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A climate activist who served one of the longest prison sentences in modern British history for a peaceful protest has won his appeal against deportation.
Marcus Decker was jailed for two years and seven months for a protest in which he climbed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Dartford Crossing and unveiled a Just Stop Oil banner in October 2022. He was served with an automatic deportation order while in prison.
If he had been unsuccessful in his appeal, the 36-year-old German national would have been the first person to have been deported from the UK for peaceful protest. His legal team argued that such action would be disproportionate, violate his right to family life with his partner and stepchildren and further chill legitimate protest at a time of escalating climate crisis.
Decker had expected the tribunal judge to make a decision in his case at a later date, but his appeal was allowed at the end of Monday’s hearing.
Decker said: “After an intense day of legal proceedings and an hour of harrowing cross-examination for both my partner, Holly, and me, I’m deeply relieved that we’ve won today. I feel this is a huge victory for the climate movement and for the laws protecting peaceful protest in this country as a whole. The judge’s level of confidence in unusually announcing the outcome immediately is a chink of hope in an environment of repression.”
He was released from prison in February last year after serving 16 months. Because he began the appeal against deportation while in prison, he served longer than his fellow protester, Morgan Trowland, despite Trowland having been given a longer three-year jail term.
Decker’s appeal against deportation was supported by climate experts, religious leaders, celebrities and members of the public. The UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, sent a 10-page letter to the government opposing deportation, while he also had support from 22 Nobel prize laureates and 562 actors, musicians and other artists.
Among those who issued statements opposing his deportation before the appeal were the former cabinet minister Lord Hain, who was a leader of the anti-apartheid movement during the 1970s and 1980s, a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Sir David King, the actor Juliet Stevenson and the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
