Two people from Brighton and Hove have been charged with committing criminal offences over their roles in the “Extinction Rebellion” protests in London.
Amy Dalla-Mura, 55, of Eaton Villas, Hove, and Martin Gardener, 31, of Preston Road, Brighton, are among 69 people to have been charged by the Metropolitan Police.
Scotland Yard said that they would appear in court in London in the next few days.
Dalla-Mura has been charged with breaching a dispersal order – known as a section 14 notice under the Public Order Act 1986.
She was due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday (Monday 22 April).
Gardener was also charged with ignoring a dispersal order and obstructing a highway.
He is due before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday 20 May.
The Extinction Rebellion protesters are demonstrating against climate change, loss of biodiversity and the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.
The Extinction Rebellion is decades overdue and vitally important. Politicians are not nearly focussed enough or acting enough on measures needed – either here or in other countries.
I have been amazed by the numbers in London for it and I applaud each of them for doing it. I wish I was young enough or fit enough to join them. Bravo!
I lost any support for them once they started smashing property and causing delays to hard working law abiding people.
If climate change isn’t halted, just wait and see how much property is smashed by wind, rain and floods, and how many delays in getting to work – if any of us have jobs then – it causes! Just ask the people in California, Australia, Japan and other countries where global warming has caused havoc.
Recognising the urgent dangers posed by climate change, and being willing to sacrifice an easy life for the cause, is brave and selfless. Thank you, protesters, for doing it on our behalf.
What misguided tosh. It caused traffic hold ups in London, so thousands of buses, vans and cars belched out loads of fumes, adding unnecessarily to the pollution there. How did the protesters get there? Presumably, they didn’t all cycle or walk but took transport that burnt fuel which probably came from a non-renewable source.
Britain has been one of the countries in the vanguard of cleaning up its act when it comes to fossil fuels, along with the likes of Germany, the Scandinavian countries and, more recently, even China. Why not target places with a less credible record? Is it because the message would be less well-received, the policing more physical and any potential subsequent detention for longer?
How many of the protesters have invested in solar and wind technology? And how many take their own children on the school run by car like thousands every day in so-called ‘green’ Brighton? Compare how much less busy our local roads were during the Easter holidays with before and after.
So much hypocrisy and self-righteous cant!