Nine environmental activists who staged a protest at London City airport under the Black Lives Matter banner have walked free from court after pleading guilty to trespass charges.

The group, all but one of whom are white, have faced accusations of “cultural appropriation” and hijacking the Black Lives Matter movement to further their interests in climate change activism. Their stunt disrupted the journeys of an estimated 9,000 passengers.

The protesters, who include a cousin of the actor Ralph Fiennes, an organic farmer and an Oxford University graduate, were sentenced at Westminster magistrates court to conditional discharges ranging from 18 months to three years, after admitting aggravated trespass.

Sentencing the group, the district judge Elizabeth Roscoe told the defendants that she found it “rather hard” to make the link between the Black Lives Matter movement and climate change.

William Pettifer, who works on an organic farm in Somerset, arrives at court. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

“I am not sure how that links to City airport and climate change,” she said. “I do not underestimate the sincerity of your beliefs.”

The defendants included: William Pettifer, 27, of Radford, Somerset; Esme Waldron, 23, from Brighton; Natalie Fiennes, 25, of Wandsworth, south-west London; Deborah Grayson, 31, from Slough, Berkshire; Richard Collett-White, 23, of Kempston, Bedfordshire; and Ben Tippett, 24, also from Wandsworth.



Sama Bakr, 27, Alex Etchart, 26, and Sam Lund-Harket, 32, who all live on a houseboat called “Northern Soul”, currently moored in Roydon, Essex, appeared with them.

Philip McGhee, prosecuting, told the court that the group donned wetsuits and sped across the Royal Albert dock in motorised inflatable rafts to gain access to the airport.

The protesters then put up a tripod made of three lengths of bamboo. Pettifer secured himself to the top of the tripod, while the remaining eight activists secured themselves to its base and each other.

Police arrived to hear the group chanting “Black lives matter” and slogans about climate change, McGhee said.



The defence solicitors, Adeela Khan and Mike Schwarz, provided further details of the environmental activism of the defendants in mitigation.

Bakr, who is of mixed heritage, took an environmental studies course and campaigned with Time to Cycle, an environmental group. Collett-White, an Oxford graduate, had an interest in climate change and anti-aviation campaigns.

Etchart, who describes himself as a “community musician”, has taken part in Occupy London protests and anti-fracking campaigns. Pettifer, who works on an organic farm in Somerset, and Waldron, an English literature and film studies graduate, campaign for anti-aviation group Plane Stupid.

Fiennes, a London School of Economics graduate, took part in the six-week occupation of the university’s central London campus in protest against student fees last year, and has also participated in Climate Camp protests along with Tippett.

Lund-Harket is a supporter of climate justice group Reclaim the Power, while Grayson, a vicar’s daughter, was one of six anti-fracking protesters who chained themselves to a fire engine outside Cuadrilla’s oil exploration site at Balcombe, West Sussex, in August 2013.

After the City airport protest, the anti-racism campaigner Stafford Scott and Lee Jasper, a former equality adviser to Ken Livingstone, were publicly critical of the protest, accusing white leftwing activists of hijacking the Black Lives Matter banner. “It’s cultural appropriation. Even our struggle [is] no longer our own,” Jasper said on Twitter.