In Colin Welland’s 1989 adapatation of Andre Brink’s novel A Dry White Season, the barrister played by Marlon Brando comments “Justice and law, Mr. Du Toit, are often just… well they’re, I suppose they can be described as distant cousins. And here in South Africa, well, they’re simply not on speaking terms at all.”

Judge Christopher Hehir, in his conduct of the case against the Just Stop Oil defendants, Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin, who he has just sent down for 4 to 5 years in prison for “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”, has done his best to make people realise just how true that is of the UK too.

His summing up is almost beyond satire in its sophisticated mulishness. Talking of the breakdown of the climactic conditions needed for human civilisation to survive, this bewigged buffoon said, “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns are shared by many, but the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

Lets break that down. “some of the concerns are shared by many”. The issue is not “concern” at climate breakdown it is the FACT of climate breakdown. This is not in serious dispute. Even the outgoing government’s “Impartiality guidance” for teachers noted that climate denial is not serious science and should not be taught.

Parliament has voted that we are in a “climate emergency”. This does not seem to have got through to Mr Justice Hehir.

So, this is not about opinions. Nor is it about how “many” people share them. It is a matter of UK law that the government has to decarbonise society by 2050. The last government’s plans to meet this target have been ruled inadequate by the UK High Court TWICE in the last two years. The consequences of a failure to meet this target will be considerably more severe than the £750,000 worth of disruption that the M25 protest is estimated to have caused. Would the Judge think it reasonably therefore to bang up Rishi Sunak, Claire Countinho, and the “Net Zero Scrutiny Group” (now happily depleted by the democratic process) for “conspiring” to put the UK well off course for reaching them, as they did in the more salubrious surroundings of the Cabinet Office, and probably on a few zoom calls as well?

It is also a matter of International legal obligation under the Paris Agreement that countries are working together to make this work. Except that the course taken by the last government clearly, in the judgement of the Climate Change Committee – the cross Party body set up to hold government to account for its actions, “signalled a slowing of pace and reversed or delayed key policies” which put the UKs progress below the curve.

In the context of an emergency that has not not been treated as an emergency, in which a lackadaisaical business as usual laziness was passed off as “pragmatism”, any “concerned campaigner” might reasonably conclude that more serious action was needed to make it plain that this is not OK, that the majority opinion, that wants more action on climate not less, should be heard. A “fanatic”, on the other hand, is someone who holds a view unreasonably and in the face of evidence to the contrary. The “plain fact” is that there is no evidence to the contrary in the case of climate breakdown. We can feel and see it happening around us. The consequences of failing to act to limit the damage will be catastrophic. Providing the protection of the law to, for example, banks that finance climate wrecking fossil fuel investments and making an example of people who, for example, take a demonstrative hammer to one of their windows, with punitive multi year sentences for a bit of cracked plate glass shows the same sense of proportion that, 220 years back, hanged Luddites for smashing stocking frames.

A keen advocate of crushing dissent on climate or Palestine by criminalising it has been the last government’s “Security Adviser”, Lord Walney, or plain old John Woodcock MP as he used to be. An acid test for whether the new government will continue down this path will be whether Walney retains his role and continues to be given credence. He should be sacked.

A basic principle of common law is that, for it to retain consent, it has to be seen to be “reasonable” to “the average man (or woman) on the Clapham onmibus”. The lengths to which the judge in this case went to silence the defendents in court, ruling that defendents were not allowed to speak to the jury about why they had done what they did, underlines his fear that the judgement of their 12 peers would be that this was a reasonable and proportionate response to the scale of the crisis and the paucity of action taken to address it. Defendents allowed to put this kind of public interest defence, however unpopular many of the JSO actions have been, have tended to be aquitted by Juries in the last few years. Can’t have that. Where will it all end?

When a judge orders the arrest of people standing outside the court holding placards affirming the rights of juries to hear the whole truth, for contempt of court, it is clear that the legal process as an arbiter of justice is being held in contempt by such a judge; which invites popular scorn for “the rule of law”, “Fundamental British Value” or not.

Mae West put it rather well in 1927.

Judge: “Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?”

Mae West: “On the contrary, your Honor, I was doin’ my best to conceal it.”