 |
| With my wife Wendy outside the court. |
We were called back to London for sentencing on the 20 April 2023. We were permitted to speak "in mitigation".
This is what I said:
Revd Mark Coleman
Mitigation Statement Pre-Sentencing at ILCC on 20/4/2023
Your honour. I would like to speak about why I sat on the Highway in October 2021. This act led to me being found guilty in this court for the common law offence of Public Nuisance on 27/01/2023.
In mitigation I want to state that I acted to protect human life, to draw attention to the death and destruction caused by rising emissions and the impacts of cold damp homes on the health of the citizens of our country. I had learned of the effects of fuel poverty when I worked for the charity Age Concern in the 1980s. Later, in the Liverpool and Rochdale parishes where I served as parish priest, I saw the misery caused by these uninsulated homes and the fuel poverty and debt that often ensues. My nonviolent act of sitting on the highway was an act of witness against this injustice and cruelty. I sat in witness to the 8500 excess winter deaths that year.
I wanted to make this injustice widely known. I wanted the government to act to protect the lives of the vulnerable, as is their duty. In mitigation I want to tell you that I acted out of love, in keeping with traditions of protest which are recognised in a healthy society and very often recognised as legitimate defences in our courts of law
When I was summoned to Stratford Magistrates Court in April 2022, I opted for a jury trial in the crown court. I expected to be able - in this crown court - to speak to my peers - the 12 people in a jury - about why I had done what I had done. It was painful, in the trial which has brought me before you today, to not be able to present to the jury the full range of evidence. I believe that I should have been able to speak to them about the context for my actions. specifically the context of rapid and serious global heating,
You will agree, your Honour, that we all have a duty to tell the truth, especially in court. It grieves me as a Christian that I swore on the Bible “to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” but I followed your ruling and did not talk about my motivation, the effects of emissions, the number of deaths in the UK from cold homes. In this I behaved somewhat like the Exxon scientists who kept quiet about their findings (about how burning oil etc heats the planet) because they were told to by their bosses to keep quiet. The bosses were simply following the law of corporations - that is to put short term profitability of their company above anything else.
We spoke at length in the trial about 'significance' and what the word meant. This word is at the heart of deciding whether the offence of public nuisance has been committed. In mitigation, I suggest that my act of sitting on the road was an act of tiny significance in global terms relative to the very significant disruption caused now and in the future by burning of fossil fuels. That significant disruption means many many suffering people and many many dead people because of the failure of harvests, water shortages, refugees on the move, bush fires, floods in ever increasing numbers.
That is not to say that I did not care about individuals who were delayed by our sitting on the road. I did and I do. But I have a duty, we all do, to think bigger, to care for their future lives and the lives of their children.I studied law at the University of Kent way back in 1977. I learned about how Lord Denning helped the law adapt to the new social reality of women owning property. I learned something about the rule of Law. It is good to live in a society where there is a functioning rule of Law. Rising global temperatures, with the brutal consequences on people, threatens our rule of law, our very civilisation. That’s why I am in nonviolent resistance, to protect what we have done as nations and peoples to make the world a better, healthier, safer place. Our legal system should be protecting life.
You have heard many of these cases, and much evidence of the death and damage caused by high global temperatures. Many people like me have quoted papers and statistics. After a while we get numb to all this. There is a limit to how much we can process
I’d like to make reference to one paper and share one story. It’s a story of hope - people coming together to solve a problem.
(i tell a story - A refugee in Rochdale, coming to church, the joy and privilege of welcoming people, the delights of culture - showing me how to unpack a pomegranate, parties at the vicarage, Iranians like to burn pasta. The mental health crisis, fears for loved ones back home. The destitute refugees who have nowhere to live - horror that we could allow this to happen. A kind recently widowed man offers his empty house. The Catholic church offers an empty house. Together we solve a problem. Sing old MacDonald had a farm at English Lessons. Giving evidence at the tribunal. The joy of getting leave to remain. Seeing them settle.. The joy of acting to protect those precious humans.The paper “The future of the Human Climate Niche” was published in 2019. The authors summarise the conclusions. “We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterised by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y”
In the Gospel of Matthew 22:35-40
... and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. Love God above all else. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." It has become commonplace for it to be said that faith is a private matter and we should leave the running of society to the state, or the market, or private corporations. I must say to you, that I shall continue to do my best to love my neighbour, to minimise their suffering and to stop their premature death. That's a responsibility of each one of us as humans.To be clear it is my intention to choose life over death and to resist government policy where it leaves people in cold damp homes and continues to facilitate new oil and gas projects. I expect that this civil resistance will involve sitting on the public highway again.
In the ordination service priests are told that they should “resist evil, support the weak, defend the poor, and intercede for all in need”. For me of course it has moral authority. Poor people are more likely to die prematurely. I have tried to be true to my ordination vows. I see it as part of my vocation as a priest, to continue to resist until the government acts.
In conclusion, I believe I have acted morally, to protect others, out of love, out of a desire to serve the public good. I accept that I have been found guilty by the court. You must now hold me to account if you are seeking to uphold the law, for I have knowingly broken it. The law right now protects those who continue to harm and destroy our only home. The big corporations profit from a business that they know is killing us. They act within the law, as does our government, which facilitates and protects these corporate interests.
There must be a high level of justification to break the law, that is, something has become more important than obeying the law. That something is life on earth, justice for those dying now and for the generations who must inherit what is left to them. If you think my actions are justified, in this most remarkable context, you should let me walk away from this court without punishment.