THOUSANDS of students and schoolchildren took to the streets today during the first international youth strike for the climate since 2019.

Across Britain and around the world, mobilisations were reported to have taken place in 1,300 towns and cities.

Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff, Oxford and Glasgow were among the cities where marches and rallies with music and speeches were planned.

Today’s Youth4Climate strikes came just five weeks before Britain hosts the crucial Cop26 United Nations conference on climate change.

In Bristol, a statement by strike organisers said: “No meaningful efforts to halt the climate and ecological crisis have happened since our last strike.

“The politicians who govern us have failed to protect us.”

In London, young protesters gathered in Parliament Square, where they were expected to be joined by trade unionists and environmental campaigners.

In Germany, mass protests were planned in 420 towns and cities.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who inspired young people to mobilise when she staged her first solo school climate strikes in August 2018, with solitary protests outside the Swedish parliament, spoke at a rally outside the Bundestag in Berlin.

Before the rally, she said: “It has been a strange year-and-a-half with the pandemic, but the climate crisis is even more urgent than it was before.

“We will go back on the streets now to show that we have not disappeared and that we are demanding climate action and climate justice.”

More protests are expected in Glasgow when the Cop26 conference opens there on October 31.