Just Stop Oil pair guilty over Crucible snooker protest

A Just Stop Oil activist who jumped on a table during the World Snooker Championships and covered it with orange powder has been found guilty of criminal damage.

Edred Whittingham, 26, disrupted a match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre on April 17, 2023

He was found guilty of causing criminal damage after a one-day trial at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on Friday,

A fellow protester, 53-year-old Margaret Reid, who tried to do the same thing on the theatre’s other table, was convicted of attempting to cause criminal damage.

A video clip played to the court showed Whittingham, known as Eddie, releasing the orange substance, which he said was dyed corn starch powder, and kneeling amid the balls on the table before being hauled off by security.

The defendant told the court he believed his actions were “reasonable and proportionate in the light of the greater threat we are facing from the climate crisis”.

Whittingham, from Exeter, said: “I didn’t intend to cause damage, I intended to cause disruption.”

Reid, a former museum worker, also denied trying to cause damage, saying she “set out to draw attention to the dire situation that we are in”.

“We need shaking out of our stupor,” she told the court.

“We need a shock. We need an action like we took to make us jump out of the pan.”

Reid, from Kendal, in Cumbria, said she has protested “politely” in the past, voted and written to her MP but “it hasn’t worked”.

Whittingham’s actions caused £899.90 worth of damage to the table, the court heard.

Completion of the first-round match was delayed until the following day as a result.

Reid’s attempts to disrupt the match on the other table, on which Mark Allen and Fan Zhengyi were playing, were foiled when she was tackled by referee Olivier Marteel.

Both will be sentenced at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on 10 July.

Max Hinchcliffe, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the pair “showed an utter lack of thought or care for the players at the tournament or the fans watching from across the world”.

He added: “The law upholds the right to protest but this must be balanced against the rights of others and this case shows that when lawful protest crosses the line into criminality we won’t hesitate to prosecute offenders.”