Young Campaigner Award
Josie Argyle
Mass Trespass on HS2 Land, in Solidarity with protestor Jellytot who was facing prison for protesting.
Photographer: Talia Woodin
Date: July 2020
A ten-fold increase in people being imprisoned off the back of protest injunctions led Josie Argyle to tackle the ‘chilling effect’
The Campaign
Josie began looking into the ‘chilling effect’ that injunctions are having on protest rights in the UK, prompted by the impact of the HS2 Route-Wide Injunction on her and her friends. She soon realised there was an emergency unfolding. Injunctions led to 97 people being sent to prison in 2022, increasing from just nine in 2021.
Not only protesters, but sometimes even lawyers, didn’t truly understand this tricky quasi-criminal instrument. Seeing that there was a gap in information and advice, Josie planned, fundraised, and created a toolkit for peaceful protesters who face prison sentences because of protest injunctions.
Taking advice from supportive lawyers and NGOs, she fundraised to cover time and travel, as well as professional editing and design to create a beautiful, usable toolkit that both communities and lawyers can use when faced with an injunction.
https://not1more.org/our-work?spotlight=united-kingdom
Sponsored by
Illustration of Protest from Protest Injunctions Toolkit
Illustrator: Elizabeth Hudson
Date: January 2024
Injunctions have increasingly been used by both the Government and private corporations to suppress dissent. By exploiting this lesser understood form of prosecution to protect private interests, they are completely disregarding and silencing the communities their practices most affect.
I feel strongly that people should have access to the correct information about their rights, particularly when facing prison time or fines of life-changing sums of money. I hope that the Injunctions Toolkit will help people to make better informed decisions when taking part in protest and thank the Sheila McKechnie Foundation for platforming this issue.”
Josie Argyle
Illustration of Protest from Protest Injunctions Toolkit
Illustrator: Elizabeth Hudson
Date: January 2024
Injunctions have increasingly been used by both the Government and private corporations to suppress dissent. By exploiting this lesser understood form of prosecution to protect private interests, they are completely disregarding and silencing the communities their practices most affect.
I feel strongly that people should have access to the correct information about their rights, particularly when facing prison time or fines of life-changing sums of money. I hope that the Injunctions Toolkit will help people to make better informed decisions when taking part in protest and thank the Sheila McKechnie Foundation for platforming this issue.”
Josie Argyle
The Change
Josie’s toolkit and her campaign have drawn attention to an issue that was flying under the radar. Important campaigns on other recent legislative changes have gained public attention, yet injunctions can have similarly devastating impacts, particularly on small communities who might be fighting to protect a tiny piece of nature that matters to them.
Access to rich and diverse places to assemble is important for participation in democracy. However, injunctions are used to exclude people from the places that are meaningful to them. She saw how dangerous it is for ordinary people to protest and, instead of being put off herself, she made sure that everyone who she could reach who was going through this process had the advice that they needed. This became the blueprint for the toolkit, the main purpose of which will be to avoid harm to future campaigners.
Many protesters didn’t know what an injunction was before being implicated by one. Josie helped to make sure that each person who went to prison was emotionally supported throughout the entire process, turning up to their cases with treats that she knew would make them happy and fundraising to ensure they had credit for phone calls and commissary throughout their sentence. She was incredibly vocal when she saw people’s additional needs were not being supported by the court.
The Future
Thanks to Josie, others have begun moving on this issue. She remains determined to ensure that grassroots voices of those affected by injunctions will get into Parliament.
Her toolkit was essential in demystifying injunctions for those at risk, but it has also been an incredible tool for campaigning as Josie brought together lawyers and NGO’s to discuss these new risks. As a result, while some groups are now taking a legal approach to injunctions, Josie is ensuring that there is also an approach which will hold policy makers to account. Josie is going to keep on fighting until this law is changed.
Who else was involved?
Josie is part of a supportive community of campaigners against HS2. She was supported by Not1More to create the toolkit, and was given invaluable legal advice by Garden Court Chambers, Robert Lizars, Bindman’s Solicitors and Action4Justice.
