However much lawyers try to pretend, the law is never very far from politics. I am a Green party councillor and have recently been involved in some legal action, supporting my fellow councillor, Alison Teal. She was facing imprisonment for alleged breach of an injunction, in proceedings initiated by the council of which we are both members.

Sheffield City Council has a programme of felling thousands of healthy, mature trees along the city’s streets, arousing huge public opposition. A challenge to some aspects of the scheme failed in R (Dillner) v Sheffield City Council [2016] EWHC 945 (Admin).

One increasingly popular form of protest was direct action by campaigners. By sitting or standing under trees, they could effectively prevent them from being felled. The council called the police in. They arrested and charged 14 people, including Councillor Teal, mostly under Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 s241. The cases were all subsequently dropped due to insufficient evidence. After a particularly badly-handled incident, when two pensioners were arrested in a dawn raid to fell some trees, the (elected) police commissioner declared that the police should not have to ‘commit resources that would be better spent fighting crime’.

After this avenue closed to the council, it issued civil injunction proceedings in the High Court. In Sheffield City Council v Fairhall and others [2017] EWHC 2121 (QB), Males J upheld the council’s arguments and agreed that the defendants trespassed in the ‘safety zones’ set up when it closed off roads. Importantly, however, he held that the defendants’ rights under articles 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly) were engaged and could have provided a defence at an earlier stage in the protests, even if, by the time of the hearing, they no longer did so.

The court granted an injunction preventing the defendants from entering or remaining in a ‘safety zone’, defined as an ‘area delineated by barriers erected on the public highway around a tree to be felled’. The defendants were also ordered not to ‘seek to prevent the erection of any safety zone’ or to ‘encourage, aid, counsel, direct or facilitate anybody else … including by posting social media messages’. The injunction did not mention the felling of trees, however. Campaigners quickly realised that they could safely use any form of protest that was not explicitly covered by the injunction. By choosing legal proceedings, the council had boxed itself into a very specific corner. The day the order came into force, campaigners picketed the works depot. While not interfering with the trucks carrying ‘safety zone’ barriers, they blockaded other vehicles that were essential to the felling operation but not mentioned by the injunction. Further, as the council had relied on property rights, so did the campaigners. By sitting on garden walls and standing in private driveways under trees at risk, they realised they could prevent them being felled without being on the public highway.

This view was tested in October when the council applied to commit three defendants to prison for alleged contempt. The applications were heard by Males J. This time, the defendants had different representation. Councillor Teal was represented by Catherine Casserley of Cloisters, whose arguments on the correct – and limited – definition of a ‘safety zone’ succeeded. This further narrowing of the injunction opened up yet more possibilities for direct action by the campaigners.

The second defendant, Calvin Payne, was represented by Paul Powlesland of Ely Place Chambers. He was found to have breached the injunction and given a three-month suspended sentence. For him and for the campaign, this was a success, given that the evidence against him included his own Facebook posts, in which he claimed, ‘I’ve been breaking the tree campaign injunction.’ The council withdrew the application against the third defendant.

So, despite the contentious and heavy-handed decision to use the law against political opponents, the irony is that the nature of legal remedies opens up the way to creative protest. The political argument will, of course, continue outside the courtroom.