An injunction has been granted to ban protest from High Speed Two (HS2) land.
The injunction was sought covering the whole route of the HS2 line, from London to Birmingham and beyond to Manchester and Leeds, that would prevent the defendants from: entering or remaining upon HS2 land; obstructing or otherwise interfering with vehicles accessing it or leaving it; interfering with any fence or gate at its perimeter. Also banned are denying access to that land by contractors; and banned is even digging beneath the land, given the protest tactic of tunnels at the Euston terminus of the project in the winter of 2020-21. Another tactic of protesters glueing themselves to items making it harder for the authorities to remove them is also covered; protesters not being allowed to ‘apply any substance’.
Mr Justice Julian Knowles said that he was ‘not concerned with the rights or wrongs of’ the line, and that the injunction would not prohibit lawful protest. While he accepted that the defendants are expressing ‘genuine and strongly held views’, he noted that the protests have ‘in significant measure not been peaceful’ and have seen arrests; and violence, intimidation, criminal damage, and assault. Even where injunctions have already been in place, protesters have resisted being removed.
He said that he was satisfied that the trespass and nuisance would continue unless restrained; given the number of incidents already (notably tunnelling at Euston Square Gardens, and at Swynnerton in Staffordshire).
Mr Knowles said that ‘claimants reasonably anticipate that the activists will move their activities from location to location along the route of the HS2 Scheme. Given the size of the HS2 Scheme, the claimants say that it is impossible for them to reasonably protect the entirety of the HS2 Land by active security patrol or even fencing’.
As for the sheer size of the case, Mr Knowles, sitting in Birmingham, noted that the documentation ran to thousands of pages; and his final judgement was more than 30,000 words. He concluded that the aim pursued by the claimants in making this application was sufficiently important to justify interference with the defendants’ rights under Articles 10 and 11 (of the European Convention on Human Rights), especially as that interference will be limited to what occurs on public land, where lawful protest will still be permitted.
The extensive injunction was appropriate, he said, given that the protesters seek to cause maximum disruption across a large geographical extent. The injunction, he said, struck ‘a fair balance between the rights of the individual protestors and the general right and interests of the claimants and others who
are being affected by the protests, including the national economy’.
For more on the injunction visit https://www.hs2.org.uk/in-your-area/hs2-route-wide-injunction/. As it’s a civil injunction, if someone disobeys it they may be in contempt of court; which can mean a fine or prison or seizure of assets.
Photo by Mark Rowe; view of HS2 construction site, part of the land subject to the injunction, from the A38 north of Lichfield, Staffordshire.
