Just Stop Oil protesters guilty over Whitehall traffic disruption

A Just Stop Oil protester shouted “shame on you” at a judge after she and three others were convicted over a protest which brought central London traffic to a standstill.

Kate Bramfitt, of Hexham in Northumberland, Ben Plumpton and Naomi Goddard, both of Hebden Bridge, and Gregory Sculthorpe, of Doncaster, were found guilty of wilfully obstructing a highway after a trial at Stratford Magistrates’ Court.

They were among 80 people who took part in the peaceful protest on 6 November last year, which went past the Cenotaph in Whitehall towards Parliament Square and caused major disruption.

Queues of traffic built up as they began marching along the road for about 25 minutes, taking up two lanes but enabling cyclists to pass by.

The court heard the demonstrators had not informed the police about the protest beforehand and did not co-operate with officers when they were arrested.

The judge said “public safety had to be managed” and the “impact of the protest went quickly from small to significant”.

The protesters sat or laid down after they were arrested and knew their actions would cause disruption, the court was told.

The judge said: “The traffic on this occasion was barely crawling and brought to a standstill while the arrests were effected.”

Buses were delayed and diversions needed, meaning the impact of the protest had “knock-on effects”.

Bramfitt, 52, Sculthorpe, 38, Plumpton, 70, and Goddard, 60, were each given a conditional discharge.

They were ordered to pay a £26 victim surcharge and £310 costs, – except Bramfitt, whose costs were reduced to £200 after she described herself as “economically inactive” and not receiving benefits.

Bramfitt then shouted at Deputy District Judge Patricia Evans before storming out of court saying: “What you have done is shameful. How do you live with yourself?

“It is shameful, all of you – you are criminalising people who are fighting for your futures. Shame on you, judge.”

Another defendant, 40-year-old Lora Johnson, of Reydon in Suffolk, who was tried in her absence, was found not guilty of the same offence.

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