Ella, along with three other Just Stop Oil supporters was found guilty of Conspiracy to Commit Public Nuisance, after being held on remand for 6 months and denied any legal defence in court. Ella, with three other co-defendants has been returned to prison awaiting sentendeing, this letter was written before the three week trial –
Hi, It’s Ella here, writing from HMP Styal, a women’s prison just outside of Manchester.
Today’s my 22nd birthday. If you asked me a few years ago what I’d most likely be doing on my 22nd birthday, I’d probably guess eating takeaway and going to the pub. I’d rather be holding a pint of lager and standing in a busy pub, than holding a blue plastic prison mug and sitting on my lumpy top bunk!
But being in prison’s not a bad way to spend my birthday.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve struggled from time to time being in prison. Everyone does. You are stripped of all autonomy, all control, completely reliant on mostly uncaring, overworked, stressed, desensitised prison officers to meet all your basic needs. Prison is degrading and dehumanising. You witness people being treated in a way no human on Earth should ever be.
But all of this being said, if prison is where the government will send me for acting nonviolently against harm and according to my moral convictions, then I feel at peace with being here.
Prison is the reaction of a government that feels threatened. People can be shocked that nonviolent protest can land you in prison, let alone for up to ten years, which is the maximum sentence I am facing.
It makes me angry, but I’m not surprised. For a state that is obsessed with maintaining business as usual at all costs, with burning fossil fuels and prioritising profit over life, the logical response to anything that threatens that is to do everything it can to stop us. And prison is the most powerful tool in the arsenal.
Unfortunately for the government, prison is not a deterrent to living in resistance. The people trying to deter us think very transactionally and individualistically. ‘If we do enough of X, they will finally stop doing Y’. They think that individual loss is a reason we will choose to not act.
They don’t understand that refusing to be complicit in allowing the climate crisis to unfold, and living in resistance against a project causing massive suffering, is not a switch we can just turn off.
And they don’t understand that we act as a community. Each person in prison has a hundred people holding them afloat.
With enough community support – the constant stream of letters, visits, money when needed, books, legal guidance and more – we can alleviate the suffering of the people in prison (which is what everyone that supports me has been doing!) and make it so much more doable.
This is the ultimate resistance: we are immune to the most extreme deterrent the state can use against us. We have rendered the state powerless. So we have to reframe prison. Prison is a tool the state is using to deter us. Prison is a sign we are pushing the right buttons.
As the climate crisis worsens, repression of resistance will increase and the bar for going to prison will get lower and lower, as the government continues to try and deter us from taking further effective nonviolent action.
For those who can go to prison (I know not all of us can), we can’t allow our fear to override our determination to act. We know the support is there and we will be held by a community and helped.
There’s also compassion and care in prison, just not from the structures within it, or from the staff or officers, with very few exceptions.
Every day I see women helping each other out, supporting each other, having each other’s backs. When we’ve got nothing, we’re all in the same boat. This isn’t to say it’s perfect. It’s definitely not, but it’s also not the scary place full of evil, dangerous people you might have been told it is.
As I said, today is my 22nd birthday, and I’ve had a really special day. Some women made me beautiful homemade cards, gave me a few homemade gifts, and they even pooled a bit of money to buy me two bars of vegan chocolate off the canteen. It was really kind and thoughtful and I’m so thankful to them.
I feel supported and cared for by the people that the media and the government say are the worst in society, that must be locked away, for ‘our safety’.
Who is benefitting from keeping nearly 4,000 women in prison at an average cost of £50,000 per person per year? Around 9 in 10 women are in prison for nonviolent offences. In the vast majority, if not all cases, the harm being done by the prison system is far, far greater than any harm these women would do.
Every single one of us is only one decision away from coming to prison. We are no different – and no better – than the women behind these walls, except maybe the circumstances life has handed to us.
These are women worthy of love and respect, kindness and humanity, compassion and care. Women who despite not being treated with any of these things by the prison system, still show it to each other, and show it to me, and have made today – my 22nd birthday special and meaningful and warm and memorable.
So yes, maybe spending my twenties in prison isn’t typical, but against the odds, I’m doing well and feeling resilient and strong.
I refuse to leave my future and the future of young people globally, in the hands of a government hell-bent on profiting at the expense of human lives. I’m completely at the mercy of an uncaring prison system, but I’m surrounded by care from the women in here, and I’m surrounded by care from the people out there.
