Unpaid work for Greenpeace rig protestors
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Five Greenpeace protestors who boarded an oil rig and prevented it from leaving the Cromarty Firth earlier this year, costing operators £110,900 and sparking a costly police operation, have been ordered to undertake a total of 585 hours of unpaid work between them.
But North sheriff Olga Pasportnikov acknowledged the passion and commitment to the climate change cause shown by the five activists – Joanne Paterson (53), Munlochy; Thomas Johnston (35), Wales; Peter Chan (49) Reading; Meena Rajput (39), London; and Andrew McParland (52), Epsom.
She singled out Paterson, who works with refugees, Chan and Johnstone for their charitable work, describing them as “outstanding citizens most of the time”.
But passing sentence at Tain Sheriff Court today, she said: “There has to be a balance allowing peaceful protest and demonstration as the rules of our society allow and doing so in a way that does not break the law.”
She added that she particularly deplored the way RNLI and coastguards had at one point been drawn into the stand-off which lasted from Sunday to Friday June 9-14.
The five had previously admitted breaching the peace by boarding the rig without permission, refusing to leave, tethering themselves to it and placing themselves and others in potential danger.
Joanne Paterson was one of the first protestors to occupy Transocean’s Paul B Loyd Jnr rig as it was upping anchors around 6.30pm on Sunday, June 9, with 99 workers on board in preparation for moving to the Vorlic Field.
She and others took up position on a horizontal access walkway, and tethered themselves to the rig, proceeding to live stream and upload videos in the protests.
Procurator fiscal Robert Weir told the court: “A full police operation was launched in response to this with the rig being monitored by numerous police officers from the port of Cromarty, Nigg and Invergordon.”
On Monday June 10, Paterson left the rig and Chan and Johnstone boarded it. Paterson was arrested at her Munlochy home on Wednesday.
Mr Weir said that with the rig still occupied by Chan and Johnstone on Thursday, Police Scotland called in specialist negotiators, a police rope access team and marine diving unit. The cost to the public purse of the additional police activity during the entire week was £140,000.
Officers from the police rope access team abseiled to where Chan and Johnstone were suspended by ropes near to the water and eventually persuaded them to give themselves up at around 7.30pm on the Thursday.
The protest was thought to have ended at that point but at around 4.30am on Friday, June 14, Rajput and McParland took advantage of a failure to adequately secure the rig and and sped out to it in a fast boat
The two shackled themselves to a platform half-way up a rig leg and were there for some 14 hours before being forcibly removed at around 5.20pm.
Jim Bready, defence agent for all five, said Greenpeace was forced to protest in the way it did because “the legal remedies open to them have been defeated time after time by the power of the companies they have been protesting against.”
The lawyer claimed there was no real danger to the person on the rig because the activists were “well trained in the work they do and are always concerned for the safety of the people involved”
Rajput will have to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work and Paterson 100 and Chan, Johnston and McParland 135 hours each.
A Crown motion was granted for the forfeiture of items including ropes, rucksacks, banners and a mobile phone, seized from the oil platform
