Protesters in prison: 'It's not a crime to want to pass on a better world'

For months, activists have been writing from British jail cells to Adam Weymouth about their anger and fear that the UK's right to peaceful protest and civil disobedience is being stolen away

- Adam Weymouth

Shortly after dawn on 29 July 2023, Sam Griffiths, then 48, walked into an oil refinery in Grangemouth, Falkirk, with 19 other members of the climate activist group This Is Rigged. Griffiths, a graphic designer from London, was used to signing petitions and writing to his MP but he had never done anything like this. He was both determined and “very scared”.

Together with another activist, Griffiths scaled a gate and attached himself to the factory's pipework using a padlock. The fuel-dispensing pumps were immediately shut down and remained so for 12 hours until the pair were removed by police.

"I have a son I want to be able to look in the eye when I tell him I love him," Griffiths wrote to me from HMP Polmont in April, explaining his motivation for taking direct action against Scotland’s last oil refinery. “He is my lens for caring about the world.”

In March this year, Griffiths was sentenced to 16 months for reckless and culpable conduct - the first time Scotland had imprisoned an environmental activist for nonviolent direct action. Between 1932 and 2018, it was almost unheard of for environmental activists to be given prison sentences. Since 2018, an estimated 120 have been locked up. This shift does not only relate to climate protest: 33 pro-Palestine protesters are on remand.

For months I have been corresponding with these individuals from their prison cells. Their letters are full of defiance, fear and anger. “It’s not a crime to want to pass on a better world,” wrote Indigo Rumbelow, 31, from Just Stop Oil. Charlotte Head, 29, from Palestine Action, wrote: “Losing my liberty has been like entering a purgatory where you are drowning, but never die.”