The Suffragette trainline in London is named after a group of women who “went to demonstrations armed with coshes, whips and toffee-hammers, for window-smashing and protection.” Some of them were trained in jujitsu to protect their leader from the cops and angry defenders of the old order. By the standards of the Starmer government and its Tory predecessors those women are terrorists.

And while we are on the subject of historical precedents, there are now posters on the London underground advertising a musical play about the White Rose group, the young Christian activists who were put on trial for agitating against their government and were executed. Analogies are imperfect, but if one were to look for a modern comparison to Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst and their moral courage, I think it is fair to point to the sixteen people who are in court today and tomorrow appealing against their sentences of up to five years for taking part in peaceful environmental protests.

A network of environmental groups have arranged two full days of activities outside the Royal Courts of Justice and you can get more detailed information from Defend Our Juries.

I went down to the first session before the court started sitting. The big surprise of the morning was Norman Baker, a former Lib Dem MP who used to be minister for crime prevention when they were in coalition with the Tories. He had no qualms about sticking the boot into Lord Walney whom he called a hack for the arms and fossil fuel industries. Walney’s other claim to fame is that he advised the Tories to categorise Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion as extremist groups and that they should face the same restrictions as terrorist organisations. Oh, and he was chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

The Suffragettes were lucky that they were dealing with Churchill as Home Secretary. After one serious incident in which a large number of them were arrested he ordered the police to release them. Walney and Starmer would have sent them to Belmarsh.

Despite the vans full of tooled up cops in the backstreets, the protest was as peaceful and orderly as a queue at Waitrose. It was an older crowd than I expected who had come out to support some of the most admirable and courageous political activists in Britain today. What was surprising was the complete absence of any sort of union or left presence despite the fact that we are now facing the reality of pro-Palestinian activists going to prison simply for demonstrating.

Starmer’s government is proving itself to be illiberal and repressive. As far as I can establish not a single Labour MP has followed the example of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or Juliette Stevenson and defended the right to peaceful protest against Rachel Reeve’s third runway and her plans for an environmentally destructive vision of capitalist growth.

The people in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice today are the direct descendants of the Suffragettes and are significantly less violent. By standing up for democratic freedoms against Reeves, Starmer and Walney they have earned their place in British radical history.

Support them in any way you can.