The Daily Populous Saturday September 28th, 2024 night edition
Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by JackFlyNorth

Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.

Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.

The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.

“Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history,” Phil Green, one of those taking part in Friday’s action, told visitors to the gallery.

View image in fullscreen An activist pours soup over one of the Sunflowers paintings. Photograph: Just Stop Oil/PA

Ludi Simpson, 71, who also took part, said: “We will be held accountable for our actions today, and we will face the full force of the law. When will the fossil fuel executives and the politicians they’ve bought be held accountable for the criminal damage that they are imposing on every living thing?”

The protest came almost exactly an hour after Plummer, 23, was sentenced to two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000 of damage to the frame of Sunflowers 1888. Her co-defendant, Anna Holland, 22, received 20 months for the same offence.

Passing sentence at Southwark crown court on Friday, the judge, Christopher Hehir, told them: “You two simply had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers, and your arrogance in thinking otherwise deserves the strongest condemnation.

“The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure, and that must be reflected in the sentences I pass.”

The defendants embraced and blew kisses to the public gallery from the dock before they were led down to the cells.

In October 2022, Plummer and Holland had gone to room 43 of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square and hurled two tins of soup over the 1888 painting, one of Van Gogh’s most famous works, before glueing themselves to the wall beneath it.

View image in fullscreen A placard bearing an image of Phoebe Plummer as protesters gathered outside Southwark crown court on Friday. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters

In July, they were found guilty of criminal damage by a jury after three hours of deliberations. Judge Hehir told them at the time to be “prepared, in practical and emotional terms, to go to prison”.

Plummer was further sentenced to three months in jail for interfering with national infrastructure by taking part in a slow march along Earls Court Road in west London in November 2023. Her co-defendants in that case, Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall, received community orders.

Plummer gave a 20-minute address to the judge in mitigation, in which she cited Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela as examples of people who had been criminalised while fighting for justice.

“On 14 October 2022 and in November 2023 I made the choices to take actions that I knew would likely lead to my arrest and prosecution,” she said. “I made those choices because I believe that non-violent civil resistance is the best, if not the only, tool that people have in order to bring about the rapid change required to protect life from the accelerating climate emergency and the political decisions being made that pour fuel on the flames and which sentence us all to a catastrophic future.

1:08 Activists throw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at National Gallery – video

“Whilst of course there are reasons why my life and the lives of people I love and care for would be easier if I don’t receive prison sentences today I don’t intend to go into detail about these, my choice today is to accept whatever sentences I receive with a smile, knowing that I have found peace in doing what I can to defend countless millions of innocent people suffering and dying.”

She added: “I chose to peacefully disrupt a business-as-usual system that is unjust, dishonest and murderous.”

In passing his sentence, Hehir said he took into account not only the damage caused to the frame but the potential for even greater damage to be caused to the painting had the soup seeped behind the glass that covered it.

Hehir told them: “Section 63 of the sentencing code requires me, in assessing the seriousness of your offending, to consider not only the harm your offence caused, but also the harm it might foreseeably have caused. For the reasons I have explained, that foreseeable harm is incalculable. Your offending is so serious that only custodial sentences are appropriate.”

Hehir noted that gallery staff had immediately taken the painting away to examine it and ensure it had come to no serious harm.

Chairmanmaozedon on September 27th, 2024 at 16:18 UTC »

People saying these kids have no idea how political activism worked in the past, yeah it's no surprise that UK kids have no idea how political activism worked in the past, because all they're ever presented with is a massively sanitised version of things like what the Suffragettes actually did to gain the vote they think it was basically all achieved with one woman throwing herself into the path of a horse and a couple of others chaining themselves to railings, there's no mention of letterbombs and threats of violence.

The UK currently has some of the most repressive anti protest laws in the world. Other Stop Oil activists were jailed for 5 years for just talking about a plan to block a motorway, not violent direct action, not even actually standing on a motorway with a placard, they were jailed for being in a Whatsapp discussing it, turned out one of the members of the group was an undercover journalist who grassed them up to the police (yup the UK also has the worst advert for a 'free press' it would be possible to conceive).

Things like the civil rights movement, anti apartheid demonstrations and the Suffragettes would have been absolutely stomped by the modern UK government.

Meanwhile people involved in actual riots, people convicted of trying to set fire to hotels and Mosques, bricking the police, not one has got a sentence over 3 years so far. The UK justice system is an absolute nonsense and a perverse incentive to violent disorder over peaceful political protest.

Tu4dFurges0n on September 27th, 2024 at 15:31 UTC »

Is there any hard proof these extremists are funded by the oil industry to turn public opinion against protestors in general?

Gravelsack on September 27th, 2024 at 15:29 UTC »

I wish these clowns would stop turning climate advocacy into a joke

Edit: you know, you could just read through the other comments and upvote the ones you agree with rather than replying with the same thing that 100 other people have already said. Just saying.