Newbury students stage bigger climate change protest

Pupils from secondary schools demonstrate outside district council offices

SCHOOL pupils from Newbury staged a second climate change protest in as many months today (Friday).

Over 100 pupils from St Bartholomew’s School, Trinity School and Park House walked out of lessons at 11am and marched to Newbury Town Hall.

A group of young children who are home educated also took part, holding placards and homemade posters in the Market Place.

The secondary school pupils then marched down Northbrook Street and up through Parkway shopping district, chanting slogans such as, “Whose future? Our future!” and “Pollution’s not the solution!” before gathering outside West Berkshire Council’s offices on Market Street.

There the group lined Newbury’s Echo Circle where St Bart’s sixth former Isaac Fernandes and Year 10 pupil Ruth Beatty-Duarte addressed the crowd, which also heard from the chair of West Berkshire Green Party, Carolyne Culver.

The demonstration was part of a wider international student movement against world leaders’ inaction over global warming, called Youth Strike 4 Climate.

It is the second student-led protest of its type, after pupils from St Bart's and St Gabriel's protested outside Newbury Town Hall last month.

A wave of similar demonstrations were staged by thousands of school children across the world today, inspired by the 16-year-old Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg who gave up going to school on Fridays last September to campaign outside the Swedish parliament against climate change.

See next week’s Newbury Weekly News for more.