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Two Just Stop Oil activists who threw soup at a Van Gogh painting at the National Gallery in London will be sentenced to prison after a British judge found them guilty last week.

The same judge also recently sentenced the group’s founder, Roger Hallam, and four other activists who call themselves the “Whole Truth Five”, to between four and five years in prison.

The “Canned Soup Two” were arrested after throwing soup onto Sunflowers (1888), causing minor damage to the frame of the painting, but none to the painting itself, which was protected by glass.

“What is worth more, art or life? … are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”@JustStop_Oil’s activists explain their action pic.twitter.com/mGNZIO6RbK

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) October 14, 2022

Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland have now been found guilty of criminal damage exceeding £5,000 (R120,000) by the Southwark Crown Court for the 2022 incident, and Judge Christopher Hehir told the pair to expect jail time at their sentencing on September 27.

The National Gallery chose to rather say nothing.

After the 2022 stunt, Plummer, 23, said, “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.”

“Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?”

Just Stop Oil claimed in a statement that during the trial, the judge “denied the defendants all defences in law and barred any mention of the climate crisis, preventing them from giving testimony on their reasons for taking action.”

Similarly to the “Whole Truth Five” trial, Judge Hehir characterized the throwing of soup as “violent” to dismiss their legal defence of “proportionality” under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The protest group however claimed “the judge seemed to not understand that acts considered violent against other humans may not be considered violent against inanimate objects.” Well, it was a Van Gogh.

The harsh sentences for the “Whole Truth Five” and the canned soup protestors have caused some concern among British lawyers, who seem to only agree on the unprecedented nature of recent climate change protests. Human rights lawyer Adam Wagner wrote on X that the sentences for Hallam and his crew were “very long sentences indeed for peaceful, though highly disruptive, protests.”

“There was a time, not long ago, where the courts were reluctant to give immediate prison sentences at all for civil disobedience. No more.”

Wagner believes that “British society’s tolerance for them seems to have ended”, and we all know The Man will always have a bigger stick. Whether the court cases set a new precedent for others to follow is something Just Stop Oil likely ignored as they were covering the departure boards at Heathrow in orange paint yesterday.

 

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Hallam spoke to the BBC from his prison cell, saying that he believed direct action protests remain “the right strategy”.

“I’ve been arrested six times in the last six months, state repression is wild at the moment.”

“The strategic moral imperative is resistance to the greatest crisis in the history of humanity.”

Andrew Tettenborn, a professor of law at Swansea Law School has blasted Hallam, who also co-founded the Extinction Rebellion protest group and sounds like he always wears a beret.

“Those who say that the protesters are merely conscientious practitioners of civil disobedience and that the punishments imposed amount to a stamping on the right of peaceful protest, are wrong.”

“Hallam’s casting of himself in the role of a civil disobedience advocate is both disingenuous and incorrect. Civil disobedience involves a willingness not only to disobey, but take the punishment.”

Whether the sentences were indeed harsh is open for debate, but at least now Just Stop Oil knows that if you come at a Van Gogh, you should bring your lawyer along.

[source:artnet]