Two Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists, who glued themselves onto the frame of a Turner painting at the Manchester Art Gallery in July 2022, have been acquitted in their trial at Manchester Magistrates’ court on Thursday. The protesters Paul Bell, a PhD candidate in climate impacts, twenty-four, and energy advisor Edred Whittingham, twenty-seven, sprayed ‘No New Oil’ and the JSO logo on the floor with chalk.
They were charged with criminal damage of less than £5,000, which the Manchester District Judge ruled as proportionate to today’s climate crisis. The protest was part of JSO’s first wave of gallery actions demanding the UK government halts issuing of new licences for fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
‘This acquittal represents a chink of light in an otherwise very dark picture of state repression and judicial malice,’ a Just Stop Oil spokesperson said in a statement. ‘We are grateful for the few within the legal system who understand that Just Stop Oil supporters are acting in self-defence and seeking to defend life on earth, while the law is protecting those who are committed to its destruction.’
There are 14 Just Stop Oil supporters currently serving prison time of up to five years, including the activists who souped Van Gogh’s two Sunflowers (1988 and 1989) paintings at the National Gallery in London, who received their sentences last week.
