“The protests were carried out to “highlight the UK’s environmental impact on the lives of black people locally and globally””.
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It is believed the group, who erected a tripod and “locked themselves together” on the runway, gained access after crossing the Royal Docks in a rubber dinghy.
Passengers at London City Airport were unceremoniously delayed on Tuesday after the United Kingdom branch of Black Lives Matter staged a protest in one of the airport’s runways.
Those charged also include Ben Tippett, 24, also a former LSE student from Wandsworth, and Sam Lund-Harket, 32, who is a leading activist with the campaign group Global Justice Now.
The activists began staging protests at about 5.30am.
Whilst at London City Airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants are known to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean.
Miss Waldron said at the time: “For most of us, all we gain from new runways is dirtier air, more noise and more floods due to climate change”. As the largest per capita contributor to global temperature change, and yet among the least vulnerable to its deadly effects, the United Kingdom leads in ensuring that our climate crisis is a racist crisis.
They are on the runway surrounded by police.
A spokesman said it had not yet confirmed how the protesters managed to get onto the runway.
“We’ve been in line for three hours”, Erik Blangsted, told KGO-TV as he waited for his flight at San Francisco International Airport.
A bold protest by the Black Lives Matter movement has shut down a London airport, prompting authorities to intervene.
City Airport apologised for the disruption to passengers and the Metropolitan Police said it had taken the nine protesters into custody after using specialist equipment to “unlock” them.
A BA spokeswoman said passengers gathered at London’s main airports would face delays to outbound flights.
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Photographs posted on Facebook showed the demonstrators lying on the ground around banners that read “Black Lives Matter” and “Climate crisis is a racist crisis”, watched by a small number of police officers. Flights which were supposed to land at London City Airport were diverted to Gatwick and Southend instead, as they are somewhat nearby and would not cause passengers too much trouble in terms of connecting flights.
