On 16 November, 22-year-old Just Stop Oil activist Phoebe Plummer was sentenced to six months in prison for taking part in a protest against new gas and oil. When asked by the judge if they would keep marching, Phoebe responded: “I will continue exercising my human right to protest, yes”.
As the Judge remanded Phoebe to prison, the activist said, "I will continue to march while they continue to licence new oil, gas and coal. How many more children have to die before you listen? How many more floods have to wipe out entire villages? How many people will die before you stop sending people like me to prison? Sir Mark Rowley has been handed a dossier of evidence. Why won’t you investigate the real criminals?”
Here we revisit our interview with Phoebe, as well as more young people who are making huge personal sacrifices in the name of climate activism.
Someone’s thrown cake at the Mona Lisa. Mashed potato at the Monet. Tomato soup at Van Gogh’s £72 million painting of sunflowers. And the aisles of British supermarkets have run with deliberately spilt dairy milk.
The latest trend in climate activism is audacious and it’s food-based. Young women and non-binary people are doing most of the hurling, smearing, and spilling – because, they say, they’ve run out of options to fight for their future.
“I did this essentially after trying every other method of activism: I tried going on marches, signed petitions, writing to my MPs. It never made a difference. It's only been since we’ve been doing acts of civil resistance that finally our message is getting heard,” 20-year-old climate activist, student, and soup-thrower Anna Holland told GLAMOUR over zoom, days after their now-infamous outing to the National Gallery in London.
“I know it might seem a bit ridiculous throwing soup at a painting, but what I actually think is ridiculous is that the British government is licencing over a hundred new fossil fuel licences,” Anna’s fellow Just Stop Oil activist 21-year-old Phoebe Plummer told GLAMOUR. “I think it's ridiculous that they subsidise fossil fuels 32 times more than renewables. I think it’s ridiculous that their inaction has led us to the cost of living crisis.”
On 14 October, Phoebe and Anna unleashed tomato soup tins on the Perspex screen encasing a Van Gogh, super-glued their hands to the wall, and yelled: “What is worth more; art or life?”
She's been recognised as one of the Global Goalkeeper Award Winners for 2022.
Security was called. Police arrived. The room was cleared, and the red liquid was mopped up. Twitter went wild with criticism and support. The story made countless headlines. Their demands – no new fossil fuels in the UK, insulation for British homes, tax for big polluters, and subsidized public transport – appeared in news coverage worldwide.
Suella Braverman, who was Home Secretary at the time, vowed to increase police powers in response. She tweeted: “To the vandals who tried to ruin a great work of art this week, I say this: Your behaviour doesn’t further your cause or influence the debate; Your disruptive behaviour stops decent people from going about their daily lives; and Your guerrilla tactics will not succeed.”
This time last year, 75% of adults in the UK said they were worried about the impact of climate change, according to the Office of National Statistics. And that was before a shocking IPCC report declaring “code red” for humanity.
No work of art was harmed. They were wiped clean and made available to admire again shortly afterwards. The conversation about the climate crisis, however, continues. And no wonder: Anxiety about the future of our planet is at an all-time high. This time last year, 75% of adults in the UK said they were worried about the impact of climate change, according to the Office of National Statistics. And that was before a shocking IPCC report declaring “code red” for humanity.
This worry has not necessarily translated into support for protests like Phoebe and Anna’s. Various Twitter users have called their actions “selfish,” “pathetic,” “naïve,” and “codswallop,” among other things. Janet Street-Porter referred to them as “a couple of twerps”, and people online called for jail time. They’ve been charged with criminal damage, with court dates in December.
Which is what they expected when they set out with their Heinz.
It's a huge victory for equality campaigners.
“Every single act of civil resistance in history was met with controversy and hatred,” Anna tells GLAMOUR. “From the civil rights movement to the suffragettes, the queer rights movement, every single one of them were met with hatred and backlash and anger. But it’s triggered conversations not just about our methods or us as individuals but about why we were there. People aren’t just talking about the soup on the painting; they're talking about the messages on our shirts and what we, as an organisation, stand for. People are finally beginning to ask themselves, each other and the government the questions that we’ve been asking all along.”
Questions like, why is the British government pursuing more and more oil when we have eight years’ worth in reserve and renewables are nine times cheaper anyway? Why are big polluters not being heavily taxed when the head of BP has literally said he’s “got more cash than he knows what to do with”? And why are people angrier about soup near art than they are about the climate emergency?
Data gathered by the Social Science Lab in June suggests that this sort of action does affect people. In a survey on changing attitudes to Just Stop Oil earlier this year, the number of people willing to participate in some form of climate activism increased from 8.7% to 11.3% of the UK population. That’s equivalent to approximately 1.7 million additional people.
“I feel like I'm seizing back power over my future from the governments and the corporations, which are denying us the right to grow old.”
Whether this latest spate of activism has recruited more people, or put them off, remains to be seen.
“This is the first thing that has given me a bit of hope that, as a 21-year-old, that maybe we can do something so that we have future,” said Anna. “I feel like I'm seizing back power over my future from the governments and the corporations which actually right now they are denying us the right to grow old.”
“I'm a scared little kid trying to fight for my future,” said Phoebe. “I want people to realise that something like this is a proportionate response to our government’s inaction – which is criminal inaction. It's not a question of science right now; it's a question of political will.”
Gen Z are the most worried, and they’ll inherit the effects of whatever decisions are made now. A 2019 Amnesty International survey of 10,000 people aged between 18 and 25 across 22 countries found that 41 per cent consider climate change one of the most important issues facing the world. A YouGov study a year later found that almost half of all 18–24-year-olds were “very concerned” about the climate crisis, compared to just a quarter of those over 65.
Inspiring stuff.
They’re desperate enough to hurl tinned non-perishables for attention.
“These spectacular types of protests are an important tactic in raising public awareness,” University of Warwick Sociology Professor Akwugo Emejulu tells GLAMOUR over the phone. “Whether it’s Heinz on the Van Gogh or people doing the bridge climb, it’s meant to be disruptive. It’s meant to garner media attention. We’re still talking about it, so I’d say it’s been effective, whether you ultimately agree or disagree with their methods.”
Professor Emejulu’s research is on race, gender, and grassroots activism. Her latest book, Fugitive Feminism, discusses Black women’s exclusion and liberation. She says it’s not just the age and gender of these protestors that matters, but their race and class – something that’s also been discussed online, though a lot less politely.
“When middle-class white people engage in civil disobedience, we know they are less likely to experience police violence,” she says. “They know they’ll be treated differently [to Black people and people of colour]. They know they’ll be handled with kid gloves because of their race and class.”
When police officers at the National Gallery recognised Anna from previous protests, one of them said “oh hey, Anna.” They were treated with respect by gallery staff and law enforcement. Professor Emejulu says it would play out very differently, if Black women started throwing things in galleries.
“It is a privilege to be able to protest and be supported and have the funds to do it. [This sort of activism] is definitely still very white and middle class and that definitely needs to change.”
“It wouldn’t get the same kind of media attention, even though the vast majority of people most adversely affected [by climate change] are located in the global south,” she said. “Think of the things Black and brown people have been dealing with just recently, with the floods in Pakistan and the droughts in Kenya. That doesn’t even get the same media attention as these acts.”
That inequity is not lost on the white women spilling things for the cause. Sarah McAffrey, a 19-year-old interior design student from Glasgow, knew she was somewhat protected by the colour of her skin when she poured cow’s milk on the floor of a supermarket on behalf of the organisation Animal Rebellion.
Olivia Julianna's response has been viewed more than a million times.
“It is a privilege to be able to protest and be supported and have the funds to do it,” Sarah told GLAMOUR by video call. “[This sort of activism] is definitely still very white and middle class and that definitely needs to change.”
Sarah is technically still under investigation but hasn’t been charged for her actions.
“On the day, there was a high police presence already, and we were all very aware of them. As the day went on, and people were getting arrested for previous milk spill action the day before, there was high tension, and it was unsettling. But there was music playing, and we were part of a group and it got exciting and fun, being around so many concerned citizens. When it finally came time to pour out the milk, I was just ready.”
In mid-October, activists across London were filmed in supermarkets, including Waitrose, M&S, and Harrods. Some had planned it; others joined in spontaneously. They asked the government to help farmers and fishing communities to transition and adjust to a sustainable plant-based future and then to rewild the land that frees up. Those demands were somewhat lost in angry online chatter about the low-paid supermarket employees who’d have to fetch a mop to clean wasted milk.
“I feel like the milk’s wasted from the moment it doesn’t go to the baby cow, so it doesn’t feel like any more of a waste than it already does when it’s on the shelf,” said Sarah, who’s been vegan for six years. “In terms of people being annoyed, I understand, it’s disruptive and annoying. It’s not a popularity contest, though; other movements in the past haven’t been popular, but they’ve got the change they needed to see.”
Professor Emejulu agrees. “These young people get it. It’s meant to be shocking; what these folks are doing, they choose these things because they are disruptive. But I’d say the conversations we’ve had in response have actually been more nuanced than in the past. I saw videos of young people talking through their thinking and why they did these things, which is a really important intervention. I haven’t seen as much straight dismissal as usual because it’s very hard to argue once you’ve heard the reasoning.”
Many of the activists in these viral videos have been women. This makes sense: women are more likely to report being worried about the impact of climate change and anxiety about the future of the environment than men.
Many of the activists in these viral videos have been women. This makes sense: women are more likely to report being worried about the impact of climate change and anxiety about the future of the environment than men. They’re more likely to be dangerously affected. And they do more to tackle it, too.
One of the most recognisable faces of this recent action is Lora Johnson, a 38-year-old from Suffolk. She attempted to glue herself to Waterloo Bridge to protest fracking alongside other climate activists, but while she was applying the glue to her left hand, was arrested and carried away by police officers. More than 11 million people have watched a video of Lora explaining her reasons, held aloft by four men: “I’m doing this for my son! The government’s inaction on climate change is a death sentence to us all!”
She's been recognised as one of the Global Goalkeeper Award Winners for 2022.
Lora spoke to GLAMOUR about her decision to join Just Stop Oil in their October campaign. “As a mother, I could not let my son's future be robbed from him by the corrupt government. I was intercepted by a policeman and ended up with superglue all over my hair as he cuffed me from behind. In hindsight, I couldn't have planned it better, and I'm really pleased that I managed to give our demands so clearly and the visuals for my comedic flying arrest struck a chord with many.”
Lora was taken to Hammersmith police station, where she read a book, wrote some poems, and was released by one o’clock the next morning. Later, Lora would be charged for throwing orange paint on the new sign outside Scotland Yard.
“People often ask me how I felt in the moment of arrest,” she says. “It might sound perverse to say at peace, but it's the truth. Inaction hurts more! To give up my civil liberty for a night in the cells, to fight for a future for my son, is a no-brainer.”
Lora’s son Alexander has just turned seven. By the time he’s the same age as Anna, or Phoebe, or Sarah, global temperatures will have risen 1.5 degrees. Too hot for soup.
