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Senior figures in British fossil fuel and water companies are having to deal with a form of workplace stress unfamiliar to most British workers – the possibility of being placed under citizen’s arrest.
The Citizens Arrest Network (CAN) is targeting various executives at UK water and oil and gas companies, serving them with legal documents and attempting to place them under citizen’s arrest as part of a campaign to “hold those making the decisions driving the worst environmental pollution to account”. The group has attempted citizen’s arrests on eight people from five firms including Thames Water since 18 March.
A videographer who followed the activists in the course of their citizen’s arrests shows Gilles d’Argouges, Chief Financial Officer for Perenco, an Anglo-French oil and gas firm, phoning his colleagues during the encounter.
“I need some help, I’m outside the office and I have been put under… citizens’ arrest. So I’m just looking to reach out to someone from Legal to get some counsel” he can be heard saying.
The video also shows Dr Kathy Fallon, a retired GP turned climate activist present d’Argouges with what she claims is “a dossier of evidence” of “indictable criminal offences” that the network accuses d’Argouges of having committed through his work at Perenco.
d’Argouges reacted calmly to the arrest, and spoke to the activists. Amjad Bseisu, CEO of Enquest, by contrast, ran from the woman trying to citizen’s arrest him who shouted: “If you’re innocent Amjad, why are you leaving?”.
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Gail Lynch, a spokesperson for the Citizen’s Arrest Network told Byline Times that previous attempts to use the law to hold fossil fuel firms and polluters accountable “became part of business as usual.”
“They would go to court, or settle out of court and then go back to doing exactly what they were doing. These fines and costs simply become part of the business model and so there needed to be a shift towards individuals so they face consequences they don’t want to face.”
David Whyte, a professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London told Byline Times that “normally directors, senior managers, CEOs are able to hide behind the ‘corporate veil’.”
“When you are a director or a senior manager there is an almost de facto corporate veil because in most instances of wrongdoing, it will be the company that’s sued, it will be the company that is held liable for a regulatory offence, not an individual.
“Effectively what the CAN is doing is attempting to pierce the corporate veil. They are trying to overcome the problem that directors, senior managers and CEOs can use the company to mask decisions that they make as individuals. I think it’s quite an important approach to thinking about legal accountability,” he said.
Whyte added that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1982 enshrines the right of citizens’ arrest to prevent a person “causing physical injury to himself or any other person…or causing loss of or damage to property.”
Because climate breakdown causes wildfires and extreme weather, displacing people and damaging property, he argued that fossil fuel executives continuing to expand production are “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.”
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One of the group’s targets was Alistair Cochrane, who was the Chief Financial Officer of Thames Water when he was placed under citizen’s arrest for multiple counts of Public Nuisance. Activists accused him of “knowingly putting the public at risk through the operation of unsafe infrastructure”, “knowingly risking the provision of unsafe drinking water” as well as the illegal discharge of sewage.
Ten days later, on 28th March, Cochrane unexpectedly quit his post. Rachel Whyte, who placed Cochran under citizen’s arrest and is now, along with Citizens Arrest Network, pursuing the charges of public nuisance against him, described his exit as a “big win for Citizens Arrest Network”.
A spokesperson for Thames Water told Byline Times that his departure was unrelated and “neither the CEO or CFO met with any of the individuals. Police attended the office and requested that this group leave the property”.
The firm did not provide another explanation for his departure. Thames Water has come under fire in recent years for polluting rivers while raising water bills. In late 2023, The Guardian reported that the firm had pumped 72 billion litres of sewage into the River Thames since 2020. In February this year, the firm’s chairman argued that bills would need to rise by 53% over the next five years.
The charge of public nuisance is one that has been increasingly levelled against climate activists themselves in recent years. Graeme Hayes, a reader in Political Sociology at Aston University whose current research focuses on the trials of arrested environmental protesters said: “Public nuisance was historically a catch-all offence, and it enabled people to be prosecuted for causing environmental harms before specific laws were put in place.”
“Its use against activists was vanishingly rare prior to 2017. In 2017, it was used against the Frack Free Three for disrupting a fracking site, and has subsequently been brought against Insulate Britain protesters and made statutory by the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts act in 2022.”
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The ‘public nuisance’ charge involves a harm against the community, or section of it. “Using it against activists who are causing short term disruption in order to protect the community feels particularly unjust. Reframing the idea of public harm back to fossil capital is important, but won’t change the use of public nuisance by the CPS against protest, which now feels well established,” he added.
Hayes said the action may still be effective in terms of a wider political and legal discourse.
“Leigh Day for example is currently bringing a prosecution for public nuisance against Welsh Water and Avara foods for polluting the River Wye…This sort of reframing may be more significant than the citizens arrests themselves – which are probably unlikely to go very far.”
And Gail Lynch added that the campaigners “come from a tradition of strategic non-violence.”
“We’re not just non violent from a moral perspective, but in order to win the public argument non violence is, and will continue to be, important for Citizens Arrest Network.
“Publicly calling out the actions of our opponents while being able to retain sympathy ourselves is key. We don’t think that your average person sympathises with the executives of these companies that are being paid in the millions whilst making people’s lives worse and more expensive.”
There is a measure they put their campaigns to, she said: the ‘pub test’. “It has to be a protest that your average person down the pub would agree with.”
Olly Haynes is a freelance journalist with Byline Times.