Two Just Stop Oil supporters, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, who threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers to demand that the UK government halt all new fossil fuels projects, have been found guilty of criminal damage exceeding £5,000.
Judge Hehir has warned the pair to expect a custodial sentence – like England hasn’t got a prison overcrowding problem and it can afford to be jailing people for throwing food at inanimate objects.
Sentencing will occur on 27 September.
Just Stop Oil: outrageous throwing of… soup…
In October 2022, the two Just Stop Oil supporters entered Room 43 of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where van Gogh’s Sunflowers is displayed. Just after 11am, they removed their jackets to reveal Just Stop Oil t-shirts and threw the contents of two tins of Heinz Tomato soup over the painting, which is protected by glass. Following this, they glued themselves to the wall beneath the artwork.
In a statement from 2022, the National gallery reported:
There is some minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed.
The trial commenced on Monday 22 July, one day after the hottest recorded day in history, where the average surface air temperature reached 17.09°C (62.76°F).
Judge Hehir, who recently issued the longest prison sentences for peaceful climate action in UK history to the “Whole Truth Five”, presided over the trial.
During that trial, he denied the Just Stop Oil defendants all defences in law and barred any mention of the climate crisis, preventing them from giving testimony on their reasons for taking action and repeatedly ordered their arrests for insisting on fulfilling their oath to tell the whole truth.
In the soup trial at the Southwark Crown Court, the judge preemptively dismissed all legal defences, including the defence of ‘proportionality’ and the defendants’ Article 10 rights under the Human Rights Act 1998, without hearing any evidence from either side.
The judge justified his decision by characterising the act of throwing soup on the painting as ‘violent’.
Senseless violence, apparently
During an exchange with Holland’s barrister, he remarked:
What if I were to throw a can of soup at your face? Would that not be considered violent?
The judge seemed to not understand that acts considered violent against other humans may not be considered violent against inanimate objects.
The two women were also barred from mentioning the climate crisis in their evidence to the jury, with Hehir instructing them that:
The position in law is that the motivation of either defendant and their convictions about climate change – however sincerely held – are not a defence to the allegation they face.
Referring to a previous ruling of Judge Silas Reid that the evidence of the climate crisis was irrelevant and inadmissible in a similar trial, the former NASA scientist and ‘godfather of climate science’, Professor James E. Hansen of Columbia University, New York, said:
The cruelty of such ‘know nothing’ judges is not so much to the defendant, as it is to our children and grandchildren.
After taking action in 2022, Just Stop Oil’s Plummer said:
Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?
The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels—everyday life has become unaffordable for millions of cold hungry families—they can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup. Meanwhile, crops are failing and people are dying in supercharged monsoons, massive wildfires and endless droughts caused by climate breakdown. We can’t afford new oil and gas, it’s going to take everything. We will look back and mourn all we have lost unless we act immediately.
Just Stop Oil: we won’t stop
Meanwhile, concurrent with this trial, the UK government is facing a legal challenge in the High Court over its failure to protect people from the impacts of climate change.
Claimants have argued that the government’s third national adaptation programme (NAP3) is inadequate, violating the Climate Change Act 2008 and their human rights by failing to set clear and realistic objectives to safeguard against high temperatures, coastal flooding, and extreme weather.
Just Stop Oil said in a statement that:
Until leaders act to protect us, Just Stop Oil supporters will continue to take the proportional action necessary to generate political pressure.
Just Stop Oil is working with an international network of groups to demand our governments establish a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030, as well as supporting and financing other countries to make a fast, fair, and just transition. This can be accomplished by endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and seeking a negotiating mandate to establish the treaty.
Featured image and additional images via Just Stop Oil
