The arrests were made after a coordinated attempt to cause disruption on the country’s busiest motorway which saw six different police forces in the South East make a total of 19 arrests.

This morning just before 7:30am Surrey officers responded quickly to reports of an individual up on the gantry close to Junction 6.  By 8:20am, officers were dealing with similar incidents around the Surrey stretch at junctions 8-9, 9-10,  12-13 and 13-14

With support from the Highways Agency, traffic was temporarily stopped whilst specialist police officers who are trained to work at height, scaled the gantries to remove and arrest the activists. Where they refused to come willingly, they were carried off and lowered with ropes.

Superintendent Graham Barnett, from Surrey and Sussex Operations Command, said: “Whilst peaceful protest will be facilitated in this country, criminality will not. This was a large-scale, co-ordinated, attempt to disrupt the lives of thousands of people by bringing the country’s busiest road to a standstill.

“Officers worked quickly with the support of the Highways Agency to remove them, arrest them, and get the roads running again but this kind of dangerous activity puts road users at risk, it puts officers at risk, and it diverts our resources away from policing our communities.

“I want to thank the public for their patience whilst we worked to safely remove those present and assure them that we will be working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to seek charges for those committing offences.

“Over the coming days we will be closely monitoring the situation on our road network and will take action wherever necessary to protect public safety.”

Arrested were four men aged 23, 47, 50 and 71 and two women aged 58 and 72.