We brought this case to court to tackle the apparent police bias against activists
As a member of the Climate Camp Legal Team I was disappointed that your article about our high court victory over the Metropolitan police put such emphasis on possible compensation claims (Met kettling of G20 protesters ruled unlawful, 15 April).
Your report, which began "Thousands of people found by the high court to have been illegally detained … may sue Scotland Yard for false imprisonment", quoted our solicitor John Halford, saying: "Everyone in the kettle has a claim for false imprisonment and damages as they were detained against their will." But he was simply responding to questions from your reporter – and while technically correct this does not reflect our motivation in bringing the case. It was not about obtaining financial compensation for those kettled.
We brought the case because we found it hard to believe that the decision by senior police officers to violently push back and detain thousands of climate change protesters for almost five hours was lawful. And the case was only filed because the Climate Camp Legal Team and numerous supporters gave time and money to help us. Why? Because kettling had become so much part of the everyday protest experience that we felt we had little option but to challenge it.
But there was a wider motivation: there is seemingly a police bias against activists. During the Climate Camp before our G20 camp – at Kingsnorth, Kent – the police misled parliament, stating that 70 officers were injured by protesters, when the real number was zero. Subsequently, the police operation at Kingsnorth was found by the courts to have been unlawful.
Since the G20, we have discovered that activist "Mark Stone" was actually undercover Metropolitan police officer Mark Kennedy – part of a multimillion-pound infiltration operation against protesters. Even more worryingly, official investigations are currently under way to determine if Nottinghamshire police, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit or the Met withheld evidence from a trial of climate change activists. This looks like a pattern of ideologically driven anti-environmentalist behaviour.
The outcome of our case will hopefully stop the police thinking they have carte blanche to deprive people of their liberty. That should already have happened, as the Met say they've learned lessons after the G20. Yet earlier this year, ahead of January's student demonstrations, Sir Hugh Orde, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said extreme kettling (where protesters are contained and then compressed into a confined area) was an appropriate tactic.
As Jenny Jones, a Green party member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said in your article: "Kettling takes away the human rights and civil liberties of innocent, legal protesters." Yet despite this the Met are appealing against the high court judgment. It concerns us that the Met have decided to make funds available for this; have senior police officers not heard that junior officers face the sack because of the budget cuts?