POLITICS & HISTORY
“What use is music, art, human creativity and brilliance when there are no humans left to enjoy them?”
JUST STOP OIL
that the act of throwing soup was “ridiculous” but regards its coverage to be a breakthrough in climate protest. In a country where the ability to protest peacefully, a protected Human Right, is becoming increasingly restricted by legislation such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022), it is progressively more difficult to campaign or protest a political regime. Some suggest that this is why activists are resorting to ‘unconventional’ actions like throwing soup on a painting; however, it is worth noting that the suffragette movement gained great traction from Mary Richardson’s slashing of Velaquez’s Rokeby Venus and consequent imprisonment. Just Stop Oil did not damage the painting, and a point of discussion has been how the art was shielded by glass, thus suffering no damage throughout the protest. Many view the fact that there was no damage done as validation of the group’s actions; however, it is worth asking whether the protest would have been morally wrong if it had damaged the painting itself. The group recently asked the question “What use is music, art, human creativity and brilliance when there are no humans left to enjoy them?” Whilst opinions on Just Stop Oil’s protest in the National Gallery occupy a wide-ranging spectrum, many argue that no person or thing was harmed in the act; furthermore, it is undeniable that their movement gained a large degree of traction and media coverage which is always the intent of a political protest. Many suggest that the anger met by the group would be better redirected at the governing elite who are not acting on the fact that many effects of global warming are already irreversible.
Just Stop Oil is a coalition of activist groups founded in the UK on 14 th February 2022, with the aim of ensuring the government ends all new licenses for the use of fossil fuels, claiming that the UK already has more gas and oil than it can afford to burn. Indeed, the UK has 2 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves alone, with overall oil reserves estimated to stand at around 4.8 times greater than annual oil consumption. The organisation claims that its supporters have been arrested approximately 1700 times since April, and five of them are still in prison, on remand or serving sentences. The evident severity of the consequences of their protest poses the question as to whether their actions are morally wrong, and what can come from further organisation and rebellion. Many critics of the group ask the correlation between throwing soup on a painting to climate change; in the same way jumping in front of a horse does not directly advance women’s suffrage, there arguably is very little connection. However, the very definition of protest encompasses a typically political public expression of disapproval, which has historically been repetitive and disruptive to enforce societal change. Approval was not widely shared amongst reactors to the protest in the National Gallery, with Labour leader Keir Starmer branding the group “wrong and arrogant” and many taking to social media to express their disagreement with the action. Yet ironically, this is exactly the reaction that propels the movement further, enabling their organisation to become reported on in mainstream media and to be discovered by thousands. Protester Plummer herself agrees
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