This was April 2025 and the man in the photo had been convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in breach of the Air Navigation Order 2016 and was appealing against conviction. His case went to the Appeal Court, where he lost his appeal.

He had a background in disruptive actions, having been previously convicted In 2022, along with five other Just Stop Oil protestors, of causing a public nuisance by digging and occupying tunnels under the approach roads to an oil terminal in Essex.

The aim of the 2022 protest was to draw public attention to the climate emergency and to demand that the government did not issue new licenses for the extraction of coal, oil or gas.

The 2025 conspiracy charge was when he and others flew small toy drones at about head height within the restricted area of Heathrow Airport but away from the flight path of any aircraft.

The action was intended to disrupt the airport when traffic control sensors picked up the presence of the drones. And that is what happened.

The intention behind the action was to draw attention to what the defendants saw as an offence against the public good – the building of a third runway at Heathrow.

Laxey has devoted a considerable amount of his time and effort to objecting to State policies and behaviour that in his view and the view of his co-conspirators stand to worsen the climate outlook.

It’s hard to say what the effect of his actions and the actions of others has been, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil were active and in the news for a period, but they have faded from view.

Was it just fashionable to protest? Were the actions well founded or naive? Were the protestors concerned citizens or were they out to be the centre of attention?

Did they make enemies of fiends of the public whose opinion they wanted to sway?

The news is full of matters that seem to ignore the threat of global warming. We see it is no longer fashionable to make threats to the climate centre stage even on news reports. Other things crowd out the stage.

Do we just have very short attention spans?

Behind the scenes, change is happening and the move to solar and wind power, and stored battery power is happening. California, Texas, the UK, and China are making big advances in clean fuel.

Yet somehow the fundamental problem of how to take our collective foot of the accelerator of more and bigger and faster, is elusive.

And it is not just a question of burning up the planet, but of satisfying the human demand for fulfilment in a world where everything has just a tinge of ‘been there, done that’ and of not quite hitting the spot.

We are grown collectively old and wise and we badly crave meaningful direction. No doubt it will come.

About the Photo

Sometimes I go out to photograph a march, and sometimes I come across a march, like this one when I was just out photographing with a few other photographers. As was normal, we got separated, and Michelangelo and I were walking down the road and these people were marching for climate action.

I was testing a camera and I processed it at the time with Photoshop. But just today I processed it with DxO PureRaw4 and I’m impressed with it.

This is a view looking along the walkway on the south bank of the Thames, beneath Blackfriars Bridge. Above is a section of the curved steel girders of the bridge.

The area known as Blackfriars is almost all on the north bank of the River Thames, but includes a sliver on the south bank.

And Blackfriars is within the ancient City of London, the area that includes the Square Mile, as it is called – the financial district of London.

To people unacquainted with the peculiarities of London, there is an area within London that is known as the City Of London.

The City of London is a ‘city within a city’ – and greater London grew up around it.

Because of the age of the City of London, the historic buildings within the boundaries, and because it is the financial district of London proper, it has special privileges (see this article).

The first map here shows the City Of London and to the west of it, the City of Westminster. So that’s two cities within a city…

The second map shows Blackfriars, and as I said, it is within the City of London.

Blackfriars station is on the District and Circle lines, and is an important interchange station, directly over the River Thames with entrances on both sides of the river. It is also a mainline rail station for places north and south of the river.

Blackfriars was named after the Dominican friars who established a priory there in the late 1200s.

There is nothing left of the priory now. What wasn’t destroyed with the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1538 was caught in the Great Fire Of London in 1666.

In the photo at the top of this article you can see the skyscrapers of the City of London, in the distance across the river.

And that brings us to Roberto Calvi, and where he was hanged.

Roberto Calvi

In 1982 the chairman of the failed Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was hanged from the bridge by persons unknown.

There was a scandal at the bank that led to its collapse, and it was said to involve the Vatican and the mafia.

What is known is that Calvi left Italy under a false passport and then the story gets hazy until his body was found hanging from this bridge.

The location of the very public execution, with the view from the bridge that looks out over the City, is probably not by chance.

Of course, several of these skyscrapers were not there in 1982, but built or not, the City has been the financial heart of London since the early 1800s, and for a century or more it was the world’s leading financial centre, and still ranks close behind New York, which is the leader in the rankings today.

I hardly ever pass the bridge or hear the name Blackfriars without thinking about Mr Calvi and his end – and feeling a little sad for him, no matter what his crime.