Just Stop Oil campaigner from Kendal released from prison

Gwen Harrison, an environmental consultant, was initially charged with aggravated trespass for breaking into the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire and scaling the fuel loading bays, where she and six others glued themselves to pipework, which forced the closure of the terminal for nearly 12 hours.

She then refused to attend court and was arrested at her home in Kendal and remanded by the judge at South Cumbria Magistrates' Court.

ARREST: Gwen Harrison being arrested in Kendal

Read more: Climate protestor refused bail due to "seriousness of the offence"

She was released from HMP Styal prison on Tuesday having been jailed for a week for contempt of court.

The 44-year-old is the second Kendal woman from the Just Stop Oil campaign to be jailed in the last month.

She appeared before Wolverhampton Magistrates Court and was released on bail.

Her imprisonment comes less than a month after Margaret Reid, 51, also from Kendal, was jailed at HMP Foston Hall in Derbyshire, also for refusing to attend court.

Instead of attending court she returned to protest outside the Kingsbury oil terminal while on bail.

They are both supporters of the Just Stop Oil coalition which is demanding that the UK Government stop all new oil and gas licenses.

“The scientists are warning us in increasingly desperate terms that there can be no new oil or gas if we want our young people to have a future,” said Ms Harrison.

CAMPAIGNING: LtoR, Margaret Reid, Catherine Rennie-Nash, Gwen Harrison

“Yet our Government is not only ignoring the warnings, it’s giving oil companies tax breaks to go after new fossil fuels in the North sea.

“This is the very definition of madness and they’re failing in their primary duty to keep us safe. More and more ordinary people are refusing to stand by and let them steal our young people’s futures and have decided to take action.”

Read more: Women arrested after breaching court ban to protest at oil terminal

Ms Harrison’s hearing on Tuesday was one of 15 that she has attended or is due to attend over a two-month period for her actions with the Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil campaigns.

She has several other cases still under investigation. She is due to stand trial at Birmingham Magistrates Court on October 17 for her aggravated trespass charge and has been ordered not to return to Kingsbury oil terminal.

Just Stop Oil has been involved in a series of protests which have involved closing down oil terminals in Warwickshire, Essex and London. Hundreds of arrests have been made and many supporters have been jailed, some for up to three months.

PROTESTING: Catherine Rennie-Nash(L), Gwen Harrison (4th from L) Margaret Reid (4th from R)

Many more cases are yet to be heard.

Ms Reid, who spent more than a week in prison last month, said: “I understand why some people say, ‘I agree with your cause of tackling the climate crisis, but not your methods  - why do you need to cause disruption?’ The answer is that civil disobedience and disruptive protest works.

“Asking nicely doesn’t and it hasn’t, and the scientists tell us we have just a few years to avoid the locking-in of human extinction.

“The suffragettes and the civil rights movement were both disruptive and deeply unpopular at the time, because when you challenge the status quo it ruffles feathers, especially those of people in power who want business to carry on as usual.

“More and more people are getting involved in Just Stop Oil, because they’ve come to realise that nonviolent civil resistance gives us the best chance of achieving rapid social change.”