‘It breaks your spirit’: The climate protesters spending Christmas in jail

The day before she handed herself in at the police station, Abigail Percy-Ratcliff packed her belongings away into storage, watched her favourite film, and said her goodbyes.

Family members in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, were in disbelief when she called them on Zoom to say she was expecting to be sent to prison without trial after being accused of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.

“I don’t think my parents really understood what was happening. I think they thought I was being dramatic,” she told openDemocracy. “I said: ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be [in custody]. It could be months and months. It could be years.’ I remember my sister laughed, because she thought that I was being overly cautious.”

Abigail was remanded in November 2022 for three and a half months after taking part in action with Just Stop Oil. She has pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charge, and is not expecting to be on trial until January 2025.

The 24-year-old is one of 12 who spent last Christmas behind bars following a series of protests as part of the group’s campaign to halt new oil and gas projects in the UK.

This year, according to Just Stop Oil, two activists will be in prison over Christmas: Stephen Gingell, 57, and Marcus Decker, 35. Ella Ward, 20, had been expecting to join them but was bailed on 20 December.

Decker will be spending a second Christmas and birthday in prison after receiving a two-year-and-seven month sentence for scaling the Dartford Crossing bridge in October last year. His co-defendant Morgan Trowland, 40, was released from prison earlier this month after spending 14 months in custody.

Abigail said she found herself in a more fortunate position than others last Christmas. “There was a lot of crying on the wing that day,” she said. “There was a girl I knew who was a Samaritans listener, and she told me Christmas is her least favourite day of the year because she’d have to go to like 20 different people’s cells because they were suicidal and she’d talk them down. It was a really bad day for everybody.

“But I called my parents and I watched a Christmas movie. We had a Christmas lunch, and some of the girls had decorated the wing. I was with some people that I knew and cared very much about. Also, my uncle visited me the day before. And the prisoners who worked in the kitchens made vegan cake and custard for us.”

Describing her time in prison more generally, Abigail said: “It really breaks your spirit. I think it’s designed to. People focus a lot on the physical conditions, which can be very bad. But I really can’t complain… The food’s terrible, which is to be expected, and the bed is very hard. But that stuff didn’t really bother me.”

What did bother her was the “psychological toll inflicted by the criminal justice system in a wider sense, but specifically by prison guards”. Despite not having faced trial yet, she felt as though she was already being treated like she was guilty.

“For all of your basic needs, food, medication, laundry… Every little tiny thing that you would think nothing of when you do it in your regular life, you depend on somebody who, at best, doesn’t care about you at all, or at worst, actively wants to see you suffer. I think a lot of prison guards believe that they’re the punishing arm of the state,” she told openDemocracy.

Daniel, who asked us not to use his surname, agreed with Abigail: “Once you’re in there, you’re a prisoner. You’re not treated particularly well or respected… You just kind of become powerless – you realise you’ve lost control… There were times where they just forgot to unlock my cell at mealtime.”

Daniel was arrested in November 2022 in what he described as “one of the most surreal moments” of his life and spent almost four months behind bars before he was bailed. He has pleaded not guilty, and his case is expected to begin in June 2024.

He spent last Christmas feeling optimistic that he would be given bail the next month, having been refused on his first attempt. Eventually, it took a fourth bail application in February before he was allowed out.

“I thought: ‘I’ll get out this time. I’m a peaceful protester, I’ve got no convictions, prisons are overcrowded.’”

It came as a shock to him when his second bail application was rejected.

“I’ve got family members who are not in the best of health. My gran had had a fall down the stairs and was going through a bit of a rough patch. You want to be there to support your family, but you’re locked up in prison,” he said.

It was tough but I have no regrets. I’m not a victim. I’m not traumatised. I feel more vindicated than everDaniel

Over Christmas he spoke with family over the phone, but for him, it was a day like any other. “There are no decorations,” he said. “There’s nothing. I wasn’t that fussed about it – a Christmas tree wouldn’t have made any difference.

“It was tough but I have no regrets. I’m not a victim. I’m not traumatised. I feel more vindicated than ever.”

Both Daniel and Abigail received lots of support from people who had heard about their imprisonment.

“I used to get tons of Christmas cards and postcards the entire time I was there. Every day, they were just sliding them into the door. Sometimes several times a day,” Daniel said.

It was the same for Abigail, who would get “big fat stacks of mail… from people I'd never met from all over the world telling me that I was an inspiration to them and thanking me for what I was accused of doing. I think that what I was most afraid of was that none of it mattered.

“It would be awful to go to prison for something that didn’t have any effect on people. Knowing that our actions have been as successful as they are and hearing so many people tell me that they were proud of what I’ve done – that was definitely what made it OK, and what made it bearable.”

Decker’s partner Holly Cullen-Davies, a musician and teacher, agreed, and said their actions do matter. “That’s the point,” she told openDemocracy. “Protest works. Unfortunately, the protesters have to pay the personal price. And unfortunately, those who were disrupted on the day also pay. I’m really sorry for them, but I think this kind of non-violent protest is proportionate to the crisis. Young people are trying everything now because leaders are failing them.”

According to Just Stop Oil, Trowland and Decker’s sentences were the longest for non-violent climate protests in British history. While Trowland has been released, Decker, a German national, now faces a “double punishment” as he risks being deported.

“If he’d been told beforehand that he’d be deported,” said Cullen-Davies, “he would have probably not risked that part of his own liberty.”

Asked how Decker is coping in prison, Cullen-Davies said: “He is a really unusually strong and resourceful person. I’m amazed daily at how he’s dealing with the different challenges he’s had.”

In conversations split between phone calls and prison visits, the two “always come back to the fact that he did what he did because we’re in a dire situation. [Compared with] other parts of the world where people are dying because of the climate crisis, we just feel quite lucky to be alive and to be safe at the moment.

“I have to reiterate that a lot. People assume that it’s awful, and we must be totally broken by this situation. But Marcus knew he was going to prison. He stands by what he did, and so do I because given the scale of what we’re looking at, it was absolutely proportionate to the crisis.”