With what seems like a recent wave of crackdowns on protests and record-long sentences being imposed on peaceful activists, would you say that sentences are now harsher than they’ve ever been?

Yeah, in any of our living memories, that is definitely true. [There is a] reversal from supposedly [Britain] being a champion of human rights internationally, to now being, according to research, the global leader in the repression of peaceful people. It’s a stunning turnaround. And the scary thing is the lack of attention on it.

It also seems that the courts are getting more and more creative with how they enforce rules. For example, we've heard about the “consent defence” and how the Court of Appeal removed that. Could you explain what that means?

In non-legal terms: it’s a really hot day and you see a car with maybe a dog or a child [inside], and all the windows are up. It’s really dangerous, and you can see the child/dog, suffering, struggling.

You break the window. You don’t have the owner’s consent to break the window. But you are confident that if they knew what was happening, they would have consented. And in that situation, they’re not going to be prosecuted.

This defence has been successfully used by many people in court [in climate change protest cases]. And it might be surprising, but juries have acquitted quite a lot [of defendants] when they have heard [the defence]. Because it is powerful and it relates to some of the underlying principles of the climate movement.

The corporate interests are very embarrassed by those not guilty verdicts. I mean, it’s really embarrassing when you’re HSBC and a group of women have broken your windows and the jury goes: “Yes, we get it. It makes sense.”

So there’s been pressure on the government from various sources, including the Israeli government, Elbit Systems who supplies the arms to Israel, and lobbyists for the oil industry to remove that defence because juries were reaching verdicts that they did not like.

There’s also the unconventional use of contempt laws. It feels like there’s a sense of manipulation in the judicial system, would you agree?

Yes. I mean, if contempt of court means trying to interfere with the judicial process to try and stitch things up and get the verdict you want, well, it’s pretty clear who is doing the contempt of court here.

It’s not the people who just want to explain things honestly to the jury. It’s the people who are trying to prevent the jury from hearing the evidence. And that is happening systematically. That’s the political interference with the legal process.

So there have been a lot more guilty verdicts as a result of this manipulation.

If this worrying trend continues, what could the right to protest in Britain look like in 10 years?

I wonder how long it’s going to continue. The extremity of the repression we’re facing is the action of a bully who knows it’s weak. It’s a bully that knows one of the most powerful tools of its violence, the prison system, is collapsing and the court system is in crisis.

When we have thousands of people on the streets [protesting] there’s a kind of practical reality that the system will not cope with arresting and prosecuting and jailing all those people. It can’t do it.

So we’re gonna get to some sort of moment when it can’t go on. It’s not sustainable, even if they want it to be.

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