Earlier this morning traffic was brought to a grinding halt when protesters blocked an arterial road leading to Birmingham Airport. Authorities said the airport and surrounding road network were otherwise operating as normal.
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Protests also took place near Birmingham Airport and in Manchester and Nottingham.
Calling the platform a “profoundly disturbing development”, the group announced it will “dissociate” itself from Black Lives Matter, which has emerged as one of the most progressive and prominent movements in the country advocating for Black people and people of color.
The demonstration in London kicked off just after 8am on Friday morning.
Nkonde said: “The delays for people on their way to holidays are regrettable but we’re talking about injustices, 1,500 families [whose relatives have died in police custody], who have been given no justice, no convictions”.
Student and activist Adam Elliot Cooper, one of the organisers of today’s protests, told the BBC’s Today programme that “in Britain, on average, one person a week dies in the hands of the police, and black people are disproportionately affected by these killings”.
“We believe the time is now for a Black Lives Matter movement in the United Kingdom to #Shutdown a nationwide crisis of racism”. It also said black people were more likely to be unemployed than white people, more likely to be permanently excluded from school and referenced the increase in reported racist hate crimes since the Brexit vote.
A further six people were arrested at the scene, and police are in the process of releasing these protesters, who have “locked on” to each other.
Demonstrators put up a banner near the entrance of Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe, that read “This is a Crisis” as people laid down along the five-lane roadway.
BATON ROUGE BLM activist DeRay Mckesson sued the city of Baton Rouge and police officials on Thursday, saying officers responded in a “militarised and aggressive manner” in arresting him and others protesting the police shooting death of Alton Sterling.
Their families deserve answers, and Black Lives Matter UK is helping them get them.
Video footage of the protest near Birmingham Airport shows police officers pulling demonstrators away from the middle of the road. How many black males were stopped in that same week and not killed by the police?
His shooting by police five years ago helped spark several days of rioting in the UK. An inquest jury decided that Mr Duggan was lawfully killed by a police marksman.
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Writing on the event’s Facebook page, they said: “This is not just another march or demonstration, this is organisation”.
