Insulate Britain Legal Fundraiser

Aim

To raise legal defence funds for the 1st Insulate Britain jury trial of peaceful protesters pleading not guilty to public nuisance.

The first Insulate Britain jury trial is scheduled to start on the 21st of November 2022 at Inner London Crown Court. This first trial group and a number of other Insulate Britain protesters were charged with “causing a public nuisance” instead of “wilful obstruction of the highway” which is the usual charge for protests in roads. The group have pleaded not guilty because they were acting to prevent the greater crime of death by fuel poverty and catastrophic climate breakdown.

Contrary to the charging decisions brought by other police forces, the Metropolitan Police are pursuing a disproportionately high number of public nuisance charges. This is likely an attempt to try and avoid defence arguments about proportionality and seek a harsher punishment for those who were criticising the UK Government for failing in their most basic duty to protect life. Insulate Britain demanded that the Government protect citizens from fuel poverty and the climate crisis by rolling out a national retrofit programme that would have created jobs, cut carbon emissions and reduced heating bills. 

Instead the Government chose to silence nonviolent protesters including many from Insulate Britain by imposing civil injunctions, criminal prosecutions and imprisonment, while at the same time protecting the profits of energy companies - as millions of British people struggle to heat their homes.  

The legal outcome is highly likely to affect subsequent cases, not just Insulate Britain but many other nonviolent campaigners charged with public nuisance. It is therefore important to have legal representation in the very first trial group at the Crown Court to establish sound legal arguments.

HOW THE FUNDS WILL BE USED

The first trial group does not qualify for legal aid and would greatly appreciate any help to cover the costs of funding lawyers to represent some of them at trial.

They need to raise a minimum of 10K. Any surplus funds will go directly to the Climate Action Support Pathway (CASP) to help cover costs in subsequent Insulate Britain trial groups and/or other climate protest cases.

BACKGROUND

In September 2021 members of the nonviolent campaign group, Insulate Britain, repeatedly sat down on the M25 motorway, demanding that the UK government adequately insulate Britain’s homes. 

Years of traditional campaigning and experts calling for urgent need to insulate Britain’s leaky housing stock, had been mostly ignored.  Insulate Britain started a campaign of civil resistance that the media, Government and public could not ignore, catapulting to the top of the political agenda the need to adequately insulate Britain's homes, eradicate fuel poverty and radically decarbonise the economy.

WHY INSULATION? 

Each year in the UK, hundreds of thousands of families are forced to choose between heating or eating, cold children or hungry children, and many thousands die because they are too cold. 

Insulating the homes of Britain will save lives and provide warm homes while pound for pound making the most effective contribution to reducing carbon and providing meaningful jobs.

The UK has some 29 million homes and they are the oldest and least energy efficient housing stock in Europe.

Every year vast amounts of precious energy are wasted in heating and, increasingly, cooling our buildings. In order to meet UK commitments under the Paris Agreement to stay below 1.5C, and legal obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008, as amended in 2019, emissions from heating and powering homes must be reduced by 78% in less than 15 years and then to zero by 2050.

Nearly 15% of the UK’s total emissions comes from heating homes: an overhaul of the energy performance of the UK’s housing stock is needed to reduce the energy demand.

Humanity is at a pivotal crossroads: accelerated human-caused global heating is threatening to destroy human civilisation unless urgent action is taken to rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The science is not disputed and now is the time to act. Improving the quality of our homes is fundamental to achieve the British Government’s climate change, fuel poverty and water reduction targets.

The aims of Insulate Britain are even more relevant now than they were in 2021.  

Climate crisis

2022 saw increasing food and water scarcity, most notably in SubSaharan Africa link and devastating disasters such as the floods in Pakistan where a third of the country was covered in water and millions were displaced. 

While the IPCC released another devastating report politely stating that billions of lives are at risk:

• Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people “live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change”.
• Increasing weather and climate extreme events “have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security”
• Approximately 50-75% of the global population could be exposed to periods of “life-threatening climatic conditions” due to extreme heat and humidity by 2100.

Energy crisis

We now face an intensifying energy crisis as gas and electric bills spiral out of control and while energy companies make obscene profits. Insulation can help cut energy bills. 

Politicians are failing the most vulnerable in society and failing to prevent a global catastrophe. 

In spite of unpopularity at the time, history was relatively quick to vindicate the actions of Insulate Britain.

• BBC Energy and Environment journalist Roger Harrabin said that Insulate Britain, “…has recently caused more comment about Britain's appalling housing stock than I managed in 35 years reporting. Is their protest disproportionate?" 
• In the months after the protests began on September 13 2021, the number of mentions of the word “insulation” (not “Insulate”) in UK print media doubled.
   
• According to Caitlin Moran, writing for The Times one year later, “Insulate Britain weren’t mad after all - they were right”
• Meanwhile the London Economic pointed out that it took “less than six months…for it to become unavoidably obvious that, actually, those roadblocking crusties had a point.”
• It also didn’t take long for the Labour party manifesto to adopt plans to roll out large scale home insulation projects for 19 million UK homes.
• Cutting heat loss from houses will be more effective in the long term than subsidising bills, according to analysis of the Government's response to the energy crisis in 2022. 

Insulate Britain are on the right side of history. 

Thank you for any donations of money that you are able to give to the legal fund.

 If you are not able to donate, please don't worry as we understand times are hard.

 Please consider sharing this fund raiser too. 

This project successfully funded on 12th December 2022