SEVEN climate protesters avoided jail sentences today for breaking windows at Barclays Bank.

The women attended sentencing at Southwark Crown Court in London for carefully cracking windows at Barclays HQ in Canary Wharf, to draw attention to Barclays’ financing of fossil fuels and to call on the bank to stop accelerating the climate emergency.

All seven women were given two years unconditional suspended sentences.

The defendants – Rosemary Annie Webster, 64, Cazzie Wood, 53, Gabby Ditton, 28, Lucy Porter, 48, Sophie Cowen, 31 and Zoe Cohen, 52 and one other – were found guilty during a two week trial last November after being charged with just under £100,000 worth of criminal damage at Barclays HQ in April 2021.

Webster, Wood, Ditton, Cohen and one other received eight months suspended for two years; Porter received seven months suspended and Cowen received six months suspended. All of them will pay £500 each towards prosecution costs to be paid within a year.

The activists said they had targeted Barclays HQ to protest the bank’s role in financing global fossil fuel projects. 

Earlier on Friday, campaigners marched from London Bridge to Southwark Crown Court in support of the seven activists. 

They included actor and climate and refugee rights activist Juliet Stevenson. Speaking outside the court ahead of the verdict, she said: “Non-violent protesters are today facing the prospect of prison. But we all know who the real criminals are.”

One supporter of Just Stop Oil was reportedly arrested outside the court while giving a speech in support of the defendants. The sentence was handed down as the Star went to press.