‘It’s completely put a stop to Mariella’s life’: The lasting impact of being convicted on a riot charge
In February, Mariella Gedge-Rogers took the train to London for her first shift as a bar supervisor at the Royal Opera House. She was excited, not least because the job sounded more interesting than the work she’d so far been allowed to take on under the conditions of her jail sentence – at a garden centre local to the open prison in Kent where she’s serving time.
However, about four hours into the shift, the Cable understands that the 29-year-old was abruptly told that the prison and probation service had changed its mind. She would no longer be allowed to work at the historic theatre, maybe for the duration of her five and a half year sentence, or at least until she’s released on licence in December.
Mariella returned to HM Prison Easton Sutton Park, devastated that this new opportunity had been ripped away from her. It was a sign that rebuilding her life will be even more difficult than she thought, as she continues to feel the full force of her punishment for her involvement in the violence that followed a protest in Bristol against the Police and Crime Bill three years ago.
Riot is the most serious public order offence, and is rarely used – in part because it requires special authorisation from the Chief Crown Prosecutor. Mariella is one of 16 people so far convicted and jailed for the offence following the clashes between police and protesters in March 2021. Others are still awaiting trial or sentencing on the same charge as part of Avon and Somerset Police’s biggest ever operation.
It’s a charge that Mariella’s mother, Heidi Gedge, says is being used disproportionately, inconsistently, and as part of a political and intensifying crackdown on the right to protest in the UK. “What they have done to her and dozens of others, it’s unspeakable,” she says. “To harm her, to ruin someone’s life like this, I’m just so angry with the whole injustice of it all.”
The protests and violence three years ago are for some a distant memory, the smashed windows of Bridewell Police Station long replaced. But the unprecedented and ongoing police operation and prosecution of the demonstrators – many of them young people, whose actions, if violent, were in direct response to police brutality – will have a lasting impact on them and their families for years to come.
A dangerous precedent
Mariella says she feared for her life as her head was pushed into the gutter by a police officer in full riot gear, and as she witnessed other cops beating protesters around her. She says thoughts of Sarah Everard, a woman raped and murdered by a serving Met Police officer earlier that month, and George Floyd, a Black man murdered by police in Minneapolis a year earlier, were running through her mind.
“They just pounced on her, three of them. They pinned her down to the ground, kneed her in the back, stood on her hand,” says Heidi, recalling footage of the moment her daughter was restrained on 21 March. “And she was whimpering, you could hear her on the video, whimpering in the gutter. She was so scared for her life.”
Demonstrators were struck with batons and shields, kicked and punched, pepper sprayed and bitten by police dogs as they clashed with officers across three protests including the first on 21 March. According to Bristol Defendant Solidarity, a group of volunteers who support protesters arrested or imprisoned after protesters, 62 demonstrators were injured, seven required hospital treatment and 22 reported head injuries. 40 police officers were reported injured.
A parliamentary inquiry found that officers used excessive force, including the controversial tactic of “blading”, where the edge of a riot shield is used to strike a protester. Despite the evidence, not a single police officer has been held to account for their actions, while the scale of the police crackdown has amounted to more people being charged with riot during one day than in any other protest-related disorder since the 80s.
It’s witnessing the disproportionate use of force by police that, Mariella’s mother says, inspired her to act, in defence of those around her. Her acts included hitting a police officer with her skateboard, climbing onto the roof of Bridewell and throwing objects at officers, and smashing the front window of the building. No evidence of injuries caused by her were presented in her trial.
Heidi says that bringing the riot charge against her daughter and dozens of others is excessive. More than that, she says the timing of Mariella’s trial ultimately determined her fate: “She doing five-and-a-half years but if things went differently, she might have got 20 months,” she tells the Cable, referring to the lesser charges of violent disorder and affray some demonstrators were sentenced with.
She was the 14th protester to be sentenced, with 11 of the previous 13 also being charged with riot – all either pleading guilty or being found guilty of the charge and receiving prison sentences of more than three years. But after this, as Roger Ball writes in his recent article on the riot charge: “the legal challenges from defendants strengthened as specialist criminal lawyers/barristers with knowledge of protest were employed”.
After this point, two protesters were found not guilty, two more were stalled as a jury failed to reach a verdict, and, the article says, the Crown Prosecution Service “began to change tack”. Of the next six charged with riot, five had their charges reduced to violent disorder or affray, which carry far lower sentences.
“At best, it appears there was exemplary over-charging which led to legal inconsistency and at worst it came from direct political interference, setting a dangerous precedent in a so-called democratic society,” Ball concluded.
There’s no direct proof of political interference, but as the Guardian observed in a recent report that asks what’s behind the push to prosecute these protesters so harshly: “ministers meddling in Bristol’s affairs is hardly unknown”.
According to the Times, Priti Patel, then the home secretary, subjected Avon and Somerset Police’s chief constable Andy Marsh to a “private dressing-down” after the force failed to stop protesters pulling down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in 2020. And later, when those who toppled Colston were acquitted of criminal damage, Suella Braverman, then attorney general, referred the case to the court of appeal, and tougher sentencing guidelines were introduced.
Raj Chada, head of criminal defence at Hodge Jones & Allen, which has represented 20 Bristol protesters, and who represented one of the demonstrators who helped toppled Colston in their criminal damage trial, previously told the Cable that prosecuting protesters had become a “reflex” in the UK.
“And it’s being done,” he said, at a time when the Police and Crime Bill had not yet been passed into law, which it did in April 2023, “specifically because [government ministers] don’t like their political opponents.” He warned against the “chilling effect” of things like the Police and Crime Act, saying that important demonstrations throughout history that affected parliamentary decision making may not have happened if such legislation was in place at the time.
‘We have lost all faith in policing and the justice system’
Heidi says she’s proud of her daughter, who she raised as a single mother in a shared flat in London, for taking a stand against police violence, and frustrated that she has been condemned as a thug who “hit a cop with a skateboard”.
“The media at the time portrayed it so badly. But the fact was [the officer] had all this riot gear on, and she chatted to him afterwards,” Heidi tells the Cable. “She was never charged with assault, he wasn’t harmed. And I don’t see how that stacks up against a list of injuries that police inflicted on protesters.”
Among those convicted was a 19-year-old man who, like many others, was assaulted by police, Heidi says. Like Mariella, he was put on a wanted list, arrested and charged – with this alone affecting him so much that he tried to take his own life. The pressure of the court process damaged his mental health further and he pleaded guilty because he couldn’t take it anymore.
“My son still fears speaking out and has lost any hope that he and the others can get justice,” his mother wrote in a letter published by the Guardian. “We have lost all confidence in policing and the justice system. How is this even possible in a democratic country?”
Heidi, a founding member of Justice for the Bristol Protesters, a group of parents, friends and supporters of those charged with riot and given harsh prison sentences, says she will continue to fight for justice, for her daughter and others who faced the full force of the law, “always, because the riot charge must be quashed.” A petition by the group, which calls for a public inquiry into the excessive use of police force during the demonstrations, has been signed by more than 2,500 people.
She hopes that Mariella, who before she went down had hoped to open a dancing and acrobatics school with her boyfriend, will still have the energy to follow her dream when she’s released on licence – if the conditions allow it.
“This has completely put a stop to her life, and it happened at a time when she was so fit and healthy,” she says. “Whether she’ll be able to get that back when she’s out, I don’t know.”
An Avon and Somerset Police spokesperson, asked about the issues raised in this article, defended officers’ actions at the 2021 protests, saying police faced “real violence” and hostility but “put themselves on the line to keep the public safe”. He acknowledged that 10 complaints had been made against officers, and said they were reviewed by their standards department, but that in all cases their conduct was found to be “acceptable”.
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