Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, activists associated with campaign group Just Stop Oil, have been jailed after taking action with the group in October 2022. This involved throwing two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 edition of Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and glueing their hands to the wall beneath the painting in London’s National Gallery. These sentences follow a pattern that has led to over 40 individuals serving time in prison for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience.
Plummer received a jail term of two years while Holland received 20 months, with the prosecution suggesting their action caused £10,000 worth of damage to the painting frame. The painting itself was undamaged because a glass screen protected it; Raj Chada, who was defending Holland, suggested the activists had checked that this was the case.
Following the sentencing of Plummer and Holland on the 27th of September, three further Just Stop Oil supporters threw soup over 2 Van Gogh paintings, Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888, which were on display in the Poets and Lovers exhibition in the National Gallery. Phil Green, a community worker from Cornwall, was one of the protestors involved in this action, and he announced that “Future Generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history”. 71-year-old Ludi Simpson, who also engaged in this action, questioned when fossil fuel executives would be held to account for the “criminal damage that they are imposing on every living thing”. Shortly after the action, the National Gallery released a statement suggesting that the paintings were undamaged.
In response to these actions focusing on artwork, Greenpeace UK, and Liberate Tate, a group which campaigns against fossil fuel industry involvement in the arts, facilitated an open letter which detailed the historical centrality of iconoclasm within artistic culture. The letter named artists such as Asger Jorn and Alexander Brenner as demonstrating how iconoclastic practice is now celebrated in museums and galleries. It also outlined the use of this as a tactic of the suffragette movement, with Mary Wood striking John Singer Sergent’s portrait of Henry James with a meat cleaver and shouting “Votes for Women!” at the Royal Academy in 1914. In the same year, Mary Richardson also slashed Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus at the National Gallery. Consequently, more than 100 artists, curators, and academics campaigned for Plummer and Holland to be spared jail, suggesting their action was in keeping with the ethos of the art world.
This comes after a summer of growing concern over the rapid increases in custodial sentencing for non-violent protest. Five individuals, referred to by their supporters as the ‘Whole Truth Five’, received the longest sentences passed on peaceful protestors in living memory for planning to disrupt the M25 as part of Just Stop Oil’s demands that governments cooperate to establish a fossil fuel treaty, stopping the extraction and burning of oil, gas, and coal by 2030. Roger Hallam, who co-founded Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, received a five-year sentence, with the other defendants Daniel Shaw, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Louise Lancaster, and Cressida Gethin receiving four-year sentences, after all were found guilty of “conspiracy to commit public nuisance”. These sentences caused an outcry, with an open letter published in The Times calling for an urgent meeting with Attorney General Richard Hemmer to discuss these judgements. This letter included notable signatories such as Chris Martin, Annie Lennox, and Tracey Emin, as well as former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, who outlined that while some of the signatories may disagree with Just Stop Oil’s tactics they are still motivated to action on account of the disproportionate nature of the sentences. In comparison to the increasing jail time facing peaceful protestors, more than four in 10 sexual assault convicts have received suspended sentences, community orders or fines, avoiding prison.
Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, whose role is to protect any person experiencing or at risk of experiencing penalisation, persecution, or harassment for environmental action, described these sentences as “not acceptable in a democracy” and “a deterrent for the right to protest in the UK”. Other individuals from advocacy groups such as Liberty, Global Witness, and Amnesty International UK also voiced concern over the trial and the specific Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act 2022 that has legislated public nuisance as a statutory offence. In response to the sentencing of the activists, hundreds of people gathered at the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament Square, emphasising the necessity of safeguarding the right to protest.
Many are questioning the decisions to pursue custodial sentences for peaceful protestors, especially after the confirmation from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that Summer 2024 was the hottest on record. The UN’s Weather and Climate Agency chief Celeste Saulo has warned that these rising temperatures are an effect of international apathy, and should instead be triggering a global “red alert”. At the same time, statistics published in early September revealed that the prison population was at an all-time high in England and Wales, leading to deteriorated prison conditions and an early release scheme to combat overcrowding.
Despite this, Plummer and Holland will join 12 activists associated with Just Stop Oil currently serving jail time for peaceful protest and 11 others remanded to prison awaiting sentencing. Judge Christopher Hehir, who oversaw the sentencing, suggested that the activists’ actions threatened “extreme harm to society”, and dismissed all legal defences including the defence of proportionality. Many fear this summer of arrest sets a dangerous and frightening precedent for the future of protest rights in the UK. However, the actions that have been taken in response to the recent arrests demonstrate the feeling of some that protest must continue regardless of this.