Contributors
JESS AGAR
Artist and activist, found ‘Not Guilty’ in 2023 of the HSBC Actions
“You know that you are doing the right thing when governments have to start beating you down with all their power and all their might.”
“You should be deeply concerned about the government’s response to climate activists calling attention to the climate emergency is not to act against the climate emergency but to change the law to make protesting illegal.”
SAM SMITHSON
Human Rights activist, found “Not Guilty” in 2023 of the HSBC Action
“Peaceful protesters cannot by the legal terms use the defence of consent anymore like we did to defend ourselves.”
TRACEY MALLAGAN
Angry mum from Milton Keynes found Not Guilty in 2023 of the HSBC Action
“Every time a group of us are found not guilty they send [our line of defence] to the Supreme Court and they take it away from us.”
GULLY BUJAK
Co-founder of Cooperation Hull, found Not Guilty in the 2023 HSBC Action.
“People are being silenced and prevented from and intimidated from speaking about the breakdown of our environment and our planet becoming unlivable.”
VALERIE BROWN
Writer, grandmother and activist
“You are going to condemn yourself to the jury if you have no way to defend and say why you did it. So taking away all defences including belief in consent is to me a system that is afraid, totally afraid and protecting themselves at all costs.”
TRUDI WARNER
Artivist and retired social worker
“The state is really trying to silence the people we really need to be hearing.”
“I stood with this sign outside a court and hoped that people would see it and take notice of it. I had no idea it would be controversial. As far as I was concerned is this is a legal principle which is actually on a marble plaque in the Old Bailey. And it’s been there since 1670.”
SUSAN REID
Grandma and retired community care worker
“I have said from the beginning that I did this to stop HSBC from killing children. Unicef estimated that over twenty thousand children are displaced each day, and that climate change is the key driver. That means that every day of our three-week trial over twenty thousand children have had to pick up the things around them and leave, none of those children will be able to go home at the end of the day.”
CLARE FARRELL
Extinction Rebellion Co-Founder
“It’s tragically surreal to live in times when the justice system agrees we’re totally fucked but has nothing to say about the cause, the remedy, the victims or the perpetrators. We must continue, we will.”
“The courtroom Where we were tried is on the River Thames, and in future it will be inundated with flood water because of the scale of global ice melt and rising sea levels. There’s no dispute that there are many nation states that are set to be wiped off the map entirely and that this is all being fueled by carbon emissions, which are funded by the banking sector.”
“I believe in telling the truth because we have to face the truth of our circumstances. If we want to act appropriately or wisely, I also believe that change can happen. And it must.”
MIRIAM INSTONE
Musician and activist
“It was one of the most incredible experiences in a lot of ways, but really scary. Very, very, anxiety-inducing. I can’t believe we did it in a lot of ways. Now, actually thinking about it I think it was it was a brave thing to do, but I don’t think any of us could actually realise the effects and where it would go and how many people would see it.”
Dr GAIL BRADBROOK
Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion
Found guilty of criminal damage, for breaking a pane of reinforced security glass at the Department for Transport, in protest against HS2
“I said to my prosecutor, who was a woman, she wouldn’t even be cross-examined in me if the women’s movement hadn’t existed and hadn’t taken actions, including breaking windows. You know, Emmeline Pankhurst said there’s no greater argument in modern politics than that of the broken pane.”
We talk about life on Earth dying.
The reality is, it’s being killed. It’s being killed by policies. It’s being killed by politicians. Is being killed by business leaders. Is being killed by a lack of true democracy, a lack of accountability. And when you’re in a court system and there’s a judge and a prosecutor there, part of you is like, where are the killers?
BLYTH BRENTNALL
Journalist
“Who should really have been on trial? The Nine women – we the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and daughters who took action in the way we thought was the most effective to stop the climate emergency, or should it be HSBC? One of the world’s biggest investors in fossil fuel.”
‘We really needed to try because we’re talking about the survival of all life on Earth.’
CATHY EASTBURN
Mother and musician
“So every evening I walk 100 years to the hill where my great-great-great-granddaughter sits.
I carry words of blessing and I reach out to touch her back and feeling me near, she turns and sad-eyed and heavy with grief and she asks me, “What was it like when the great whale swam? When the birds sang you awake? When the bumblebees buzzed? When the rains came soft and the cool soil smelt sweet underfoot?” and my blessings catch in my throat.
On dark days, I walk the hundred years and I find no one there.
Let today be the bright day, when I lay my hand upon her back and feeling me near, she turns and blesses me and says “Your love was sweet enough sweet sister, your love was fierce enough.”
Cathy’s words were Inspired by The Good Ancestor by Maverick Leggett.
TIM CROSLAND
Former Govt Lawyer, Director of Plan B (climate justice charity) Co Founder of Defend Our Juries
“The jury trial is a vital safety valve of our democracy. It’s a break on the abuse of executive power when power is not being used to support and protect the public, but to support and protect other interests as well.
And that’s why this film is so important, because of what’s being hidden away, what the government doesn’t want the public to know, what’s being swept under the carpet, that our vital interests are in danger and those arguments that people were able to present to a jury of their peers, the government gets its way.”
‘We should never forget that in Germany in the 1920s, part of the trajectory that Germany entered into was the abolition of jury trial under a so-called emergency measure. And that paved the way and always paves the way for tyranny.”