A retired GP from Bristol told a railway manager she wanted to “save the world”, after she stopped a train heading into the UK’s biggest power station when she should have been appearing at the High Court, a jury has been told. Dr Diana Warner, 65, was wearing orange high-visibility clothing and waving an orange flag when a 400m long empty freight train stopped near Drax power station, in East Yorkshire, on December 14, 2021, Leeds Crown Court heard on Monday.
Warner told the jury she went to the railway line near the power station to protest when she should have been at court in London, to face proceedings for breaching an injunction to stay off the M25 motorway. She said this injunction was imposed after she took part in Insulate Britain protests which brought the London orbital motorway to a halt.
She told the jury she was eventually jailed for two months for contempt of court. Warner said that she believed the publicity she received from skipping court and stopping the train in East Yorkshire instead, would highlight her campaigning on the climate emergency and other issues.
The court was told how the train driver decided to stop the train, which was travelling at 30mph, close to the village of Carlton, after spotting Warner on the tracks, as he believed she was waving a red flag, indicating danger. But he continued after the defendant left the line and his signaller confirmed there was no problem ahead.
Network Rail mobile operations manager Simon Vickers said in a statement read to the court that, when he was called to the scene to investigate, Warner approached him and “confessed” that she had been the person on the tracks.
Summarising Mr Vickers’s statement, prosecutor Oliver Connor said: “She went on to tell him she had been on the tracks because she disagreed with the practices of Drax and she wished to save the world.”
He said she explained to the manager that this was “in relation to deforestation and climate change”. Mr Vickers explained in the statement how he waited for police to arrive but when they did not turn up after some time, he took a photograph of the defendant and she went off to find a bus, offering him the flag as a memento.
A video was played to the court of Warner standing by the stationary train as she explained why she believed Drax is the “most ridiculous power station on Earth”.
She could be heard explained how the plant, which burns wood pellets, is “chomping through so many trees”, adding: “We’re just eating our forest, pristine forest.”
The train pulls away as she is talking and the defendant, who is now a grandmother, says: “This is so scary.”
Warner told the jury she became involved in environmental politics after her children were born in the 1990s, eventually standing for parliament twice for the Green Party.
She said she moved away from the movement in the 2010s because so little progress was being made, but had a “sudden awakening” in 2018, just before she retired as a doctor.
Warner said this came as she was examining a baby with congenital hip dysplasia, and realised that climate change was a bigger threat to the child than her condition, and she “vowed” to do everything she could to protect her.
The defendant explained her objections to Drax power station, saying trees should “never be used to burn for fuel”.
She added: “This is our heritage, our lifeline.”
Opening the case earlier, Mr Connor told the jury of seven men and five women that there is no dispute that it was Warner on the tracks and that she was trespassing.
He told the jury: “Where there is dispute is whether the defendant caused an obstruction. The prosecution case, put simply is, causing the train to stop, that, in of itself, plainly amounts to obstruction.”
Mr Connor said the defendant claimed she was on the tracks “because Drax claimed to be a green company, but it’s not because it is causing deforestation in Canada, and she wanted to save the world”.
The court heard that the incident did not cause any delays nor any costs. Warner, 65, of Filton Avenue, Filton, Bristol, denies one count of obstruction of an engine or carriage using a railway, contrary to the Malicious Damage Act 1861.