Children’s charity Plan UK has said it was left “disappointed” after adverts for a campaign called “give child marriage the finger” were banned by Transport for London and some train networks on grounds of obscenity.

The adverts, which ran from the middle of last month until this week on most networks, featured the strapline “Hate Child Marriage: Give it the Finger” together with a picture of a single raised ring finger. 

They asked donors to give £5 and wear a ring in solidarity with young girls forced into marriage. The adverts were part of the charity’s ongoing “Because I am a Girl” campaign.

However the charity said that several transport networks have refused to run the campaign, and it has instead been forced to create an alternative.

Melissa Gledhill, head of individual giving at Plan UK, said the campaign had been “pulled at the last minute” by TfL after advertising space had already been booked, and that the charity had been forced to produce new materials at the last minute.

“We were told it breached obscenity clauses,” she said.

The charity then approached train networks and was again told the ad breached obscenity clauses.

“We didn’t want to run an advert that exacerbated the ideas of girls being vulnerable and victims,” Gledhill said. “But we knew that if we didn’t we needed to find an alternative way to get attention. We felt this was cheeky and interesting rather than obscene.

“We were disappointed that we weren’t able to get the original adverts out there,” she said. “We need the transport networks and we need to have an ongoing relationship with them, but we didn’t have any negative reaction from the public. We circulated it widely in the original form on social media and the reaction was extremely positive.

“The campaign was still a success, and we had the best conversion rate to regular giving that we’ve ever had. But we feel it would have done still better if we’d run with the original creative.”