Doctor’s heartbreaking coronavirus experience read to Bristol lockdown protester in court
A judge read a junior doctor’s heartbreaking account of treating coronavirus patients to a man who marched through Bristol in opposition to lockdown restrictions.
Robin Campbell was among 400 members of the Stand Up Bristol group who marched through the city in November last year.
The 53-year-old, of Hill House Road in Downend, was arrested during the event with a megaphone.
He admitted being in a gathering of more than two people and received a £1,500 fine during a hearing at Bristol Magistrates’ Court on 7 January.
District Judge Lynne Matthews told him: “Let me just read you something which I read in my lunch break. It was in The Times.”
For around five minutes, the judge read the words of an anonymous doctor who has documented their experience of working on a high dependency unit during the pandemic.
“The patients don’t ask many questions, mostly because they need to spend all of their energy breathing,” the judge read from the piece.
In response, Campbell started to tell the judge about “the science” of coronavirus.
But she interjected: “I know about the science. What is it about your predicament on November 14 that meant it was proportionate for you to put others at risk?”
The lockdown sceptic then launched into a series of false statements downplaying the severity of the pandemic.
When Judge Matthews repeated her question to him, he said he had disagreed with “the proportionality of a lockdown”.
Campbell had initially denied any wrongdoing but subsequently entered a guilty plea.
He was ordered to pay a £1,500 fine, £85 prosecution costs and a £150 victim surcharge within 28 days.
Outside court, he told Bristol Live he changed his mind about his plea because “couldn’t be bothered with the hassle” of a trial.
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