For a few hours today the lead story on the front pages of both the Guardian and the Telegraph was about the untimely demise of a plant. The Sycamore Gap Tree was a mildly famous old tree next to Hadrian’s Wall. I don’t think I ever consciously saw it in person, but I had heard of it. The tree’s Wikipedia article – it has its own Wikipedia article – says,
The tree was felled in the early morning of 28 September 2023 in what Northumbria Police described as “an act of vandalism”. The felling of the tree led to an outpouring of anger and sadness.
That last sentence is certainly true. It was one of those news stories that is of little consequence by the normal measures of the importance of news stories but which packed a surprising punch emotionally. I’d heard of that tree. It had a node in my brain, not a big node but one in a nice area near to the ones dealing with history and nature and charming old guidebooks, and now some scumbags had cut it down, apparently for the fun of making me and people like me feel bad. I was glad when said scumbags were arrested and gladder still when earlier today they were both found guilty of criminal damage and told to expect custodial sentences. I was even a little bit glad to read that both men had been remanded in custody prior to sentencing for their own protection.
Am I justified in thinking that the two men who cut down this particular tree deserve more serious punishment than other people who cut down trees that do not belong to them in order to steal the wood or something? I would not go quite so far as the readers of the Telegraph, who would be quite happy to use the wood to build a gallows and recover the costs by selling commemorative slices, but I am definitely in a vengeful mood.
Why? It was not my tree, except in the feeble sense that it belonged to the National Trust, of which I am member. My suffering at its demise was not zero but was not great either. It didn’t ruin my life. It didn’t even ruin my morning. Presumably the same goes for all the other people who felt bad reading about the vandalism in the paper or hearing about it on the news. They suffered, but not greatly. The tree didn’t suffer. All agree that the criminal damage was a straightforward crime and should be punished, but why do so many people, including me, feel that this was a more serious crime than most instances of criminal damage because it upset people? The post below treats the idea of blasphemy laws and a so-called right to be shielded from offensive speech with a scorn that I fully share. I have an uneasy feeling that I am coming close to setting up an offence of tree blasphemy.
”I have an uneasy feeling that I am coming close to setting up an offence of tree blasphemy.”
No, you’re lamenting the destruction of a cultural artifact that helps bind us together as a people. The act goes beyond petty vandalism in the same way that tearing down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson does in the States.
Or, if you want to put it another way, the sentimental value that so many people had for the tree increased its value, so its intentional destruction should carry a greater penalty for the miscreants. A greater harm brings a greater penalty.
They do not deserve harsher punishment from the state, just as people praying next to clinics do not deserve harsher punishment than people praying miles away.
But we’re rapidly leaving the era when punishment is RESERVED to the state. We’re leaving the era of law, in other words.
And so there is a great possibility that they will face a harsh punishment, but from a new direction.
So . . . “deserve”? Not really a factor anymore. There will be no unilateral withdrawal from Law. It will be general.
https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/people/district-council-to-pursue-injunction-after-illegal-works-on-south-downs-site-5114640
A story from earlier this week in my locality. The South Downs National Park is no less worthy of protection than the Sycamore Tree and those who wilfully damage it no less deserving of punishment.
We live in a country where the PM is adamant that two tier justice is a myth. Yet despite this I am far from confident that the group who used heavy machinery to illegally strip an area of land the size of several football pitches on a bank holiday and even had the foresight to bring along a septic tank to service their rapidly established caravan community will be held accountable for their actions.
Unlike the Sycamore Tree I do not recall this incident making the national headlines.
I rather expect the widespread reporting of the Law’s foibles means that people are starting to believe that the era of law is leaving us. People may begin to think that heavy doses of two tier prosecution and politicisation of the ‘impartial’ judiciary system have corroded the value of observance of the law.
I wonder how many trees Hadrian cut down in order to build his wall? I wonder, but I don’t care.
Natalie,
I am not going to respond to your post, yet. I need to think about it. The philosophical issues you raise are deeper than the roots of a sycamore tree.
The BBC article on this said that the vandals who chopped down a tree could expect sentences of “up to ten years”.
I’m sure that will come as great comfort to the victims of grooming gangs, some of whose perpetrators only got six and a half years.
Truly horrible people did this – their only motive was to make the lives of other people worse, by depriving them of something they loved.
Throw the book at these men.
Fascinating series of posts from bobby b’s “hmm, there’s something interesting to mull over about context that I might need to think about” through to Paul’s “THROW THE BOOK *hic* AT THEM”
Dear Miss Solent
I rather like the idea that the pieces of excrement are remanded in custody for their own protection.
At least a couple of other trees have their very own Wikipedia page – The Wanaka Tree and General Sherman Tree.
I suspect that if, after an extended stay at His Majesty’s pleasure, they decided to try the same trick on General Sherman that they would find themselves mostly dead™.
Hopefully they will be banned from ever entering the countries that the two trees reside.
DP
Sailing West to Valinor? Of course Melkor/Morgoth and Shelob got there first… And look at what happened as a result!
It seems like a lot of fuss over one tree, when entire forests of ancient woodland in North America are being felled to provide “biomass” for Drax. But that is somehow OK because Net Zero.
Funny old world.
neonsnake – yes these men should be severely punished.
Do you disagree?
It seems to me that mkent got closest to the kernel.
Just trying to rephrase it (as i understand it):
The vandals, whether they fell a tree, tear down statues, or throw soup at a painting, should suffer consequences in a manner proportional to the damage inflicted — and the damage is subjective: if you tear down Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square, the subjective (as well as objective) damage is vastly greater than if you fell a tree in the middle of nowhere.
Natalie raises, as she so often does, a very deep question.
Emotionally, I agree with Snorri’s analysis, but we all know to be careful of such arguments in the land of non-crime hate thingies or whatever they are currently called.
In English law, the test in such situations is to ask whether a reasonable person would have [whatever]- in this case been particularly upset by this specific tree’s destruction.
Which is fine, except I don’t know what a reasonable person looks/feels like any more.
Leaving aside whatever monetary or ‘real’ value this tree may have had –
If these men are to be ‘severely punished’ for hurting a lot of people’s feelings – because that is, in the end, what is being suggested here – they loved the image, the view, the prospect – then it is a very short step In-Deed to punishing people very severely for, oh, let us say – destroying a copy of the Quran. It’s not the monetary or real value of the book itself – it’s the strong feelings that people have about the book that are hurt, and that people are to be punished for hurting.
Think About It. Is that what you want? Really?
Was this an unpleasant and hurtful thing to do? Of course. Were these nasty people who got pleasure from destroying something that others loved? Seems like it.
But nasty people move among us every day, yet we do not punish them for what they think – only for what they do. Which is as it should be. You cannot put a price, or a penalty, on hurt feelings – those lie beyond the capabilities of the law. And if you try to apply the penalties of the law to hurt feelings, you are going down a very dangerous road from which there is very little chance of return.
This is just one of those nasty, horrible and unpleasant things in life where, no matter how distressing it is, the only considered answer must be ‘it’s too bad, but there’s nothing can be done about it’. Life is filled with trials and disappointments, this is just one more. Let social opprobrium and disfavour be the extent of their penalty for this unsavoury act.
llater,
llamas
Let the punishment fit the crime. Sentence them to hard labor, planting saplings in places that need them. (Let the judge set the time.) Send along a policeman to watch over them and make sure they’re doing it, and doing it well. I’m sure the policeman will protect them as they labor if the neighbors decide to intervene.
This is the kind of offense pillories were invented for, but since we no longer have pillories, we’ll have to make do.
I don’t think punishing miscreants for cutting down a beloved tree in a public park is equivalent to punishing someone for burning his own Koran. Since this is a British website and Koran burning is a touchy subject for the current government, let me use a more American example.
Baseball is pretty big in some parts of America. Yet if I buy a baseball and destroy it, even in front of Wrigley Field, most people here would agree I’ve committed no crime, even if the Cubs fans didn’t like it. On the other hand, if I steal a baseball from some kids playing a game and destroy it, most here would agree that I’ve committed the crimes of theft and destruction of property.
Now take that one step further and suppose I broke into the Baseball Hall of Fame and destroyed the baseball hit by Hank Aaron for his 715th home run. Not only have I destroyed someone else’s property, I’ve destroyed a cultural artifact that helped tie Americans together. It is the cultural significance that not only makes the baseball more valuable in a monetary sense, it makes it irreplaceable in a cultural sense. Restitution is actually impossible. I can buy the Hall a new baseball, but I can’t make Hank Aaron hit it for his record-breaking home run.
We see around us that Western Civilization is under attack. People are destroying cultural artifacts of that civilization to hasten its demise. They are tearing down statues, vandalizing monuments, and throwing paint at priceless works of art. The destruction is meant to destroy more than just property, and the punishment should reflect that.
Tree blasphemy
No, you aren’t wrong to feel this way – it was the utterly senseless nature of it, a living thing that gave pleasure to people wiped out by two utter worthless cunts for no good reason other than to deprive people of that pleasure.
While I wouldn’t countenance capital punishment for it, building stocks with the wood so the public can punish them less severely seems like a damned good idea.
Context matters. If the country is in the middle of an insurrection. civil war, or religious jihad – then destruction of national symbols can be interpreted as treasonous.
Here in Israel the courts have learned to distinguish attacks “with a nationalist motivation” – code for Arabs attacking Jews because of Jihad/conquest or antisemitism, rather than petty crime. I don’t know if the European courts have made that distinction yet.
bobby b:
I fear you are correct – and people will remember that the original purpose of the police was to protect criminals from the mob, so they could stand trial.
The elites are playing with fire by mooting the possibility of redressing grievances through the courts.
It will be deliciously ironic to watch the tree-hugging, tree-sitting environmentalists do an about-face when the tree is a symbol of The White Supremacist Patriarchy.
Punished? Yes, certainly they should be. I’ve little idea of the motive, but it appears to be nothing more than “lol this will make us infamous”. Certainly (absent any other information), I think they’re a pair of absolutely top-tier wankers. Like, who does that kind of thing for “laughs”?
Incarceration? Nah. At the end of the day, although I had similar emotional responses to others, I can’t countenance locking someone away for chopping down a tree, no matter how photogenic said tree might be.
Community service – I liked the idea floated above of getting them to plant more trees. That feels appropriate to the act.
Rather than planting trees which requires some level of organisation and expense a far simpler punishment would be 12 hours a day every Saturday and Sunday for a couple of years picking up litter.
Even better would be to move them down to Sussex where their penance would he to replace the topsoil illegally removed by the caravan dwellers as per my previous post.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime
@ mkent – ypur analogy of the Hank Aaron baseball rather misses the mark because the baseball in question has significant monetary value. I’m no expert but I’ve watched enough Antiques Roadshow to guess it must be worth millions. One of the key points of this controversy is that the thing destroyed has minimal or undefinable monetary value.
A better analogy for the US might be one of burning a US flag, a popular expression with a subset of the perpetually aggrieved. While this act is deeply, viscerally offensive to untold millions on Americans, the courts have consistently held that thete is no crime involved than there would be in burning, let’s say, a tea-towel in similar circumstances. IMHO, this is the correct, moral and libertarian position. The act, offensive as it was, burthened no man in his person or his good, and is thus no crime.
llater,
llamas
llamas,
If the tea-towel in question resembled the late deeply unlamented Yasser Arafat’s headwear of choice you’d be in the sh’ite in the UK.
As to burning the US flag* that is protected by the First Amendment** as it should be. As should be burning a Qu’ran or the collected works of Dr Seuss. I think we have to make a strict distinction between “wrong” and “illegal” here. Having said that if you destroy something in a way that is against the law for destroying things then, yes, it is at some level it should be up to the judge to take into account intent and the outrage caused. Merely causing outrage in itself should not be a matter of criminal law.
*Did ya know some enterprising Iranians actually concocted a syncretic flag of the USA, UK and Israel for sale for burning after Friday prayers. “Three for the Price of One!”
**With obvious caveats such as your ownership of that piece of cloth and not doing it where it could cause a more general combustion.
Did ya know some enterprising Iranians actually concocted a syncretic flag of the USA, UK and Israel for sale for burning after Friday prayers
After the pager incident I’d like to think that at least one consignment of said flags will be made of far more immediately combustible material than expected.
One can dream.
How will these two be sentenced now that they have been convicted? The judge has little discretion in this, there is a ‘grid’ on the ‘Sentencing Council‘ sentencing guidelines, and the judge has to look at the factors.
It looks to me as if this is ‘criminal damage above £5,000’, and it might be a ‘high culpability’ offence in category ‘A’, but then again it might fall into ‘B’. And in terms of the ‘harm’ the categories of ‘Serious distress caused;
Serious consequential economic or social impact of offence‘.
So it might be that the judge looks at the a range of 6 months in prison to 4 years, but also considering the aggravating factors, such as ‘Damage caused to heritage and/or cultural assets‘.
The prosecution has no role as such in determining the sentence, they do not advocate for a particular sentence, but they might put before the court any previous convictions which might aggravate matters.
I very much doubt that the Court would consider that as the sycamore is a ‘non-native’ tree to the British Isles, that this offence might be aggravated by a sort of proxy ‘racially-aggravated’ factor, that would be a brave submission to the Court, but if it were, the maximum sentence would be 14 years, not 10. I think it would take a few more years of this government, or a Conservative one before such an approach might find acceptance in the courts.
To be honest, I had absolutely no idea that this tree existed and I had an uneasy feeling that the whole thing about its importance was a sort of press-manipulated hysteria first seen around the time of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Looking at the two convicts, I can see considerable force in Paul’s contention that the motivation was one of depriving people of something that they loved, akin to the Orc’s hatred of beauty, a hatred for its own sake.
Normally the political class are quite happy with this attitude, hence the uncontrolled graffiti all over the country, so it all seems a bit odd that they should receive so much opprobrium.
On balance, these people need to be deterred, and I think that 10 years in CECOT would be a suitable punishment. Give them some white underpants, teach them 10 words of Spanish and fly them out to enjoy rice and beans and regular haircuts for 10 years of continuous light.
Depriving them of something they loved.
See here is the thing — they didn’t, as a general rule, deprive anyone of a tree they loved because most people knew practically nothing about this tree. I do vaguely remember seeing it in some photos — it is very photogenic — though TBH if you had pressed me I would have wondered in those photos were real or faked.
The fury over this comes about because the press made a big fuss about it. They wrote an article that in a few sentences convinced us to really care about a tree that we actually had barely even heard about and then stoked our fury that it had been so callously destroyed. I also think that its proximity to Hadrian’s wall probably got people thinking the Romans planted it, which they didn’t. It is an old tree but far from the oldest in England.
Let us also consider that on that same day no doubt some granny was mugged and, if it was an average day, probably one or two people were murdered in Britain. These are, I think, self evidently far more serious than cutting down a tree, no matter how old or photogenic it might be. But I doubt there are too many people calling for the gallows for those criminals. In fact, most likely, the perpetrators will not be caught, and the police will probably not look nearly as hard as they apparently did for these felonious lumberjacks.
So I think it does tell us a lot about the criminal justice system. Part of that system is to get a control of vengeance, replacing it instead with justice. The blood feuds of the past and the inability of the poor to get recompense for their wrongs, are surely things we seem to eliminate with a publicly funded justice system. But when the people consider justice inadequate to quell their bloodlust then we can have a big problem. And I think that the justice system sometimes lets one publicly visible case be used to show that the system is working. The trial of Derek Chauvin is another example of this. Someone had to go down for this to save the country from riot and it almost didn’t matter what the facts were. The alternative was the collapse of civil society which would undoubtedly have been the case had he been acquitted (and the jury would no doubt have to go in the federal witness protection program.) It is a lot like in the old south when some young white girl had her chastity violated then some black boy is going to be hangin’ from a tree, and it almost doesn’t matter which black boy.
So the rage over this tree is mostly an artificial thing — something nobody cared about really was blown up into a rage fest by its high degree of publicity. It is part of our culture’s obsession with rage porn. Part of the press’s desire to get clicks. Part of the distraction politicians use to keep the public from noticing the potholes in the road or the massive government deficit or the monstrous corruption and graft in the political machine.
I also think a lot of the rage comes from the utter pointlessness of the act, the contrast between something beautiful and ageless and two loser punks with nothing better to do on a Saturday night. And from that point of view, I think much of the rage comes from a sense of the breakdown of decency in society. I have to live by the rules of society with all the costs and disadvantages, to gain the benefits of living in a civil society. These punks just flaunt that and in a sense make a fool out of my choice to be a decent person.
So what should happen to these two stupid idiots? I guess throw them in jail for a while if only to satisfy the blood in the water. Doesn’t sound that society will much miss their valueless contributions anyway.
@Mr Ed
On balance, these people need to be deterred, and I think that 10 years in CECOT would be a suitable punishment. Give them some white underpants, teach them 10 words of Spanish and fly them out to enjoy rice and beans and regular haircuts for 10 years of continuous light.
FWIW, I really don’t agree with this approach to incarceration. I did in the past but my thinking has changed. Why? Because 10 years isn’t the rest of their lives, so we are going to get them back in society eventually, and if they were bad going in what will they be like coming out?
In our jails and prisons I think there are really three categories of prisoners — those in pre-trial detention, those who should never get out but we are too scared to string up on the gallows, and those who will get out.
For those in pre-trial detention I think that generally speaking the conditions they are held in are appalling. They have been convicted of no crime at this point and are incarcerated only to ensure appearance at trial. So they should have a nice safe place to live, with decent amenities and free visitation with family and lawyers. I see no reason they shouldn’t have a cell phone for example. There might be some exceptions to this, but in general they have not yet been found guilty and so should not be subject to punishment. Loss of liberty is a punishment, and, insofar as we have to do that, we should be taking as little away from them as possible. But, as a general rule, we throw them in gen pop at the local jail.
The second group are the people who should never be allowed out. These are people who have committed the most heinous of crimes and in truth I think they should end their time dangling from a rope. But since we don’t seem to be willing to do that they should be off on their own — locked up and throw away the key.
The third group are the most challenging though. People who have been convicted of a crime but not so serious. Maybe some guy who mugged someone on the street with menace but didn’t actually injury any one, or an embezzler, or car thief, or, dare I say it, a felonious lumberjack. These people’s crimes do not deserve to pay with their full lives, and so will eventually be reintroduced to society. So it is the job of the prison system to help them to be better people when they leave than when their arrive. Subjecting them to prison justice, mob rule, the constant threat of violence, the inability to improve oneself, and perhaps worst of all, the constant mind numbing boredom, is going to result in us putting worse people back on the street, not better.
Here is the thing, if we want to deter crime the solution is not more brutal imprisonment — imprisonment is already pretty brutal — rather it is to increase the certainty that you will be caught. In Chicago the murder clearance rate is about 25%. So if you kill someone in Chicago you have a three in four chance of getting away scot free. Make the clearance rate 75% and murder would be a much higher risk to the perp. Here is seemed the police did a lot of work on that tree. The fact that hundreds of murders went unsolved during the time they were searching for these punks makes you wonder about how they allocate resources.
Perhaps if the British police spent less time chasing people down for saying naughty things on the internet they’d have more time to pick up burglars. From what I hear from my British friends the police don’t even really investigate crimes like burglary or car theft anymore. They’ll just give you a police report for the insurance.
And don’t get me started on the Orwellian sounding “non crime hate incident”. I mean that’s a joke, right?
I repeat my previous comments.
The men who cut this tree down are clearly idiots, and will be punished for what they did. But it was only one tree. Before it was cut down, I had never heard of it. However, the people who despoil our countryside with solar farms and wind turbines do not face prison, rather they derive a very good income from the hapless British taxpayer, despite doing far greater harm to our country than two fools who cut a tree down.
It’s almost as if we are being gaslit.
JohnK,
Gaslighting is bad!!!
And now the BBC is reporting that the two convicts were ‘suspects’ in a homophobic abuse case, but were never charged.