AN ENVIRONMENTAL campaigner has vowed to keep getting arrested after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges against him following the London Extinction Rebellion protests.

Tristan Strange was arrested three times in April, as environmental protestors took over Waterloo Bridge and Parliament Square in demonstrations that lasted two weeks.

The 37-year-old, who lives in Swindon town centre, was due to stand trial on Tuesday at the City of London Magistrates’ Court on a public order charge.

But he told the Adver he had received a letter from the CPS telling him the charges were being dropped.

“I’m going to repeatedly break the law until the government starts to listen,” he said. Like other Extinction Rebellion activists, he sees being arrested as a key tactic to raise awareness of what he sees as impending environmental catastrophe.

Mr Strange may get his wish to be arrested sooner rather than later. Today marks the first day of two weeks of Extinction Rebellion protests across the capital.

Demonstrators are expected to block roads around Westminster and stage a sit-in at City Airport. Swindon campaigners are expected to be among the protestors.

Extinction Rebellion spokesman Joel Scott-Halkes said as many as 20,000 protestors could be involved: "We are going to very loudly, very clearly, very respectfully say that if a government is taking its people towards extinction, it is not a government anymore that we respect."

In April, Mr Strange was one of hundreds of demonstrators to be arrested by the Met Police.

He was cuffed after attempting to glue himself to a laurel push in Parliament Square and twice arrested on Waterloo Bridge.

And Mr Strange said getting hauled away by the long arm of the law was not as terrifying as one might thing: “It’s liberating. All of a sudden you realise the thing you’re traditionally fearful of doesn’t really matter that much when you’ve got this issue you care about.

“There is a sense of satisfaction when you get shut in the cell and handed a book to read for the night.

“A couple of nights in a cell is a very small price to pay.”

He said government needed to take the issue of global warming more seriously, with ministers currently paying lip service to it.

Extinction Rebellion has called on the Government to follow parliament and declare a climate and ecological emergency. They want politicians to create and follow the decisions of a Citizens' Assembly, a kind of giant parliament made up of members of the public, on climate and ecological justice.