A MOTHER-of-three from Winchester has been found guilty of wilful obstruction of the highway after taking part in a Just Stop Oil protest in East London.

Hazel Agombar, 54, from Hyde, was one of 13 climate protesters arrested last October for sitting down on a busy road for 45 minutes on a Sunday lunchtime.

The roadblock near Spitalfields Market was part of Just Stop Oil's campaign - demanding the Government stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects.

On Tuesday she was given 12 months conditional discharge and ordered to pay £300 costs by Stratford Magistrates Court.

Ms Agombar, of Egbert Road, Hyde, is the co-founder of Winchester Friends of the Earth and a long term campaigner in the city.

She works for a fuel poverty charity which supports households on low incomes to stay warm and well at home during the cost of living crisis.

She took part in the protest before last year’s COP27 climate crisis talks in Egypt. Ms Agombar was arrested after sitting down at the junction of Commercial Road and Lamb Street in east London.

Ms Agombar said she felt forced to take direct action after all other avenues of protest – such as letter writing, signing petitions, organising peaceful demonstrations and voting – had not worked.

She said: "I have done everything I can within the democratic process to make my voice heard on the climate crisis. Nothing has worked. There is no other issue more important or more vital than this one. 

"A parent’s first duty is to protect their children – and I am failing to protect my three sons because they are living on a dangerously over-heating planet.  By 2030, scientists predict that we will have crossed almost all planetary boundaries safe for human habitation. That’s just a few year ago. 

"It is unthinkable that my sons, my nieces and nephews, my friend’s children, the wonderful young people that I work with, young people everywhere – none of them will have the future that we imagined they would.

"The government continues to deny the scale of the problem – they are lying to us. The UK Government defies climate warnings with new oil and gas licences but it cannot defy the law of physics. These new extraction and burning of fossil fuels will worsen the already terrible warming. 

"I am not happy to disrupt other people’s lives. Of course I’m not. But by taking action I was trying to prevent a greater crime from being committed – that of the UK government issuing 150 new licences for gas and oil infrastructure."

She said last year’s protest was designed to disrupt traffic and raise awareness of the climate crisis, but not entirely block the highway. Emergency vehicles, cyclists pedestrians were not blocked, she said.

Ms Agombar has been an active climate campaigner in Winchester for 20 years.  Just Stop Oil is demanding that the Government commits to ending all new oil and gas projects in the UK.

She said: "My concern about the climate crisis has deepened in the past few years. We can see evidence of global warming leading to climate breakdown all around us. And it will become terrifyingly worse. We are faced with unimaginable challenges – food shortages, broken supply chains, drought, extreme heat, catastrophic storms, sea level rise, disease, mass migration, and war. I understand from the scientific reports that I have read that we will live to see societal collapse. I am distraught and furious at the lack of meaningful governmental action.  Direct action is a last resort and reflects the gravity of the situation.”