Former Wandsworth City Trader Faces Trial Over Climate Protest
Andrew Medhurst quit job to support Extinction Rebellion
Andrew Medhurst. Picture: Twitter
A 53-year-old man from Wandsworth is to face trial for his part in an Extinction Rebellion protest on Waterloo Bridge.
Andrew Medhurst, who worked in the City of London for thirty years, was arrested on 16 April after failing to comply with a police order to move to a permitted demonstration location. He was part of an action which brought widespread disruption to the capital.
The father-of-two appeared at City of London Magistrates' Court on 9 August and denied the charges against him. He will now stand trial this November.
After the hearing he spoke outside the court saying, "If there's any criminality, in my opinion, going on here, it's the criminality of my government and governments around the world who are failing to express in very simple language the huge threat to human life both to the people on this planet now today and future generations.
"It's just criminal for governments to not tell citizens what is in store and as a result I think it would be more appropriate for officials of Her Majesty's government to be in court."
Mr Medhurst began his finance career with Midland Bank in 1987 working in dealing rooms Hong Kong, Tokyo and Bangkok as an FX salesperson and derivatives trader. He later moved Lloyds and then into the pensions sector, where he began to question the sense of encouraging young people to save for the future ‘they may not have’. He decided to leave his job to concentrate on climate activism earlier this year.
In 2014, he started a blog called ‘Stories for My Grandchildren’ named after a book of a similar name by climate scientist, James Hansen.
He said, “I was doing my bit in my personal life — flying less; cutting meat from my diet (after watching ‘Cowspiracy’); rejecting consumerism — but it felt insufficient. Most of my peers weren’t changing their behaviour; did they know and yet not care? And where were the bold government actions necessary — UK politicians an age to introduce a sugar tax and mandatory charges for plastic bags — things didn’t look hopeful.”
August 14, 2019