Insulate Britain activists hauled into a police station for holding posters near Inner London Crown Court have said tough new anti-protest laws will not stop people fighting back.

Home secretary Suella Braverman unilaterally pushed through new protest restrictions last week that had already been voted down in Parliament. The legislation will give police unprecedented power to shut down any protest causing “more than minor” disruption.

Sally Davidson, an Insulate Britain supporter who was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, told openDemocracy the new police powers are “astonishing”. A trio of Davidson, Cathy Eastburn and Oliver Rock had sought to remind jurors about their right to acquit climate protesters “based on their conscience”.

“The home secretary is bringing in further and further detail about what is criminal in terms of fighting for your life against a government who are happy to not insulate people's homes,” said Davidson. “They’re happy to basically watch the world burn; they’re happy to licence more oil and gas fields within the UK in the full knowledge of what this is doing to people's homes and communities.”

But she added that people would “continue to be in resistance; they’re going to continue to block roads; they’re going to continue to resist in court when things are happening that are not fair and just”.

Rock added: “This criminalisation of protest – in particular, of environmental protest – is an example of attempting to shoot the messenger. These elected politicians obviously don’t really care about protecting people’s democratic rights.”

He said: “Things are just going to get worse with the climate and the environment. This is a crisis that is going to accelerate, and it’s going to make living conditions harder… People are going to kick off about this.”

All three are still waiting to see if they will be charged with an offence. Ironically, the message they were arrested for displaying was a simplified version of a plaque already on display at the Old Bailey in London, referencing a landmark trial in 1670.

Their actions followed the jailing by judge Silas Reid of several Insulate Britain protesters for contempt of court after they defied a ban on mentioning the climate crisis or fuel poverty in their statements to jurors.

They took inspiration from Trudi Warner, an activist who had held a similar sign outside Inner London Crown Court a few weeks earlier.

Eastburn, who was arrested in the corridors of the Old Bailey where she had gone to support Warner, told of feeling “absolutely shocked” by Reid’s refusal to let defendants talk about the context or motivations behind their decision to take part in road-blocking protests.

“It seems like a massive overreach of power by the judge… The jury was not allowed to hear the full story. What kind of trial is that? [Hanging the posters] just felt like a really important thing to do to try and remind the public of the importance and the rights of the jury.”

Describing her arrest as a “waste of police resources and time”, she added: “It’s quite sinister – it shows what their priorities are. And we’re seeing this generally – the government is introducing new legislation to stifle dissent rather than taking the action that they must to secure a future for young people everywhere.”

This, Eastburn said, is fallout from the tone that is being “set at the highest level by our government. And they are enabled by large parts of the media”.

Eastburn explained how the media and anti-protest laws targeting groups such as Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion are used to whip up public anger against climate activists.

“A lot of hate is stirred up… In some very extreme cases, we’ve witnessed people in the media inciting violence against protesters. Then that translates into outbursts of violence against, say, Just Stop Oil activists.

“Even with what the CPS is prioritising – rather than prosecuting climate criminals, they're choosing to prosecute peaceful, non-violent ordinary people who are in resistance against a criminally negligent and harmful government.

“Disrupting the public is an extreme measure that is taken in desperation, because that’s the only way to sound a powerful and unignorable alarm.”

Rock, meanwhile, told openDemocracy that Labour’s position on the anti-protest laws was “disappointing but not surprising”.

Labour peers in the House of Lords recently refused to back a motion from Green Party peer Jenny Jones to block Braverman’s new anti-protest legislation. Labour has faced criticism for its stance, particularly after David Lammy said the party would not scrap the new laws if it formed the next government.