For a week starting April 15, no cars or buses drove over the bridge adjacent to Parliament, only the occasional ambulance or bicycle. The environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion occupied the bridge, lining it with small trees and chalking artwork onto the asphalt, and staged a sit-in protest locking down the road and several other areas in central London. Last Wednesday, they disrupted train services at the station closest to the London headquarters of the oil giant Shell, gluing themselves to the roof of a train carriage, then later gluing themselves to the fence outside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s house in north London, to attract press attention. They’ve also staged actions in Montreal, including chaining themselves to the office of Quebec Premier François Legault, blockading a store in Paris, a funeral procession in Norway, and several protests in New York.

The group has staged smaller protests in the few months since they started campaigning, but this is the biggest protest to date, causing the biggest and lengthiest disruption to London in living memory. Transport has been hugely affected, with some of the busiest bus routes unable to run. The police have arrested over a thousand protestors after initially stating they lacked the jail capacity to arrest enough members of the group to shut down the protest. After their release, many arrestees simply rejoined their friends at the sit-ins.

Reaction from some senior media figures has been highly critical: a clip of a protestor walking off set during an interview on Sky News went viral after the presenter Adam Boulton accused the spokesperson of sounding “like a right-wing fascist,” telling him, “you’re incompetent middle-class, self-indulgent people and you want to tell us how to live our lives.” Media commentator and agent provocateur Julia Hartley Brewer tweeted asking why she couldn’t drive her car straight across the bridge as she wished to, with hundreds of people pointing out that killing people intentionally with your car carries a life sentence.