Yvonne and the MAGA followers making of the Epstein files? There is one uncomfortable and irreconcilable truth: their saviour Donald Trump is implicated too. For them, Trump is a “white hat”. He is working behind the scenes to reveal the truth about all of these hidden systems. The MAGA diehards are generally being quite quiet about this, although, in a curious twist, one of MAGA’s biggest proponents, Marjorie Taylor Green, has been vocal about it, and now sees MAGA and Trump as one big lie. I have not had an opportunity to ask Yvonne if her view on Trump has changed, but given that she received a pardon from him I think it is unlikely she is going to remain anything but his closest disciple. On social media at least, Yvonne hasn’t been vocal about it. One of her more recent posts relating to Epstein chooses instead to focus on her belief that Joe Biden was a clone:

Another aspect of the Epstein files that is bending my mind is the strange way that it unites the right with the left. Those on the left, the ones that MAGA ideologues call “the loony left”, also see themselves in a fight against a powerful elite who are out to serve themselves, and who care not a jot about the little people. What the Epstein files reveal is just more and more evidence of a billionaire class acting with impunity. According to the conspiracy theorists in my film, the world is made up of paedophiles. With the release of the Epstein files it is feeling hard to argue with them. They may have missed the mark when it came to naming them correctly, but that we live in a paedophilic culture is becoming clearer and clearer with every one of the Epstein files that are released.

In other news,

The UK cinema release of The Conspiracists begins on 21 February with a screening at Hebden Bridge Picture House. I’ll be there for a Q&A hosted by Scott Archer Patient.

For a London cinema screening block in April I am excited to announce that Noelle Cook, my compatriot on the road trip in the film, will be coming over from the US to join me for the Q&As. Noelle is the author of the book The Conspiracists - Women, Extremism and the Lure of Belonging that accompanies the film. We have screenings already confirmed at Curzon Soho, The Lexi and Act One. More dates are being added all the time, so do check back if you can’t find a screening in your local area or sign up to our newsletter for updates.

In person screenings with Q&As of The Line We Crossed are continuing too. I’ll be joined by Marcus Decker and Phil Laurie for a Q&A following a screening at The Sands Film Club in Rotherhithe on 10 March. I am delighted to announce that the film is coming the Scottish borders and will be showing in Galashiels at Pavilion Cinema on 29th March. Trudi Warner and local activists Kate Prasher will be there for the Q&A.

The Line We Crossed is now available to stream! Thank you to everyone for sharing this on newsletters and within their communities, it is entirely thanks to word-of-mouth that people get to hear about my work. Please keep sharing!

I am continuing to work on completing the film The Humanitarians and was pleased to be able to show a short preview clip of that work with an audience last week prior to the screening of The Conpsiracists organised by the Manchester Quakers and at a talk the following day with sixth form students at Billericay School. This is a challenging film to make on so many levels and I am very grateful to everyone who is supporting me in this endeavour.

More recently I have begun work on a new feature documentary about “the anti-gender movement”. Today I am publishing the full interview that I filmed with Neil Datta in conversation with Deborah Frances-White. If you don’t know much about the anti-gender movement, I would highly recommend watching it.

Currently, every Monday and Tuesday 60 people - 30 per day - who have been charged under section 13 of the Terrorism Act for taking part in the Lift The Ban campaign and “displaying a placard bearing the words Palestine Action” are in court for their plea hearings. I quoted there the words of the clerk whose job it is to repetitively shout out that same charge for every defendant. Let’s do the maths: there have been over 2,700 arrests of people who have taken part in the Lift The Ban campaign to date. Therefore, it is going to take 90 court days just to get through their plea hearings. That is if every single one of them is charged, some of the Lift The Ban sitters are still waiting for their charge letter to drop through the door. At the plea hearing - they are all pleading not guilty - each defendant is set a trial date. They will be tried in batches of five and each trial is estimated to take a day. By my maths, that’s a further 540 court days. And this in the context of our courts bursting at the seams, and justified outrage at how long it is taking for cases to come to trial. This at a time when the UK government is reviewing what the hell to do about the fact that their courts are overloaded, including proposing limiting jury trial a legal tradition that dates back to the 12th Century.

You may have noted I used the term “shouted” when referring to the clerk of the court. She had to shout because those appearing via video link often find it hard to hear what is being said. You know when you watch your parent or grand parent (depending on your age) holding Facetime to their ear? Yes, imagine that. Except this isn’t a Facetime chat about the family cat and the weather, this is someone who could be sent to prison for their actions and could have a terrorism offence permanently attached to their name. It’s not just the video link attendees who struggle to hear but the defendants in court who are in the dock. When they shuffle in they are ceremoniously locked inside a glass booth with eight thin slits through which the sound is meant to travel. Add to that the fact that many of the participants in the ‘Lift The Ban’ campaign are elderly and often hard of hearing. It boggles my mind that somewhere as critical as a courtroom has been designed in such a way to make it difficult for people to hear. On one occasion the District Judge asked a defendant who was clearly struggling to hear, “would it be better for you to be outside the dock to hear us?”, a somewhat pointless question given he couldn’t hear her. I am pleased to say he was subsequently brought outside into the main court for his plea though.

You are probably now starting to get the picture of who these alleged terrorists are. They present no threat of physical danger to anyone, but there is nevertheless a performative locking of the door when they are in the dock. Now I want you to imagine the back row of the court room. Sat there were five officials in plain clothes. I was told they were counter-terrorism police. Let’s do some fun “back of a fag packet” calculations. Let’s say they were of junior rank - unlikely as some of them looked too old for that. A London starting salary is around £42k. When you add hidden costs such as NICs, pensions etc, an employee costs about 1.75 their salary, which brings that salary cost to £73.5k per officer. So that was an annual salary bill of £367,500 sitting right there in front of me. That’s £1,655 for that day alone and we potentially have 90+ days of this to get through so that’s a ‘back of a fag packet’ cost of £148,950 gone from the public purse just for the plea hearings charade. That’s before we even get to the trials or think about the cost of the Judge, the lawyers for The Crown Prosecution Service and all the assistants required to run a court including the rather officious woman who would rap her painted nails, covered by a pair of disposable polythene gloves, on the glass window of the public gallery to tell us off for whispering and sniggering. We felt like kids in the back of the school bus.

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And then there were the little moments of dissent that played into this theatre of the absurd. When asked to plea, some of the defendants felt the need to make a statement about “our corrupt government who have created this pantomine” or to read out the names of children killed in Gaza or to refuse to enter a plea while a judicial review of the legality of the proscription of Palestine Action was still ongoing. One man in the dock began to read a statement to which the headmistress - the District Judge - shouted over him telling him to stop. When he persisted she ordered him to be removed from the court. This involved her retiring to her chamber while the court staff fumbled with the door lock of the dock in order to remove the elderly man while hearty applause rang out from the public gallery. Only when the kids had calmed down again did the headmistress come back in to continue with the show.

I cannot know what the District Judge, the counter-terrorism police or the court staff all thought of the whole charade. Maybe the counter-terror police were enjoying having a bit of mindless downtime but I doubt they joined the police force with that in mind. The only person who showed any enthusiasm for their job was the polythene gloved, nail rapping security officer.

The District Judge, the CPS lawyers, the security and police officers are just doing their jobs and I am not mocking them for that. What is absurd is that we’ve gone and gotten ourselves into this situation where we are acting out this pointless process. A chain of events has been set into play by a government heavily influenced by lobbyists, idealogues and ‘junk tanks’ who are trying to stifle dissent because dissent gets in the way of them making enormous amounts of money through selling weaponry and oil; because dissent calls out uncomfortable truths that those in power would like to ignore.

There were already sufficient criminal laws in place to punish people for direct action protest that caused damage to property. In fact, since the introduction of the 2022 Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act and the anti-protest laws that followed in quick succession, there are plenty of ways of charging and criminalising people for protest action. Palestine Action did not need to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation in order for those involved to face serious consequences for their actions. Had it not been proscribed, the Lift The Ban campaign would never have come about. And even in the scenario of the Lift The Ban campaign taking place, had the policymakers taken a pragmatic look at the risk of these quiet placard holders to society and decided to leave them sitting there, their campaign would not have received the exposure it has, it is unlikely it would have grown to be a movement of thousands, and there would not now be an additional 2,700 people going through our court system that is bursting at the seams.

You no longer need to go to the theatre to watch an absurdist piece of theatre, just head over to Westminster Magistrates Court on a Monday or Tuesday and you can watch it for free on the tax payers dime.

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In other news,

My feature film The Line We Crossed that charts the unraveling of protest rights in the UK and documents the emergence of Defend Our Juries, the campaigning group behind the Lift The Ban campaign, is now available to stream. In addition, screenings and Q&As of The Line We Crossed are continuing in 2026. I will be in Cambridge this Thursday 22 January for a screening and Q&A hosted by the Cambridge Human Rights Law Society. Joining me for the Q&A are featured participants in the film Dr Clive Dolphin and Sam Griffiths.

The release of our feature film “The Conspiracists” in UK cinemas and community centres is soon to start. I’ll be in Manchester on 1 February for a screening and Q&A hosted by The Quakers at the Friends’ Meeting House.

I have been invited to talk to sixth formers at a school on 2nd February about my work as a human rights documentary filmmaker and some of the themes covered in my films. This is the generation who are going to be most affected by these issues and I am keen engage with them. If this is something you think may be of interest to a school you have connections with please reach out.

I am continuing to work on our next feature film The Humanitarians. I began filming for it in 2022 and hope to complete it this year. It is about the right to asylum and the rise in anti-immigration sentiment. It is an investigative film that digs deep into this gnarly, complex issue that is driving us apart. I remain incredibly grateful to all the people in my orbit who are supporting me to get this film made.

I’ve also now begun to work on a new film project investigating the growing anti-rights movement in the UK. I expect this to be a 2 year journey of discovery and hope to release the film in 2028.

To keep up to date with screenings, events and progress on these projects I recommend signing up to the Page75 Productions newsletter.

If you have yet to watch Part I of REQUIEM FOR PROTEST I would encourage you to watch that too. This showed an earlier ‘Lift The Ban’ protest that took place in Trafalgar Square. The footage I filmed of that action is placed in the context of The Terrorism Act 2000 when the definition of terrorism was changed. Despite warnings at the time that The Terrorism Act could be abused to include domestic direct-action protest groups, it was nevertheless passed into law. Twenty five years later those warnings echo loudly in our heads as Palestine Action became the first ever domestic direct action protest group to be proscribed.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, while I was filming The Line We Crossed I was also documenting the emergence of Defend Our Juries, the campaigning group behind these ‘Lift The Ban’ actions. As featured in the film, in 2023 a judge ordered the arrest of Trudi Warner for contempt of court for silently holding a banner on the street outside the court informing people that they have the right to acquit people on their conscience. This right is correct in law and can even be found written on a plaque displayed inside The Old Bailey. Her arrest sparked outrage and a grassroots campaigning group, Defend Our Juries, came into existence around her case. It took over a year before Trudi Warner was cleared of those charges at a hearing at The Royal Courts of Justice. The judge said in his comments “It is fanciful to suggest that Ms. Warner’s behaviour falls into this category of contempt”. Juries are today under threat but, for now at least, if you ever find yourself on jury duty you can thank Trudi, her legal team and the campaigning group Defend Our Juries who rose up in solidarity with her, that this right has been upheld and remains available to you.

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On completing The Line We Crossed, a film that shows first hand the erosion of our protest rights through the experiences of climate activists, I hadn’t planned to continue documenting this. I had naively thought that when the new government came into power that the repression of our protest rights would stop. That has not been the case and I feel compelled to continue telling this story through these shorts, podcasts and articles. As well as the two Requiem For Protest films I have recorded a podcast episode with Jonathon Porritt where, in the second half, he talks about his own arrest for taking part in ‘Lift The Ban’. I have recently written an article about the personal impact of being arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act with accounts from two participants in earlier ‘Lift The Ban’ protests.

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If you are able to support me in continuing to document this issue, a donation to Page75 Productions would be a great help! You can also help by sharing my work. I rely heavily on word-of-mouth to get my work seen because, it may not surprise you to hear, getting mainstream distribution for ‘hot potato’ issues like this is tricky.

This week there is a judicial review taking place at the High Court to give a judgment on whether the proscription of Palestine Action was legal or not. The outcome of that judgement will have an impact on the thousands of people who in recent months have been arrested and charged for showing support for Palestine Action by holding banners in a public space displaying the words, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

Reportedly more than 2100 people had been arrested under section 13 of the act for taking part in the peaceful “Lift The Ban” action. That number will have increased in recent days as more actions have taken place. If found guilty, the maximum penalty is a 6 month prison sentence. They may just receive a fine. They would always have a criminal record for a terrorism offence. There has been a lot of reporting about these arrests but little about what it has meant for the people in the weeks and months after their arrests, so that is the topic I have chosen for this week’s Substack. For this article I am solely focusing on the arrests under Section 13. For those arrested under section 12, and for the Filton 24 who were arrested for taking direct action, it is a different story.

The very first set of people arrested for the “Lift The Ban” action under Section 13 were initially given harsh bail conditions including “sleep at home” orders and bans from entering parts of the country. Those restrictions have since been eased. Broadly speaking, all the “Lift The Ban” Section 13 arrestees are allowed to go about their day to day unhindered while they await their trials. Sounds reasonable given that clearly none of these people are a real and present danger to society. But, there are nevertheless some insidious ramifications lurking beneath.

I’ve spoken to two people who have already experienced real world consequences for their dissent. My first conversation was with a woman whose name I will change to Heather to protect her daughter’s identity. Heather herself has no issue in owning her open act of dissent and being named for it, but there could be unintended consequences for her daughter. This was not the first time Heather had been arrested for nonviolent protest action. At her plea hearing for her arrest under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act she pled not guilty and told the judge “I am not a terrorist.” Her court date was set for May 2026. The principle of being innocent until proven guilty is a concept all UK citizens have grown up with, and so Heather thought nothing more of traveling around freely while awaiting trial. Her daughter, married to an American, lives in the US and Heather and her partner had booked a trip to visit her and a friend there who was gravely unwell. They were traveling via Iceland and so needed to check in on two planes. Heather’s partner had also taken part in the “Lift The Ban” actions but had not, at that point, been formally charged. They had followed advice from her daughter to take a burner phone with them because of well publicised stories of people being stopped at the US border and detained or denied entry because of information found on their phones that the Trump regime would disapprove of. They cruised through check-in at the airport in the UK and made it to Iceland, but things fell apart when they tried to board the plane in Iceland. Heather’s ESTA visa had been revoked by the US government. Her partner could fly, but not her. It was in this moment that the significance of having a terrorism charge sunk in. She told me she felt shocked and dazed when it happened. There were tears. The trip was abandoned and they both knew it was unlikely they would ever see their sick friend again. Heather has since told me that their friend has now passed away. I asked Heather, if she could turn back the clock, would she do the action again? Her answer came after a long thoughtful pause. Probably not. Her daughter had always been very supportive of her activism but had asked her not to cross a line which would mean she could no longer visit her. When she had to phone her daughter to tell her that the line she promised she wouldn’t cross had been crossed, you can imagine the heartbreak. Even if the judge rules the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful at the upcoming judicial review, will the red flag against her name remain on record? Will she ever be able to get an ESTA visa again? A European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is being introduced for travel from the UK to Europe in 2026, will it operate like an ESTA and also end up preventing “Lift The Ban” action takers from traveling outside our little island?

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I also spoke to Ruth who too had been charged for taking part in a “Lift The Ban” action. She had promised to take her children, young adults, on a holiday to Biarritz in South West France. She had decided to go by coach to Paris and take the train on from there to the South. She was feeling quite pleased with herself and laughs when she tells me how she boasted to her friends about how cheap the coach tickets were. When the family arrived at the ferry terminal and got off the coach she spotted a rubbish bin. Remembering she had left a banana skin under her seat she got back onto the coach to retrieve it with the intention of throwing it away. The border guards who had been standing near said bin had spotted her and thought her behaviour suspicious — when they saw her getting back onto the coach they thought she was trying to avoid them. They pulled her aside and checked her records. They found the terrorism charge. With a terrorism charge you are not allowed to do a “no comment” interview. They can also compel you to hand over your mobile phone and give them the access code. If you don’t, then you risk arrest and detention. The same happened to Tommy Robinson when he aroused suspicion traveling through the border at the Channel Tunnel. Let it be noted that the similarities between Tommy Robinson and Ruth end there! Unlike Robinson, Ruth did give them her access code, something she feels annoyed about now. Had she not she would have been arrested and the situation would have spiraled. While she was being interviewed for three hours her children were taken to a family room, and she made a point of telling me that the border guards treated them well. They were laughing with them, including some “oh mum!” jokes. The border guards were looking for evidence of drugs and bombs, they didn’t care about Ruth’s protest charges. When they found nothing of concern she was released but by then the coach had long since departed and they had to find their way back to London. The next day Ruth had to shell out a fortune for three last minute Eurostar tickets to get her and her daughters to Paris in time for the train to Biarritz. As she went through customs at the Eurostar terminal Ruth was careful not to pick up any banana skins. She was not stopped and they made their train and the holiday went ahead as planned but it was a sobering and expensive experience.

I asked Ruth if she regretted her decision to take part in the “Lift The Ban” action and she was quite clear in her mind that she did not. “When you are protesting against ecocide and genocide why shouldn’t it involve some form of sacrifice?” she told me. She referenced her faith and as a person of faith the concept of sacrifice is one that sits comfortably with her. She could also understand why Heather had answered in the opposite, her circumstances were different.

Ruth’s response made me think about what we are willing to sacrifice to stand up to injustice and to the support causes we believe in. There is a silent majority of people who want our governments to take more climate action, there is a silent majority of people who are horrified by the genocide in Gaza, there is a silent majority of people who want to defend our democratic rights, but the people who are willing to stick their necks out and make a significant sacrifice by taking action, are but a few. Whether the civil rights movement, the suffragettes, the anti-apartheid movement, the gay liberation front, Gandhi’s Salt March, the Resistance in WW2, (and the list goes on), throughout history there have been people willing to stick their necks out for all of us and make great sacrifices. They are brave people. They are special people. They are ordinary, but extraordinary people. Without them we would not have the rights we have today.

In October there was a hearing for the first 28 people arrested with Judge Snow in the chair. They all pleaded not guilty. At that hearing Judge Snow devised a plan for hearing these cases and determined that they will be tried in batches of five at the rate of ten people a day. That means each of the accused will be given 36 minutes to defend themselves, that includes the time spent by the prosecution and the defence to cross examine them. One of the defendants, Deborah Wilde, told the court: “I don’t think I can get a fair trial on the [time] limit that you have allocated to me. I would like to seek leave to appeal.” Snow told her that this would not be legally possible. “I’m satisfied that the time is sufficient,” he said. “I’m not allowing more time for the trial. Your only remedy is the High Court.” Taking this to the High Court is beyond most ordinary people’s means.

I wondered if there could be one mass hearing, a kind of “class action” case, but this is not possible because of an important principle in law that every case must be heard individually. The same was true of the Post Office scandal cases. It took an act of parliament to allow for the mass quashing of those convictions. So the “Lift The Ban” defendants will have just 36 minutes in front of this judge and they will not be able to be tried by a jury of their peers. Jury trial would have opened up the possibility of an acquittal on the basis of conscience. When Julian Assange found himself in front of Judge Snow it did not end well. Judge Snow is quoted in the media for calling him a narcissist. “His assertion that he has not had a fair hearing is laughable. And his behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.” We cannot predict how he will rule in these cases but if his comments about Assange are anything to go by, it does not bode well for them.

There is a lot in the balance at the judicial review this week. There will no doubt be many more legal machinations that follow the outcome. Meanwhile thousands of protesters must sit with the uncertainty of their terrorism charges hanging over them. They all took part in the action knowing that there could be consequences, but it does not mean that they will be enjoying having this hanging over their heads.

By way of an update on my feature film work, I am coming to the end of a 5 month UK tour with screenings of The Line We Crossed. In that time, there have been more than 70 screenings and 90% of them have been accompanied by Q&As. I am eternally grateful to the participants in the film who have so generously given up their time to take part in those Q&As both with and without me. There are more screenings in the pipeline and they will resume in 2026. We are now planning the streaming release of the film and would encourage anyone who wants to be kept up to date with release dates and new screenings to sign up to our newsletter.

2026 will see the UK release of our film The Conspiracists. The film has been screening in the US during 2025 and last week was shown at The Society for Visual Anthropoligy Film and Media Festival in New Orleans. Author and participant in the film, Noelle Cook, was able to attend the festival to represent the film and she reported back a lot of interest in it. As MAGA ideology is starting to spread into the UK, 2026 feels like the right time to release the film in the UK.

I am back out in the field filming for our documentary with the working title “The Humanitarians”. It is an investigative film that digs deep into the gnarly and complex issue of asylum and immigration that is driving us apart. I began filming it in September 2022 and continued to film throughout 2023. Returning to the field to film updates, what is startling is how much more difficult it has become to film for this documentary. That is because of the ratcheting up in the level of hostility towards not only asylum seekers, but also humanitarian groups trying to support them. If you would like to support this film donations to Page75 Productions are most gratefully received.

Finally, If you have not yet had an opportunity to listen to my podcast with Jonathon Porritt I would encourage you to do so. This was the first podcast I have produced on the theme of democractic backsliding, the subject area of my films. It was an enjoyable experience recording it and the encouraging feedback has inspired me to do some more in the future.

They had not damaged anything. The action had been carefully planned not to cause damage. They are environmentalists after all. The orange powder they threw at the ancient monolith was made of cornstarch and food dye and it was cleaned off the same day. The monument remained open to the public. Those stones have been there for 5000 years and have weathered far more than a bit of cornstarch.

IMAGE: Just Stop Oil

The headline in the Daily Mail at the time was “Stonehenge expert fears rare lichen in rock could be irreparably damaged after Just Stop Oil paint attack as JK Rowling leads social media mockery of eco zealots.”

Social media went mad citing the danger to lichens. I suspect many of their detractors barely knew what lichen was, let alone had ever cared about it before they jumped on the toxic rhetoric spouted by The Daily Mail. Chemicals were not needed to remove the cornstarch, as a Reuters fact check article confirms and shows one such social media post where its author had signed it off with the words “enjoy prison, tossers”. Cornstarch is an organic compound often used in the food we eat, tosser.

For the last two weeks three Just Stop Oil campaigners have been on trial in Salisbury for that action. Rather symbolically it was around the corner from the home of the Magna Carta which was the first step towards establishing the rule of law in our country. Today, the jury gave a unanimous not guilty verdict.

During the trial the defendents were allowed to talk about the climate crisis and why they took action. If this sounds obvious to you that they should have been allowed to do that, then I am sorry to burst your bubble and I recommend you watch my film The Line We Crossed. I was compelled to start making that documentary when I heard that climate campaigners who had taken direct action were being told they could not talk about the climate crisis in court. The defence was able to cite the Penn-Mead trial in 1670, the outcome of which led to the right that still exists today for juries to acquit on their conscience. They were able to place the case in the context of current news headlines that include the worst ever hurricane to hit Jamaica, massacres in Sudan and the latest reports coming out of the number of deaths from rising heat.

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So often in law courts we are buffeted with impenetrable legalese and technicalities but sometimes it needs poetry to cut through.

I heard it reported that the first two stanzas of The Goose and The Common Poem were read.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

So often I am reporting on the plight of climate campaigners who have been given harsh prison sentences, placed on remand, given draconian bail conditions or are being silenced by a litany of anti-protest laws that continue to be rolled out. Today I am happy to report good news. Today, we saw the power of the jury. Today we saw how important it is to be able to be judged by your peers. (Jury trials continue to be under threat.) Today we saw the actions of protesters judged in the wider picture of what is happening in the world. Today we saw a win over the toxic press and social media coverage that opted to revel in demonising climate campaigners rather than questioning why they had had to take this direct protest action in the first place.

In psychology the tendency to ignore disconfirmatory evidence is known as ‘disconfirmation bias’, where people favour information that supports their existing beliefs and dismiss information that contradicts them. Conspiracy theories protect our cherished beliefs by ignoring disconfirmatory evidence. When I was with the MAGA women they were horrified when I told them I had had the Covid vaccine. They showed me pity for my naivety. But, how come I was still alive and in good health? I asked. This fact did not hold them back. I had probably been given the saline version, I was told. They couldn’t give the real version to everyone because then ‘they’ - the elite cabal - would have killed all the workers. They still needed some workers after all. But I had had it three times, had I been given the saline version three times? Well, maybe I was just good at detoxing, came the retort. Once we are wedded to a belief, no evidence to the contrary seems able to persuade us differently. That I was there, alive and well, despite having had three doses of the vaccine, was not sufficient cause for them to question their belief that the Covid vaccine was anything but a nefarious plot designed to control and kill us. As we navigate living in today’s post-truth world we all need to be wise to the trap of disconfirmation bias.

Here is a short preview clip from The Conspiracists of my conversation about the Covid vaccine.

Anti-vaccine views are now on the rise in Britain. At the recent Reform party conference Aseem Malhotra was given a slot on the main stage - the main stage, not a side fringe event. His speech was entitled, “Make Britain Healthy Again”, a direct reference to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), Robert F Kennedy’s campaign slogan. Previously, Malhotra had written a paper calling for a moritorium on Covid MRNA vaccines. In his Reform party conference speech he talks of the censorship from the mainstream press who would not report on his paper and goes on to thank GB News for standing up for free speech as the only broadcaster who would air his views. He recounts that after that GB News interview Robert F Kennedy Jr called him to thank him and since then has “been in constant communication with him.” The irony is not lost on me that at the commencement of Malhotra’s speech he states, “barriers to the truth are often more psychological than they are intellectual”. Yes, that is similar to the statement I wrote at the top of this article about disconfirmatory bias. There are other sections of his speech I agree with in essence, such as the dangerous influence of lobby groups. But that is where our shared views end. What conspiracy theorists are masters at is taking a shred of truth and then spinning them into something that fits their ideology, however far fetched. His thesis is that “evidence based medicine has become an illusion”, that there is “an epidemic of misinformed doctors” and - to a big round of applause - he announced “that the general population don’t know what’s happening and they don’t even know that they don’t know’. Were they applauding his announcement that they, along with the rest of the population, are ignorant? Or did the people in that audience see themselves as apart from the general population? There were so many elements of his speech that sounded like the conspiracy theories I heard on my trip with the MAGA women. He called the Covid MRNA vaccine “gene therapy”. He tells his confirmatory audience that “it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccine has been a significant factor in the cancer of members of the royal family”. The royal family popped up regularly in many of the conspiracy theories the MAGA women shared with me. Molhatra also went on to say that “the Covid MRNA jabs have likely killed or seriously harmed millions of people across the world”. This conspiracy theory has been debunked time and time again, and in fact the opposite can be said to be true: there is evidence that it saved upward of 14 million lives and research by the World Health Organization puts the number of lives saved in the UK at 475,000 with many more kept out of hospital or off a ventilator. Like the conspiracy theorists I spent time with, Malhotra had an answer to that too. He tells us in his speech that the World Health Organisation “has been captured by Bill Gates”, and thus cannot be trusted. These conspiracy theories are quite literally, dangerous. Measles is on the rise in the UK. Measles can cause life long disabilities and even death. But it feels like scientific fact is losing the battle against disconfirmation bias right now.

Also present at the Reform party conference was the climate change denial thinktank The Heartland Institute. During a speech there it was reported that Lois Perry claimed that “There’s nothing wrong with CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant.” She said that “government net-zero policies had been introduced to control us. It’s to tax us. It’s to take our money and it’s to take our liberty.” She added: “They want us in electric cars. Electric cars can be remotely controlled. Again, not a conspiracy theory. These cars can be shut down.” This idea that an elite group are out to control us like characters in some kind of science fiction fantasy novel is all over MAGA conspiracy theories. To be fair, there are times these days when it feels like we are characters living in a science fiction novel, but the idea that a group of powerful people are working closely together plotting to control us all is absurd.

It was reported that at the Reform Conference Perry’s counterpart, James Taylor, claimed that “we are not facing a climate crisis, there is no way we could be facing a climate crisis.” In recent years opponents of climate action had shifted their arguments from outright climate denialism to ones that would delay or obstruct it instead. That we are now heading back to a US imported version of climate denialism is deeply depressing and a backward step in the effort to mitigate the worst effects of the climate and ecological crisis and find a way forward to a fair and just transition to clean energy.

It is unlikely to have missed your notice that one of the speakers at the recent Unite The Kingdom rally was Elon Mush1. His highly inflammatory speech that called for civil war was full of MAGA tropes. The rally was attended by upward of 110,000 people and Charlie Kirk banners could be seen everywhere. While Charlie Kirk was a controversial figure in the US, not many in the UK will have heard of him before that week, yet there were hundreds of placards in homage to him. Charlie Kirk was the leader of Turning Point and was assassinated on 10 September 2025 by a lone gunman. Turning Point was founded to advocate for conservative politics, primarily in high school and college campuses. While I was on a research trip in the US in 2022 I met with a group of students from Turning Point. They told me they felt they were mislabelled as fascist just because they were pro America. They were quick, and proud, to inform me they had LGBTQ members in their chapter though. Remember back to those heady days of 2022 when diversity and inclusion was not yet a bad word? I wonder if they would have been so quick to tell me that if I were interviewing them today? One of the students was from a family of cattle farmers and he felt that agriculture was being blamed for climate change. He wanted us to keep our hands off his cows. Unsurprisingly, he was not a fan of the move towards plant based food. What was chilling about that meeting was how eloquent they were for their age. I complimented them on that and they were proud to tell me why: Turning Point had very sophisticated training courses that they had all attended. They told me that “Turning Point teaches you how to win and that you owe it to your ideology to win”. Those Charlie Kirk inspired trans-Atlantic giant squid tentacles are well trained and out to win.

At the Unite The Kingdom rally the American Republican candidate Valentina Gomez described Keir Starmer as, “the biggest paedophile protector in history.” A reference to Jeffrey Epstein. Not much time would go past while I was on my trip with the MAGA women without mention of paedophilia. “Pedo-Jo” was one of their favourite phrases, the name they gave to Jo Biden. The list of people they deemed as paedophiles was a rather long one. The MAGA women I met saw themselves as mama bears “We are the moms and the mama bears and our children have been threatened.” They were out to save their children from the evils of this world.

This “save our children” mantra was on display at the United The Kingdom rally and has also taken centre stage at the recent protests outside hotels being used to house human beings who are seeking asylum. The “save our children” mantra has now been co-opted and conflated with the highly politicised issue of immigration. In one single stroke every man fleeing horrors and searching for sanctuary in the UK has now been branded a criminal and a paedophile.

Also given the stage at the rally was Eva Vlaardingerbroek from The Dutch far-right. In her speech she said, “They are demanding the sacrifice of our children on the altar of mass migration. Let’s not beat about the bush — this is the rape, replacement, and murder of our people… Remigration is possible, and it’s up to us to make it happen. We are Generation Remigration.” In the most recent turn of events both Reform and The Conservatives have now gone beyond the “stop the boats” rhetoric to talk of “sending people back” who quite legitimately have leave to remain in the UK. Simultaneously In America we are witnessing horrendous scenes as ICE have been given a mandate to go out and catch their prey, arresting, detaining and deporting people, some of whom are quite legitimately in the US.

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I remember how shocked I was when I heard the Roe v Wade had been overturned in the US. There is evidence that Nigel Farage is now connecting up with the The Alliance Defending Freedom (AFD), the US anti-abortion group that challenged Roe v Wade. The ADF has now brought its playbook to Britain and is focusing on a topic it believes will resonate with British voters: free speech. They are attacking the “safe access zones” implemented outside UK abortion clinics citing freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the right to protest. Those safe access zones were put there to protect people entering them from harassment. They have now been weaponised amid MAGA-esque cries of “censorship”. But in a brazen show of double standards the cries of “free speech” only seems to apply when it suits them. When it is “free speech” they don’t like it gets shut down, and with their leader Trump in The White House he is proving able to pull the necessary levers of power to shut it down. In another example of those squid like tentacles reaching across The Atlantic, campaigners and right wing pundits in the UK have been quick to jump on this flawed “free speech” band wagon too, marketing it as a backlash against cancel culture. There has always been tension as to where the line is when it comes to free speech, but the use of hate speech that, not long ago, would have been shunned by most of society is today becoming more acceptable.

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And now the UK has a new emerging think tank that has all the hallmarks of the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA led organisation that drafted “Project 2025”. Project 2025 was the basis of Trump’s second term agenda. James Orr, an associate professor of philosophy of religion at Cambridge University and close friend of JD Vance is one of the names behind this emerging UK think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain. Orr is on the advisory board. He went to the same boarding school as Rishi Sunak by the way. He is friends with the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel who has heavily influenced right wing politics in the US. Orr has been quoted as saying, “The CBB will be guided by a post-Brexit, pro-nation, pro-sovereignty, pro-Britain impulse and framework”. MAGA is a pro-nation, pro-sovereignty, pro-America movement. One of the central facets of the MAGA movement is its distrust and hatred of the elite who are disconnected from ordinary citizens, and with it comes one of its biggest contradictions: It is hard to square that with the fact that MAGA’s poster boys, and its UK equivalents, the likes of Trump, Musk, Thiel, Farage and Orr, are anything but ordinary citizens. Farage too went to private school before becoming a commodities trader in the London Metal Exchange. Most commodities traders command salaries deep into six figures, a far cry from the median annual salaries of British people of £37,000.

None of the MAGA women I met were inherently nasty people. In fact, they showed kindness towards me. They certainly showed no evil intent. They had however chosen the route of conspiracy theories to try and make sense of their lives, and they had found powerful communities - primarily in online spaces - to validate their beliefs. We all live in echo chambers. Echo chambers are comforting, it is the path of least resistance to be surrounded by people who agree with you. I venture outside of my echo chamber from time to time because of my work, otherwise I think I’d probably choose to stay in my cosy chamber. But the problem with that is our cosy echo chambers are not impervious and when their walls crumble we may find ourselves looking out onto a horizon where there is no longer a place for liberal values. The conspiracy theories you will hear in my film may sound whacky to some, but they are a bedrock of the MAGA movement and Trumpism. It is a movement that is being imported into the UK, without tariffs, but with a very heavy cost to our human rights and the multi-cultural progressive Britain that not so long ago was lauded.

And so we find ourselves today, with a polarised Britain where neither side will move its position. Yet those at both poles have more in common than we are often willing to accept. Many of those at the Unite The Kingdom rally came because of a shared distrust and hatred of a political and corporate elite who they see as self-serving and most definitely not serving them. They have ‘elected’ the likes of Farage and Tommy Robinson to be their de facto leaders. Those on the left are equally disastisfied by our political and corporate elite, and since Zack Polanski took over the leadership of the Green Party there has been a marked surge in membership and support for a more leftist agenda. The cost of living crisis and the effects of austerity are at the root of this discontent on both sides. However, the narratives and ideologies coming from those leaning towards the far right bear many of the hallmarks of the MAGA movement in America. Which brings me back to that giant squid. It catches its prey with its tentacles, gripping it with serrated sucker rings. Then it brings its prey to its beak and shreds it with small, file-like teeth on its tongue. What we now need to figure out, and fast, is how we avoid getting sucked.

We are now releasing The Conspiracists in the UK and are keen to connect with community groups to host screenings and discussions. If you would be interested in attending a screening event near you please take a moment to fill out our petition form or get in touch with me directly.

Screenings of my film The Line We Crossed continue across the UK. Up to date screening information can be found here. As a postcript to the film I made a short piece “Requiem For Protest” in collaboration with Kim Halliday. For those interested in climate and protest rights I would highly recommend listening to this podcast I recorded with Jonathon Porritt.

I am currently working on a film about the right to asylum and the highly charged issue of immigration. If you would like to talk to me about that, please reach out.

A few days before this protest Jane Goodall passed away. I discovered Jane Goodall and her work when I was a student and she inspired me like no other person had done before. I have so much admiration for her grit and her values. And just as she had inspired the young me, I found the much older me inspired by her once again last week. This time her inspiration came in death: In a rather bold and unsettling TV format Jane took part in the Famous Last Words interview. The promise is that the interview won’t be aired until after the person’s death thus allowing them to say what they really think without fear of retribution. These are some of her final words:

“Even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing, and if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world – if you want to save the planet for the future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren – then think about the actions you take each day. Because, multiplied a million, a billion times, even small actions will make for great change.”

Thank you Jane for inspiring me one more time. As I watched the police carting 488 peaceful people off into police vans, every single one of those people gave me hope. Those 488 people, and the thousands who have taken part in the same action before them, give me hope because it shows there are still people out there who haven’t given up, who haven’t chosen apathy in these dark times.

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Listen to my podcast with Jonathon Porritt. During this podcast Jonathon talks of his experience of taking part in a “Lift The Ban” action.

The Line We Crossed, our feature documentary charting the unraveling of our protest rights through the experience of climate defenders, continues to screen in cinemas and community centres across the UK. Visit the website to find out where you can watch it, or to petition your local screen.

Let’s begin with Defend Our Juries as last week there was a significant new turn of events in that story. For some reading this, this story will already be well known, but for those outside the UK, or not following this closely, I will start with a summary of what got us to where we are today:

A direct-action protest group in the UK, Palestine Action, had been targeting facilities that supply weapons to Israel in an attempt to stop genocide. They got onto a military base (oops, that was embarrassing for the government) and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft. In case you’re wondering why they did that: Britain sends military cargo, flies spy planes over Gaza and refuels U.S./Israeli fighter jets. Despite there being laws in place to prosecute protesters for aggravated trespass and criminal damage, the government moved instead to proscribe the organisation and thus Palestine Action became the first direct-action protest group to be given the status of terrorists. They now sit in the same bucket as Al Qaeda. The government’s claim in the press that they have secret evidence that justifies the proscription is a flimsy one given it has failed to back that up in any way. They haven’t made reference to their ‘secret evidence’ in the open evidence submitted as part of the legal case, an omission that adds to the flimsyness of their claim. When new terrorism legislation was introduced in 2000, and later after 9/11 and the 2005 London bombings, there were voices in parliament who raised their concerns that those laws were drafted so broadly they could be used against groups that weren’t terrorists at all. Prior to the Terrorism Act 2000 proscription could only be applied to groups involved in violence targeting people, not protest-led property damage campaigns. In response MPs were told not to worry, the police and prosecutors would use common sense and discretion. Some ministerial assurances were added but no statutory wording. The door was left open to misuse. In 2025, it appears that this open door may well have been misused. This is also the view of Liberty and Amnesty International who have been granted permission to intervene in the judicial review about the proscription scheduled for November. Quakers have now also requested to intervene. A judicial review allows the courts to examine whether a decision has been made lawfully, fairly and rationally.

In 2023 a campaigning group, Defend Our Juries, came into being when Trudi Warner was arrested for contempt of court for silently holding a placard on the street outside a court informing people that juries have the right to acquit someone on their conscience. This, and thus the emergence of Defend Our Juries, became one of three storylines in my documentary The Line We Crossed. The words on her placard were a fact in law, not misinformation: The right to acquit on your conscience was first established in 1670 and is enshrined in a plaque inside London’s Central Criminal Court. That right has since been reaffirmed by a High Court Judge.

Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: Trudi Warner holding her, now infamous, placard.

In a series of “I am Spartacus” inspired moments hundreds of others held up the same sign that Trudi held, in silence, outside courts across the UK.

Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: human billboards seated outside Southwark Crown Court

Being a silent human billboard became an effective campaigning tactic: The act of sitting down while holding a piece of cardboard in silence is so peaceful it is hard to justify treating these protesters as if they are dangerous criminals; It is an action that is easy for anyone to take - unlike tunneling, climbing high bridges, blocking traffic or breaking into a military airbase which are direct action tactics for the hardy few. And so, in what appears to be the misuse of the Terrorism Act to proscribe an organisation that was not trying to kill anyone but save people from being killed, the campaigning group Defend Our Juries got busy. The day after the proscription, a small group of silent human billboards gathered under the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square in a bid to test the enforcement of this proscription and show their opposition to genocide. They were all promptly arrested, charged under section 13 of the act and given harsh bail conditions. A charge for which they could face up to 6 months in prison. The next weekend more went out across the UK and did the same. They were arrested too. Then more than 1000 people did the same and 521 were arrested.

The hosting company received a request to take down the Defend Our Juries website. A request that they clearly felt compelled to honour as it was duly removed. Their Zoom calls were shut down too. The group found ways around this and were planning a press conference on Zoom last Tuesday about the next sign holding action. That morning a number of Defend Our Juries key spokespeople, including the group’s co-founder and former government lawyer Tim Crosland, had their homes raided and were arrested under section 12 of the terrorism act. They were arrested for allegedly speaking at Zoom meetings, the purpose of which was to brief activists planning to attend these peaceful sign holding protests. Let it be noted, these calls were not covert, they were openly publicised. The arrestees were held in police custody for two nights before appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court last Thursday.

Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: Tim Crosland being interviewed outside The Royal Courts of Justice prior to the Trudi Warner hearing.

The six arrested on Tuesday morning, including Crosland, have all now been charged under section 12 of the act and released with draconian bail conditions. They could face up to 14 years in prison for this crime. Their case now reverts to The Old Bailey on 26 September. The Old Bailey is the central criminal court in London and it is where they send murderers.

Remember that judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action I mentioned above? Well, on the same day Crosland and the other defendants appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court, The Home Office were successful in their appeal to challenge the decision to grant a judicial review of the proscription. It is now not clear if it will go ahead or not.

Despite the arrest of the Defend Our Juries spokespeople the sign-holding action on Saturday went ahead. Undeterred, in fact most likely spurred on by the government’s extreme response, 1500 people joined the protest and held the same signs. 875 of them were arrested for displaying articles in support of Palestine Action. So by my tally this means more than 1500 people have now been arrested for terrorism for peaceful signholding. For context, only 248 people were arrested under terrorism laws in the UK in 2024.

Mimicking the design of her first, now infamous placard, Trudi Warner created a new sign to hold up during Saturday’s action: “POLICE, OTHER JOBS ARE AVAILABLE”. You have to wonder what the police are thinking as they cart off hundreds of peaceful people, most of them quite elderly, some with mobility issues and others such as Mike Higgins, a blind wheelchair user, whose arrest became a viral sensation.

And so we find ourselves in the land of the absurd. You are now deemed a serious danger to the public for committing the crime of silently holding up a placard for, essentially, showing your concern about people being killed in a genocide.

Which begs the question as to why our government is responding in this way? In a counter-factual scenario, what would have happened if the police had used that discretion we were assured of when the new Terrorism Act was being debated? MP Stella Creasy made the point in parliament yesterday that “there is a difference between people protesting using violence and people protesting the use of proscription”. What if they had just let those first sign-holders be? The campaigning group would have been able to announce a small moral victory but it is unlikely that it would have ended up being the headline news it has become. The resources put into policing and trying these peaceful signholders could have instead been deployed against criminals who were actually causing harm to citizens. Is this Starmer and his posse just being pig headed? Are they responding to criticisms from the Far Right of “two tier policing”? What is certain is, they’re not reading the mood in the room. Everyone is seeing the pictures of starving children in Gaza and most people in Britain are horrified by it. Arresting peaceful people who oppose genocide isn’t a good look. But yet, effectively, that is what they are doing.

What this proscription highlights, and that of the actions of the protesters campaigning against it, is the extent to which our rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association have been eroded as a result of laws that have been introduced over recent years, laws that are so broadly drafted they are open to abuse. When we consider that they are being used like this under a Labour government it is even more chilling: How might these laws be used if we find ourselves with a Far Right government after the next round of elections?

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These haven’t been the only protests taking place during my brief time away. The protests outside asylum hotels kicked off again this summer too, and immigration has shot to the top of the political charts in the UK. Lucy Connolly has been heralded by the Far Right as a political prisoner. Her crime? Inciting racial hatred and an intent to stir up serious violence after urging people to “set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers” in a social media post after falsely believing the The Southport attack was carried out by a Muslim asylum seeker who had come to the country on a boat. Let it be noted that days later protesters did actually set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. She was given a 31 month sentence and was released in August after serving 40% of her sentence. On Saturday, while the peaceful sign-holders were being arrested, Connolly took the stage to loud cheers at The Reform conference and was introduced as a “living symbol of two-tier Britain.” Reform has jumped on the free speech wagon in a twisted libertarian-style echo of how Trump and his MAGA supporters have used it.

In 2023 I spent time with some middle-aged MAGA women in America who too shared and acted on misinformation spread online. They ended up spending time in prison for storming The Capitol on Jan 6. (That film, The Conspiracists is being released in the UK later this year - check below for details). The women I met are so far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole that it is hard to see a way back for them. In both instances, whether it be The Capitol or British hotels being attacked, it is clear to see how dangerous disinformation powered by social media can become. And, it feels unstoppable.

Image: from the film The Conspiracists: Ethnographer Noelle Cook in conversation with two MAGA women featured in the film.

I have been making a film over a period of 3 years now about how our right to asylum is under threat, yet another example of the current democratic backsliding we are experiencing. In that pursuit, I have been following the progress of a number of asylum seekers who have made the journey to the UK across The Channel in a small boat. Years later they are all still stuck in the system awaiting a resolution. They don’t want to be in those hotels either, but the failure of the previous government to process asylum claims humanely or efficiently has led us there.

Video: a video clip I made back in August 2023 to open an event about my films. 2 years later and nothing much seems to have changed, except perhaps to say the situation has worsened.

I’ve been inside one of the asylum hotels and it was not a nice place and I definitely did not feel safe. It wasn’t some kind of budget hotel experience that I had naively imagined it might be, but a repurposed former hotel. It was a place that immediately crushed your soul. The entrance was tightly controlled by security guards. Many of the walls were boarded up, as if in a building site. There was a sense of threat as you walked down the corridor, and you sure as hell didn’t hang around outside your room for long. Better to shut yourself away. The asylum seeker I was with that day told me he could see a woman from his window, and she would cry all day long. He would make her a heart sign with his hands, but felt helpless because there was nothing more he could do to help her. While I was there, there was a knock at the door. A paper bag with an insufficient meal had been left outside for him. That was dinner. A row of matching paper bags were lined up on the small table in his room, a week of paper bag meals. Before I arrived at the hotel I had thought, at least he is safe, has a bed to sleep in and a place to wash. When I left the hotel I felt very differently. This particular hotel was in a dead area, there was nowhere to go. Its residents would just lurk around in the car park when they needed air. The backdrop was a ring road and a pile of black rubbish bags and nothing much else. Everyone I have met who has taken that perilous journey on a small boat has told me they are just looking for somewhere where they can feel safe to live. They thought that the UK would be that place. If Lucy Connolly is anything to go by, they are far from safe here either. It leaves me asking the question, what kind of country do we want to be? We used to be proud of our human rights record but that no longer seems to be an accolade that some of us want our country to have.

In another disturbing twist the anti-migrant protesters have turned this into a story about keeping our women and children safe. In fact, it turns out that 2 in 5 of those arrested at the protests outside asylum hotels last summer had previously been reported for domestic abuse themselves. Taking an issue and turning it into one cloaked as protecting our women and children is a classic from the authoritarian playbook. This same trope played out with the MAGA women who stormed The US Capitol that I met while making The Conspiracists. They saw themselves as the “mama bears” and felt able to justify anything if it was being done in the name of protecting children.

And so the culture wars appear to be in full swing and while the divisions grow and authoritarianism creeps unashamedly into the UK, while we fill up our courts and prisons so that they bursting at the seams, we continue to divert ourselves from collectively addressing the single most pressing issue of our times: finding a swift and just transition to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis.

What is on my horizon in the coming weeks?

I am continuing my tour with The Line We Crossed currently showing in cinemas and community centres across the UK. I’ll be heading up to Birmingham for a screening at MAC and on to Chester and then Hedben Bridge for screenings there. I’ll also be doing Q&As at upcoming screenings in London at Forest Cinema, Act One and The ICA. Information about other screenings can be found here.

The Conspiracists won two awards last week: Best Feature Documentary at The Miami Women Film Festival and an “Exceptional Merit” award at Documentaries Without Borders. We’ve announced plans to screen the film in cinemas and community centres in the UK later on this year. If you’d like to see it at a screen near you, let us know by filling out our petition form.

As the anti-migrant rhetoric continues to rage I am continuing to film and edit my next documentary. It is such a complex and charged issue, but as I try and navigate my way around it I keep coming back to the thought, “what if I were in their shoes, what would I do?” and, “what do you do if you discover there is nowhere safe to go?

Yesterday I was interviewed by Matthew Toffolo for the WILDsounds podcast about The Line We Crossed. In June the film won the audience award for best feature film at the WILDsounds Environmental Film Festival. It is always very heartening to receive an accolade like that, but what is particularly interesting about this award is that the audience were Canadian. The Line We Crossed is a film about British activists and the repression of protest rights in Britain. It is about British laws and yet it appears to be resonating with people living in other democracies. Alongside the UK release of the film, we’ve been able to hold a number of screenings in The Netherlands as well. Activists from France are also keen to show the film.

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This is a struggle that affects so many people and it appears that the film is able to speak to other communities living in democracies who are also facing an assault on their protest rights, and who are struggling to raise the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis. Last week things took an even darker turn in the UK when it comes to the clamping down on dissent by The State. As Matthew said, while you don’t necessarly want it to be, this is a timely movie.

So for my Substack this week I am going to hand you over to the podcast episode recorded by WILDsounds. It begins with the interviewer trying to get his head around why defendants weren’t being allowed to explain to the jury why they were protesting. We then move on to talk about the people in the film and spend some time discussing the filmmaking process.

Listen to the podcast

The Line We Crossed is currently screening in cinemas and community centres across the UK (and The Netherlands!). Find out where it is being screened here.

Greenpeace have published their findings from a Freedom Of Information request they made to The Met Police about their use of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” to arrest protesters. The research found that less than 3% of arrests for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in the past five years resulted in a prosecution. The data adds weight to the accusation that The Met’s use of this to arrest nonviolent protesters is an abuse of police powers. The Met’s response to this accusation, and their justification for the low number of prosecutions, is that the threshold for arrest is much lower than the threshold to charge someone.

“The threshold for arrest is reasonable suspicion that an offence has occurred. The threshold to charge someone is significantly higher, with officers needing to show that there is enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction at court. Proving that an individual has conspired with others to cause a public nuisance, to that standard, is particularly challenging. This is reflected in the limited number of charges for that offence.” The Met Police.

I saw first hand how this is being used to stop protest, how protesters are being placed in police custody to get them off the streets and then given bail conditions that can last for long periods to stop them from protesting, only to later have those charges dropped. You can see it clearly in my film The Line We Crossed which was released in cinemas and community centres across the UK just last week. I’ve pulled out a clip from the film here that talks to this very point.

Six months later all the Just Stop Oil protesters arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance at The Coronation received a letter that they were no longer under investigation because of “insufficient evidence”. Meanwhile they were forced to spend six months of their life with the uncertainty of this hanging over their heads.

If you want to see the way protest is currently being policed in the UK, through the experiences of people on the frontline, I urge you to come to one of the screenings of The Line We Crossed. It adds the human element to what it means when our democratic right to protest is taken away from us.

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The other event that happened yesterday was 385 UK MPs voted to proscribe Palestine Action as terrorist group. Only 26 voted against the order. There are already laws in place to charge protesters for criminal damage and aggravated trespass. Elevating this direct action protest group to terrorists puts them alongside organisations whose actions intend to kill. The UN have themselves put out a statement saying “According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism.”

The same order also bans two neo-Nazi groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russia Imperial Movement (RIM). Maniacs Murder Cult is a violent and extreme neo-Nazi group. The Russia Imperial Movement is a violent white supremacist militant group. If Palestine Action had not been tied together with these other two violent organisations would 385 MPs have voted to proscribe them? Is this more dirty tricks to get an organisation that is the thorn in the side of the government out of the way? An organisation that will have deeply embarrassed the government by breaking into a secure military area. An organisation that is a threat to vested corporate interests.

If this order is not thrown out by The House of Lords today then, in just a few days time, it will be illegal to be a member of Palestine Action or show any moral support for them.

Last week was the public release of The Line We Crossed in cinemas and community centres across the UK and we started our Q&A tour with it in the North of England. I was joined by Trudi Warner who is featured in the film and Sue Bennet the mother of one of the film’s protaganists, Sam Griffiths. Sam couldn’t be part of the Q&As because he is currently serving a 16 month prison sentence for nonviolent peaceful protest. These are my reflections on that week which, on the one hand, gave me hope but, on the other hand, was overshadowed by the news that the government was moving to proscribe Palestine Action following a protest action where they spray painted some RAF jets. Proscription means they would be categorised as terrorists and put in the same bucket as Al-Qaeda. That means, once they are proscribed, if you wear a T-Shirt saying “Palestine Action” you too could be deemed a terrorist. That means, once they are proscribed, I would not be able to mention them in an article like this in case it was deemed as showing tacit support.

In the Q&As the question that kept coming up was, “what now?”. It’s a question that many climate activists are asking themselves.

Nonviolent direct action is a powerful method of struggle that confronts injustice head-on. The activists shown in the film chose that method so that they could not be ignored. That the government, both previous and current, has chosen to crack down on it to the extent they have, suggests it is working, but the price those activists are paying, like Sam, is a heavy one. Anyone taking that step into direct action now can easily find themselves as cannon fodder. To do it requires an extraodinary level of commitment and resilience. Two Just Stop Oil activists who received long sentences have served enough time to be eligible for home detention curfew but have been informed by the probation service that they cannot be released. These are not violent individuals, in fact they are committed to the principle of nonviolence, but they are seen as too politically dangerous to release. They are, by definition, political prisoners. The Filton 18 were detained under counter-terrorism powers. They have only been charged with non-terror offences - criminal damage, violent disorder and aggravated burglary - yet they are nevertheless being held under terror laws which means they can be held on remand pre-trial a lot longer. Yesterday they had their plea hearing at Woolwich Crown Court. The plea hearing will determine what legal defences the activists can rely on at trial and if they are even allowed to mention Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Outside the court people from many groups convenened to show their support. Defend Our Juries were out in force displaying their “Timeline of Genocide”. The hearing continues today.

Showing the film on the backdrop of what is happening to Palestine Action made the documentary even more poignant and timely. When Labour was elected I thought that maybe “The Line We Crossed” would become an historical document of what happens when a right wing government introduces draconian anti-protest laws. But, not only has the new government failed to repeal any of those anti-protest laws, they are adding to them. Along with the move to proscribe Palestine Action, a new policing bill is currently going through parliament. If that bill passes it will take away your right to wear a face mask at a protest. It will also allow the police to put restrictions on protests if they believe “that the protest may create an intimidating atmosphere for those seeking to access a place of worship for religious activities. This applies regardless of whether the protest organisers intended to have that effect.” It is that second sentence that is the giveaway that this is just a further extension of police powers to give them more tools to stop a protest. There are an awful lot of places of worship dotted around the UK. If you commit a criminal offence while protesting there are laws already in place to arrest and prosecute you. If the policing bill goes through, even if you are protesting entirely peacefully, simply wearing a mask could make you a criminal.

So where did I find hope last week? It was with the sense of community and solidarity that I encountered. One of the criticisms often thrown at Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain is that they alienate ordinary people. They will tell you they never set out to be popular, that they set out to get our government and the media to pay attention to the climate and ecological crisis and the cost of living crisis. It wasn’t until two young women threw soup at a famous painting that anyone started to listen to them. Those women knew that the soup would not damage the painting - it was covered by glass - but they knew the statement it would make could be a powerful one. It wasn’t just a publicity act, it also posed a question: “what is more important, life or art?”. Those women were given long prison sentences for that action and the judge based his long sentence on the damage that the soup could have done (had the painting not been covered in glass), not the damage it actually did.

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Many of the people alienated by the actions of Just Stop Oil - we see some of them behaving violently towards them in the film - are likely to be amongst those worst affected by the climate crisis and a poorly managed transition to clean energy. They are already the biggest victims of the cost of living crisis. Both groups should be on the same side pushing back against a heavily lobbied government that is not putting their needs first. It is easy to understand how someone who is blocked by a protester while trying to get to work would be angry. Life is tough enough as it is, without having to deal with that. Which brings me back to the “what now?” question. With Just Stop Oil “hanging up their hi-vis” many climate activists are trying to figure that out. Defend Our Juries are doing actions that fall just on the side of legal. They are generally quiet, peaceful actions that are often effective, in part, thanks to the sheer numbers of people who turn out to take part in them. They also take place in the regions, as well as in London. Others are pushing for a new form of democracy, one that embraces concepts such as Citizens Assemblies that give more people agency and involvement in the democratic process. What is needed now is solidarity, not division. The government’s embrace of right leaning policies is touted as a reaction to the threat of Reform, because they think it will get them votes. But what if they actually put together policies that would help improve the lives of ordinary people, policies that put people first? Surely, that’s the better way to win votes?

Picture: A silent Defend Our Juries protest outside Southwark Crown Court

We were all very touched by words of Sam’s mother Sue. When asked what it was like to be a mother of an activist who has been incarcerated for protesting she told us how proud she is of him. She acknowledged that even though he is soon to turn 50, he is still her little boy, and as a mother her role is to support him. It is clearly a harrowing experience for anyone to have a love one sent to prison, but to hear her express her love and support for him in that way was a powerful moment. As we were touring in The North, Trudi and I were able to use the opportunity to visit Sam in HMP Polmont. To be able to tell him how positively people are responding to the film and the discussions it is creating was affirming. I recently published a letter from Sam recounting his experience of being in prison on my Substack that you can read here.

We weren’t sure how taking a documentary that was filmed entirely in London outside of London was going to play out. The blend of blaring car horns from the speakers with the sound of sheep bleating outside gave for an unusual audioscape. What quickly became apparent though was that it doesn’t matter if you’re a sheep farmer or a Barista working in a big city, the emotional impact of the film is the same. When we were sitting in The Old Booking Office in Haltwhistle, a remote area in the North East, I realised just how important it is to bring films to all kind of venues. The discussion we were able to have with those 30 people crammed into that little venue felt as vital and important as the ones in the bigger auditoriums. The community and solidarity that I felt came not just from the people who came to watch the film and who helped organise the screenings, but from the people who offered generously to host us. We stayed on a sheep farm with vast acres of peat bog. I learnt how important the peat bog is to our ecosystem and its incredible ability to store carbon. I saw how they are successfully rewilding some of their land. I spent one night in a community housing project in Lancaster and saw how it is possible to rethink and reinvent how we live. It didn’t feel like being in a cult, cut off from the rest of society, it was well connected into “normal life” but offered a more sustainable, more affordable and more community focused way of living.

Picture: Peat bogs and sheep in Northumberland

While my film presents an alarming, dystopian picture of what is happening to our protest rights and the seemingly inexorable slide towards authoritarianism, the experience of touring with it is also showing me that there is an incredible network of people who care, who support and who want to make change and who want to see change. That is where I take my hope from.

Screenings continue across the UK and we have our London Premiere this Thursday at The Lexi cinema. The Q&A will be hosted by Human Rights Campaigner Peter Tatchell. It is also showing in Lewes this weekend, and in Bath next week. It also resonating outside of the UK with the first of several screenings in The Netherlands last Sunday and winning the audience award for Best Feature Film at a festival in Canada last week.

Before I sign off, I feel compelled to mention that one of the scenes in the film that gets one of the biggest laughs (you will have to watch the film to find out why) takes place at The Wimbledon Championships. Yesterday was the first day of this year’s tournament. It was the hottest opening day of the tournament ever.

Sam in action in The Line We Crossed

I’ve written extensively about the silencing and criminalisation of environmental defenders in the UK and you can watch it happening in the documentary; Sam’s journey from ordinary (but extra-ordinary) man to political prisoner is one of the story arcs in the film. But for this article today, I want to focus on what it is like being in prison in the UK. Until Sam found himself behind bars I had had no insight into what it is like to be inside. It has been eye-opening and thought provoking hearing first hand from him about his experiences. In a recent letter exchange the idea came up that he would write about that for my Substack, and yesterday I received it in the post. So for the rest of this article I am going to hand over to Sam so that you too can hear from him first hand. I have not edited a word of what he has written.

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What is it like in Prison? In the words of Sam G.

“This is the most natural question about prison people want to know. But the truth is there is no one answer except that on some level most people are going to say it’s rubbish. There are different grades of rubbish though (I know because I am working in Waste Management here at HMP Polmont) and your experience of the same jail can be very different depending on your mental state, where you are in the prison and who you get locked up with.

I now have experience of three prisons (thank you Suella Braverman) and two prison systems - English and Scottish. I’m going to tell you a bit about what I know, but if you end up following me to one of these places please be aware that no two prison experiences are alike!

In November 2023 I was remanded to HMP Wandsworth for walking slowly in the road for 20 minutes. I was there for 21 days. My Trip Advisor review would be scored negative in stars if that’s possible. The place is 170 years old and it shows its age. The Victorians who built it designed the cells for single occupancy - today they all hold two prisoners. On my first night, while still processing the reality of the situation, I was taken to my cell on the induction wing with a guy called Dave who would be my cell mate for the next week and a bit. This was after being booked in and interviewed. The only question I remember - and it will never leave me - was, “have you ever set light to another human being?”. The cell Dave and I were taken to was filthy, there wasn’t a curtain or anything around the loo to give privacy (we were then given a curtain that we stretched across chairs to create a screen) and it was small. Just as I was thinking, “how do we fit in here?”, the door was closed and locked and we just had to get on with it. The induction wing in Wandsworth is pretty wild, people are scared or aggressive or both and I always felt that violence was a possibility. I was not a victim of violence, but fights were going off all over. After 4 or 5 days Dave and I were transferred to a quieter wing - it was a relief and a lot easier to sleep. In the induction wing doors were being kicked to the early hours every night. It wasn’t until we moved to this calmer wing that I got out for exercise. This was stressful in a different way because I felt vulnerable being out of my cell and in the open with a lot of other people. But I’d learnt already that if I can stay calm, things will be okay - that’s by no means a guarantee, but it seemed to work for me. This is where it helps to be middle-aged and anonymous looking. Younger guys have a much harder time of it because other younger guys are generally more volatile, but they pretty much ignore the older fellas. I was 48 at the time.

That morning was transformative for me as I walked round and round the exercise yard. I was very on edge but focused on my breathing - longer out-breaths than in-breaths. I then started to list, in my head, all the things I am grateful for. I started with my wife and son, stroking the ears of my dog, hot toast and marmite with a good cup of tea… After 20 minutes of this a calm came down on me that felt like a blessing and I found it difficult not to beam. From that point on I knew I’d be able to cope and I really got my head round the situation. But please be left in no doubt that HMP Wandsworth is a disgrace. Human beings should not be locked up 23 hours a day in cramped conditions with shit food and little to do. It’s a massive waste of life and everybody deserves better, especially if we want to leave people in better physical, emotional and moral shape than when they arrived.

I’m glad I experienced Wandsworth first because everything since has been so much better. But, all Victorian prisons have similar issues and they are not fit for purpose.

In March this year I was sentenced to 16 months in prison for being part of an action at INEOS Grangemouth. In the summer of ‘23 I, along with others, gained access to the site and chained myself to a gantry 20-30 feet above the ground. On that occasion we stopped the flow of oil on site for eight hours. Normally a full tanker leaves Grangemouth every five minutes, day and night, such is our thirst for oil. I took the action to prevent greater harms that the flow of oil continues to inflict. There’s the local pollution and contamination of Grangemouth and the carbon pollution when the oil is burned that continues to push temperatures higher, pushing us closer, or by now beyond, irreversible climate tipping points. I took action because I have a son, he was 13 at the time, and I desperately want to protect him and his future. I will continue to do all that I can - and right now that means being a political prisoner.

I was sentenced to 16 months, my co-defendants received community orders of 200 hours - quite a big discrepancy! And it’s one I’m appealing - I’m not holding my breath that sense will prevail though.

I was sent to HMP Low Moss near Bishopbriggs. Once there the check-in process took some time but the vibe was very different to Wandsworth. There some of the staff looked to humiliate you on the way in but there was nothing like that here at Low Moss. I had a good chat with the officer who interviewed me (no alarming questions) and I was very calm knowing pretty much what the worst was, and this was not it. We must have got on quite well, or he took pity on me, because he assigned me to the old man section. This is one level of one wing where calmer, older prisoners end up. As soon as I was there the guys on the section let me know how lucky I’d been, saying the rest of the prison is wild. Why? Drugs and lots of them. There’s a real epidemic and it’s costing people their lives. One of them is a legal high, a tranquilizer used on fish so they can be transported live. It knocks people out for days on end and makes them very unpredictable. People collapse on it, have psychotic episodes and the trade itself is a source of violence. There was the odd guy on our section using it, but on other sections it and other drugs were rife. Life on our section was pretty good and I have no complaints of the three weeks I spent there. I have a lot of respect for the prisoners and guards I got to know a bit but you always felt a bit of tension in the air, especially walking to and from places in the prison.

After those three weeks I was transferred to HMP Polmont, a lower category prison. That’s where I am writing this from. I have a cell to myself here, everyone does, and I have time out of it. Low Moss wasn’t that bad for time out of cell too, but this is better. From my window here I can see the Ockle Hills in the distance - I am determined to walk those hills when I’m out. While at Low Moss I’d had some really good chats with a guy called Paul and I was transferred with him and another fella, Mark. It really helped us settle here at Polmont, knowing each other already. We’re all of a similar age but very different backgrounds. Mark works on the rigs so we’ve had some good chats about oil. And now we’re all working together too, in Gardens and Waste Management, we enjoy chatting and taking the piss out of each other at work or when we have meals or recreation. Paul has asked me quite a lot of really good questions about why I’m here and why I take the kind of action that could result in prison time. It’s been great trying to give good answers to those questions and the whole set of conversations has spurred me on to try and capture the questions and answers in writing and ultimately as a short book - let’s see!

There’s a good gym here, and there’s a mini-gym at the end of the section, so I’ve been getting a little bit fitter. The thing I’m doing most of is playing Pickleball - it’s fast and fun and it may well be the death of me. I’ve always left limping. First it was my knees, then my hips, them my neck and shoulders - I’m playing tomorrow and would love to be able to walk away unaided! I’m 49 now and not very fit, so all this is a bit of a shock to the system.

Another opportunity that this spell in prison has given me is to have time to read and write - what a profound blessing it is - both give space for reflection and thought too. It was very busy before getting locked up so I’m trying to make the most of this. With reading I’m balancing some great serious books with some out and out trash - it’s working for me so far! And writing-wise, I’m loving having the time to write letters and to reply to emails as well as chipping away at the book project.

That all said, I am a long way from home and I miss my wife, son and dog a great deal. Today it’s my wife’s birthday and I’d give an awful lot to be with her in person. I’ve sent a homemade card and will speak to them both this evening. They’ve made it up to see me here and in Low Moss the legends that they are, and on those occasions I’ve been able to arrange a double visit - otherwise it’s a hell of a long way to come (London to Polmonth) for 45 minutes. My mum and sisters are in and around Newcastle and Whitley Bay, so are a good bit nearer and I’m getting to see them a bit too which is lovely. I’ve also been very lucky to be visited by some friends here in Scotland too. I’ve also been doing the odd virtual visit - a video call - and have loved seeing my wife, dog and son all there on the sofa.

Prison is one thing for those inside, but quite another for loved ones on the outside. My wife is having to deal with an awful lot including financial insecurity with only one wage coming in. She’s a fighter and has incredible powers of perserverance and ingenuity but it’s so unfair that she and my son are bearing the brunt of this punishment. I feel guilty for that. And angry at a system that locks up the people who are most committed to raise the alarm - and a system that leaves the rich and powerful free to rape the earth and fuck us over.

So there is anger there - at the stupid system we live in, and guilt for making my wife and son’s lives harder right now but do I regret taking the action that landed me here? No, I don’t. I’m proud I stood up for what is right and that I followed my conscience. I acted to protect my son’s future and I remain resolutely committed to that. Two of us got into Grangemouth that night and proved that ordinary people can stop the flow of oil - it’s in our power. I’m a very ordinary, middle of the road, fairly normal bloke, if I can do something like this, anyone can! I’ll have at least another two and a bit months to think on this before I become even eligible to be released on tag. If that happens, I’ll be on home curfew 7pm to 7am each day and will have to wear a tag on my ankle that monitors my location.

In summary, prison is not a great place to be, but it can be somewhere where you learn about yourself and others. Gender, age, sexuality and race all play a big role in how things will go. If you are considering taking nonviolent direct action that could lead to prison, think carefully about it and weigh up the pros and cons. The biggest pro is that the bell you rang with your action is sustained and maybe even amplified by being jailed for it. Your sacrifice continues to resonate.

Sending love from cell 557, Iona 1, HMP Polmont

Sam G x

If you would like to send a message to Sam in prison click here to find out his details.

If you would like to watch the documentary The Line We Crossed visit the website to find out about screenings or petition your local screen.

Last week, Timothy Martin, was convicted of two felony charges of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and damage to federal property. He faces up to five years in prison on each count. His crime? He put washable finger paint on the protective case of a Degas’s Little Dancer in the National Gallery.

This action is similar in characteristic to the UK Just Stop Oil climate activists who threw soup on the glass of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. That action left a lot of people bemused and spawned much outrage. Before the soup action, Just Stop Oil had been targeting oil and gas terminals, but those actions weren’t getting any meaningful press. It was only when two women threw soup on the painting that the media started to pay attention. I can only imagine that Timothy Martin’s action was motivated by the same frustration. He had to do something “outside of the box” to get his cause into the headlines. That neither Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Degas’s Little Dancer were damaged is testament to the fact that these protesters are not completely unhinged. Their actions were carefully planned for maximum media exposure but to avoid any actual damage to these precious works of art.

Let us not forget that 100 years ago Mary Richardson, a suffragette took a meat chopper to the Rokeby Venus while it hung in the National Gallery. A little bit of washable finger paint and some soup is mild in comparison. Mary Richardson received a 6 month prison sentence for her crime. The soup throwers are currently serving sentences of 2 years and 20 months respectively. Recently, there was an appeal against their sentence length: they were unsuccessful. This does not bode well for Timothy Martin.

Civil disobedience is a fundamental pillar of a well functioning democracy. “If you cannot show dissent in a democracy, you no longer live in a democracy” is the line from Sean, one of the featured participants in my documentary The Line We Crossed. As UN Rapporteur, Michel Forst, confirmed to me in my interview with him, civil disobedience is a right that is protected under human rights conventions. The fact that civil disobedence is protected by an international covenant is an indicator that it is an important right, and one we might want to protect. I may be wrong about this, but my impression is that a lot of people are unaware that civil disobedience is a human right. When people take part in civil disobedience, they do so knowing there may be consequences. One of the golden rules of taking part in nonviolent civil disobedience as a protest tactic is that you do it publicly and that you own it. This is why, once the action has been taken, the action takers tend not to run away. There is a clear attempt by the US and UK to crack down on civil disobedience. Crushing civil disobedience by putting in place harsh anti-protest laws, removing legal defences for protesters and handing out draconian sentences is authoritarianism 101.

I have to confess that when I first heard about the soup throwers I was as bemused as the rest of us. It’s only through my own personal journey of documenting protest actions and civil disobedience that I’ve come to understand it. And on that journey I’ve come to understand why it is important to hold back on any moral condemnation of acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. Through observing the clamping down on protesters taking part in civil disobedience, I’ve started to appreciate its value and why it is a right we need to preserve. Sometimes we don’t realise how important something is until we’ve lost it.

As macro world events take over it is easy to feel helpless to make change. Taking part in direct action gives people a sense of agency. So many of the activists I have followed have said to me that they “can’t just sit back and let this happen”, and this is what drives them to civil disobedience. Without human agency you are essentially reacting to life rather than living it. A lack of agency can lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. When a state crushes dissent we lose agency.

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While voting is an important part of the democratic process, it is only something we as citizens can do typically every few years. Using your democratic rights is something you should be able to do every day. Petitioning your government representative is of course something we can all do, but who amongst us has ever actually seen any material change from doing that? Some with access to the legal system and money can challenge those in power through the courts, but that is not an option for most people. Journalists and people with public platforms can use their pens and voices to call out injustice. Those routes are not available to all. Taking part in sit-ins or marching on the streets in protest is something everyone can do, or at least they used to be able to do. For Mahmoud Khalil that turned out not to be the case. In the US they have turned to an obscure law to deport him, despite his status as a green card holder.

The US and UK public and media were all for celebrating the right to protest when the Arab Spring was taking place, but they seem less keen to support it when it happens at home.

Nonviolent civil disobedience is like an art. It’s a human expression. Like art, not every act of nonviolent civil disobediance is going to appeal to everyone, but I now see it as an important form of artistic expression. I read today about Greenpeace activists who poured a blood red dye into a pond outside the US embassy in London to draw attention to the US sale of lethal weapons to Israel. The dye is biodegradable and so won’t cause any long term damage, but the red water is a powerful statement. As a result, Will McCallum, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, has been was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. This is a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Taking part in civil disobedience is not for everyone, and I am not suggesting that everyone should go out and commit an act of civil disobedience. There are consequences for doing it. But I am saying it is an important right that we must protect. Next time we find ourselves huffing and puffing in moral outrage because someone has committed a nonviolent act of civil disobedience that we don’t understand or we disagree with, perhaps we should take a moment instead to reflect on the statement it is making and think of the value and power of human agency.

My feature documentary about the crushing of protest rights will be released in cinemas and across community centres in the UK from 23rd June onwards. If you would like to use some of your human agency to petition your local screen to show it, you can do so by taking a minute to fill out this form.