Anti-Press anarchist who glued himself to the dock

THE trial of extinction Rebellion protesters who disrupted national newspaper deliveries by blockading a print works was delayed yesterday after one glued himself to a table in the dock.

Liam Norton, 36, covered his eyes with a pink mask and began live streaming from his phone shortly after the hearing began, shouting: ‘What is going on here is complete corruption.’

Supporters in the public gallery chanted ‘Climate justice now’ as he ranted.

District Judge Sally Fudge left the courtroom at St Albans Magistrates’ Court in hertfordshire while security staff removed him from the dock.

the case resumed two hours later without Norton, pictured, after he was arrested for criminal damage and placed in custody. An online profile of the electrician, from Scarborough, says he is part of an XR team that plans ‘specific acts of civil disobedience’.

More than three million newspapers including the Daily Mail, the times, the Sun and the Daily telegraph were delayed or not delivered at all after dozens of XR protesters chained themselves to structures outside the Newsprinters works in Waltham Cross, hertfordshire.

A total of 51 were charged with obstructing the highway on September 4 last year, including six in court yesterday.

When the case got underway, the court was told two massive bamboo structures had been erected outside the main gates of the print works, with one protester suspended underneath and others lying on the ground beneath them.

Protesters were also sitting on or lying under two vans parked in the road.

PC Josh Wilson, the first officer on the scene, said he had been told not to touch the structures as they might collapse.

the activists claimed to be protesting against the way the climate crisis was reported in the media, he told the court.

Norton and the other defendants – eleanor Davidson, 33, James Ozden, 35, tim Speers, 25, Morgan trowland, 38, and eleanor Bujak, 28, all from London – deny wilful obstruction of the highway.

there was a second blockade of print works in Knowsley, near Liverpool, the same night. the case continues.