The great-granddaughter of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst described the sentences given to several climate protesters as “heavy-handed and disproportionate”.
Helen Pankhurst was speaking ahead of the Court of Appeal hearing challenges against the sentences handed down to 16 activists.
They were jailed for between five years and 15 months for their involvement in four climate protests.
Adding her support to the appeal bids, Ms Pankhurst said: “The suffragettes are looked up to because they fought tooth and nail and refused to be silenced and give up on their cause, the universal suffrage now taken for granted in all democracies.
“Environmental activists today stand in the same tradition. I have no doubt future generations around the world will thank them for their campaigns.
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“The heavy-handed and disproportionate custodial sentences given in the UK to peaceful environmental activists speaking truth to power is worrying in the extreme.
“A repeal is the only just outcome here.”
Environmental campaign groups Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace UK have been allowed to intervene in the case of a group of five protesters nicknamed the “Whole Truth Five“, with FoE claiming the sentences were of “unprecedented length related to peaceful protest”.
The challenges are set to be heard at the Court of Appeal in London over two days.
They were jailed in July last year for agreeing to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb on to gantries over the M25 for four successive days in November 2022.
Roger Hallam, co-founder of environmental campaign groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin each received four-year jail terms.
