Morgan Trowland sits atop the QEII Bridge. Photo / Just Stop Oil
A Kiwi protester has scaled a bridge over one of the UK’s key transport routes, plunging London into traffic chaos to demonstrate his opposition to ongoing oil and gas exploration.
39-year-old Morgan Trowland and another man climbed the Queen Elizabeth II bridge over the River Thames at Dartford at 3.50am on Monday (UK time), forcing police to close the bridge, which forms part of London’s M25 orbital motorway.
The men took the action as part of the Just Stop Oil group’s “month of action” against the UK government continuing with new oil and gas exploration in the face of the climate crisis.
Trowland, a civil engineer, posted an emotional video from the top of the bridge in which he was “not willing to sit back and watch everything I love burn for the rest of my life”.
He described the UK government as “fraudulent” and said their actions to grant consents for new exploration was accelerating the process of climate change.
“It’s an absolute act of treason, selling all of ourselves and our children into an uninhabitable Earth,” Trowland said, “and I believe it’s my duty to do anything in my power to stop it.”
He ended the video by saying that humanity was “out of time” and called on others to commit acts of civil disobedience.
In a release issued by Just Stop Oil, Trowland revealed more about his motivations: “Our government has enacted suicidal laws to accelerate oil production: killing human life and destroying our environment.
“I can’t challenge this madness in my desk job, designing bridges, so I’m taking direct action, occupying the QE2 bridge until the government stops all new oil.”
BJ Harrington, the Chief Constable of Essex Police, told media he thought the pair’s actions were “crazy”
“We want them to come down, but we’ve got to do that safely. Safely for the public, safely for the people who use the bridge and safely for those who operate the bridge. It’s a really dangerous and difficult environment,” he told BBC Essex.
“I think they are crazy. I’m really frustrated and you’ve got every guarantee from me that the officers there at the moment, working with the Dartford Crossing and National Highways, will get that road open as soon as possible.”
The pair, who have hung a banner across the bridge, have vowed to stay put until the UK government makes a “meaningful statement” on changing its policies.
Trowland is a veteran campaigner in the UK, previously gluing himself to Tower Bridge in 2021 and taking part in a blockade of a newspaper print works the year prior.
A Kiwi protester has scaled a bridge over one of the UK’s key transport routes, plunging London into traffic chaos to demonstrate his opposition to ongoing oil and gas exploration.
In a Facebook post last year, Trowland said the only solution to the climate crisis was to “take over the state”.
“Your children are facing annihilation within a decade or two (who knows exactly when?); people in other parts of the world are facing it now. Inexorably, extreme weather and ecological collapse will alternately scorch, flood and plague our crops leading to food shortages, leading to mob violence, murder and rape as your desperate neighbours turn ugly.
“We are outta time for incremental changes and we need to organise an emergency response an order of magnitude greater than for COVID. For that we need to take over the state as it’s the only institution through which this could happen. The mechanism proposed for that is a citizen’s assembly to set legally binding strategy.
“That may sound impossible but it’s equally impossible to sit back and watch the annihilation lap at our doorsteps.”
But Trowland’s actions today have seen an outpouring of antipathy from many of his fellow citizens.
“Now just have to get his address,” one outraged man wrote on Facebook.
“Then we can go and sit outside his house and stop him going out ever again .stop all food deliveries etc. Let’s see how he likes being stopped from living his life.”
Others urged business owners not to serve Trowland if he came into their establishment and “make life uncomfortable for him as he has and is doing so for thousands of normal individuals.”