Two environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil movement climbed a motorway bridge over the Thames near London on Monday morning, October 17, causing major traffic jams. Friday, October 14, other activists of the group had thrown tomato soup on the glass protecting the masterpiece Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh, exhibited at the National Gallery in London.
In the early morning, these two men climbed more than 80 meters on one of the towers of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, Just Stop Oil wrote in a press release.
View from a bridge … Donate https://t.co/HBHsudWj6v #QEIIBridge #FreeLouis #FreeJosh #Soup #EndNewOilAndGas https://t.co/VqI9fJaXNQ
The police confirmed that they blocked traffic on this bridge bypassing the capital, which is used by around 160,000 vehicles every day. Just Stop Oil asks the government of Liz Truss to put an end to the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the country, exploitation which the Prime Minister has decided to accelerate.
One of the two activists, Morgan Trowland, posted on Twitter a video of him at the top of the bridge. “I’m ready to do this because I’m not ready to sit around and watch it all burn”he said. “Our government has put in place suicide laws to ramp up oil production, killing human lives and destroying our environment”explains this 39-year-old man, a bridge design engineer.
Towards a strengthening of the powers of the police
I’m willing to do this ‘cos I’m not willing to sit back and see everything burn – Morgan, Civil Engineer Our corru… https://t.co/Xl5lwlxzOY
This demonstration by Just Stop Oil is part of their series of actions against the exploitation of hydrocarbons, which began at the beginning of October. In addition to the action on Friday at the National Gallery in London, activists from this group attacked a dealership of the luxury car brand Aston Martin in central London on Sunday, spraying the window with paint orange.
Faced with these demonstrations, the government decided to strengthen the powers of the police. In a column published Sunday by the The Mail on SundayInterior Minister Suella Braverman announced that the security law currently before Parliament will give the police new powers to take more action. “proactive” against these groups, of which it has already denounced in the past the actions of “guerrilla”.
At the last Conservative Party congress in early October, Liz Truss castigated movements and associations such as Extinction Rebellion or Greenpeace, accusing them of being part of a “anti-growth coalition” with the Labor Party and anti-Brexit.
