Quaker climate activist faces deportation
Quakers are rallying behind climate activist Marcus Decker who is facing deportation thanks to his witness against fossil fuels.
Marcus Decker, 36, of Tottenham Quaker Meeting, was sentenced to more than two years in prison after scaling the Dartford Crossing in 2022 as part of a Just Stop Oil (JSO) protest.
With others, Decker climbed 200 feet up the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, unfurling a giant JSO banner and causing widespread disruption.
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This double punishment is devastating for us
- Holly Cullen-Davies
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The Home Office served Decker, who has a partner and two step-children in the UK, with a deportation order to his native Germany while he was in prison.
With the support of the Quakers in Britain Faith in Action team, Quakers will hold a Meeting for Worship outside his deportation hearing in Islington on Monday, 10 November.
Deportation orders are made when a person's presence is not thought beneficial to the public good, especially if they've received a custodial sentence of a year or more.
At the time, the sentences given to Decker and co-defendant Morgan Trowland were the longest handed down for nonviolent protest in this country in modern times.
Quakers in Britain has repeatedly raised concerns around the repression of dissent and the rights of individuals to bear witness to injustice.
Quakers in Britain Recording Clerk Paul Parker said: “We are facing an existential threat thanks to the climate crisis. Marcus Decker served a draconian prison sentence for bearing witness to that threat.
“That that sentence is now being used to suggest that his presence in our country is not conducive to the public good, when he is demonstrably a credit to humanity, sets a dangerous precedent."
Decker is embedded in UK communities ranging from Tottenham Meeting, to actors and musicians across London and beyond.
A petition set up by his partner Holly Cullen-Davies has attracted 176,000 signatures. In it she said: “This double punishment is devastating for us."
Her campaign has received backing from 600 public figures including George Monbiot and Olivia Colman.
In a letter the celebrities noted that the extreme weather which regularly closes the Dartford Crossing will only become more frequent thanks to climate change.
In prison Decker set up a choir with the help of a guitar sent in by folk legend Peggy Seeger. More recently audiences at the Cockpit Theatre enjoyed a musical of his life narrated by Juliet Stevenson.