Louise Lancaster, a 58-year-old former special educational needs co-ordinator, has been sentenced to four years in prison for her role in the M25 protests that caused "massive disruption" over four days in November 2022. Her family describes her as "unrelentingly kind" and someone who "listens more than she speaks," expressing shock at the sentence length while backing her climate activism.
Lancaster was one of five co-conspirators who attended a Zoom meeting to plan recruiting 45 volunteers to climb gantries over the M25. Her former husband Tim explains that Louise, who studied maths at Oxford, had previously tried conventional activism - marches, petitions, writing to MPs - but concluded "we did all of that and nothing changed — we have to do something else." He describes how difficult the decision was for someone who worried about inconveniencing people: "She wouldn't have done it if she'd been able to see another way."
The protest impacted around 700,000 vehicles, allegedly cost the Met Police £1.1m, and caused missed exams, funerals and cancer appointments, leaving the motorway "compromised" for more than 120 hours. Lancaster did not herself take part in the November protest, but she paid more than £1,000 to rent the Airbnb where protesters stayed and bought climbing equipment. She had previously climbed a gantry on the M25 in July 2022.
On the Zoom call, Roger Hallam, co-founder of Just Stop Oil, said they intended to cause "the biggest disruption in British modern history" to force the government to end new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Judge Christopher Hehir said Lancaster and her co-conspirators had "crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic."
Hallam was jailed for five years, while Lancaster received four years along with Daniel Shaw, 38, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22. Her son Theo says she knew the risks: "if we'd said, 'Mum, don't do it,' she wouldn't have taken part."
