Retired GP who obstructed railway during power station protest avoids jail

A climate activist who stopped a train heading for the UK’s biggest power station has avoided jail as a court heard she has given up direct action because of the “shock” of being sent to prison over another protest.

Retired GP Dr Diana Warner, 66, walked down the line outside Drax power station wearing orange high-visibility clothing and waving an orange flag to stop a 400-metre long freight train on December 14, 2021.

A trial at Leeds Crown Court in February heard Warner travelled from her home in Bristol to carry out the protest in North Yorkshire, skipping court in the process.

Warner’s trial heard she should have been at court in London that morning charged with breaching an injunction to stay off the M25 motorway.

The defendant told the jury that injunction was imposed after she took part in Insulate Britain protests which brought the London orbital motorway to a halt, and she told the court she was eventually jailed for two months for contempt of court.

Warner said that she believed the publicity she received from skipping court and stopping the train in North Yorkshire instead would highlight her campaigning on the climate emergency.

She was found guilty of obstructing the railway over the Drax protest, which saw her being filmed by an associate beside the stationary train, explaining why she believed Drax is the “most ridiculous power station on earth”.

On Tuesday, a judge heard Warner had four convictions for five offences – all relating to protest activity – between 2019 and 2022.

Rosalind Burgin, defending, said Warner had not committed any offences since then and “now pursues her passion through non-direct means” as prison was “effective as a deterrent on her”.

Referring to a pre-sentence report about Warner, Ms Burgin said: “Since her experience of custody in 2022 which came as a shock to her, she stopped her involvement in direct action protest as a direct result of her time in prison and its impact on her health.”

Judge Guy Kearl KC, the Recorder of Leeds, sentenced Warner to a two-year conditional discharge, telling her if she engaged in any similar behaviour during that time she would be in breach of a court order.

The judge told her: “I accept you are deeply committed to the cause you support, and your motive is conscientious. You did not cause wider disruption to the railway lines and you did not cause damage.

“Since your period of imprisonment you have desisted from direct action.”

Judge Kearl ordered Warner to pay court costs of £4,380, saying that by opting for a crown court trial rather than one at a magistrates’ court, she had “incurred greater costs to the public purse and taken up valuable court time”.

In a video played to the jury during Warner’s trial, she could be heard explaining how the plant, which burns wood pellets, is “chomping through so many trees”, adding: “We’re just eating our forest, pristine forest”.

After it was sent out to consider its verdict, a jury of seven men and five women came back into court with a note for Judge Kearl, the Recorder of Leeds, which said: “As a matter of conscience we are finding it difficult to come to a verdict. What should we do?”

Judge Kearl told the jurors that they should not decide a case based on conscience, telling them they should come to a verdict based on applying the law, as directed by him, to the facts of the case, decided by them.

The jury later returned a unanimous guilty verdict to the single charge of obstructing an engine or carriage using a railway, contrary to the Malicious Damage Act 1861.