# Just Stop Oil Sunflowers protest

On 14 October 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland of Just Stop Oil threw two tins of soup at an 1888 Sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh at the National Gallery in London, glued themselves to the wall and asked the crowd whether they were more concerned by the protest or by the effects of climate change on the planet. They had been inspired to do so by the decrease in media coverage of the organisation's activism and selected that painting due to its vulnerability. Their act attracted worldwide censure, caused £10,000 worth of damage to the picture's frame, and subjected Plummer and Holland to homophobic abuse, but it also inspired several subsequent activists to throw food products at other paintings. The pair were convicted of criminal damage in July 2024 by Christopher Hehir, who sentenced Plummer to two years in prison and Holland to 20 months in September 2024.

## Background and preparation

Just Stop Oil was founded in February 2022 by Roger Hallam to demand that the government of the United Kingdom stop issuing new licences for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels. Their members included Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer, who joined in May and August. The organisation's activists mounted a series of protests including a July 2022 incident where members turned up at the National Gallery in July 2022 and glued themselves to John Constable's The Hay Wain. The National Gallery held one of Vincent van Gogh's seven Sunflowers paintings, housed in a 17th-century frame with silver leaf, clay undercoat and patina built up over centuries, which had been chosen in 1999 for its rustic style and because its colouration matched the painting.
In the wake of declining media coverage of Just Stop Oil, Holland and some others began developing ways to return to the headlines. They considered spraypainting the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square orange, but considered Churchill too divorced from the climate crisis and his monument too heavily guarded, and considered attacking Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans for how meta it would have been, but instead selected Sunflowers due to the quality of Campbell's Soup Cans and because Van Gogh lived in poverty. The pair opted to throw soup instead of paint as it symbolised the tinned goods distributed by food banks, whose usage had risen following the global energy crisis.
Plummer and Holland arrived at the National Gallery on 13 October 2022. The pair came with soup in their backpacks with the intention of testing the gallery's security protocols and used their visit to examine the positions of guards. They also inspected the painting and made sure there was glass protecting it. They then spent the night at a Just Stop Oil safe house, where they practised various positions and arrived at the conclusion that the soup was best thrown over arm, with a short backlift. They also memorised speeches they intended to deliver after throwing them.

## Protest and bail

   "What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people? The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup. Meanwhile, crops are failing and people are dying in supercharged monsoons, massive wildfires and endless droughts caused by climate breakdown. We can’t afford new oil and gas, it’s going to take everything. We will look back and mourn all we have lost unless we act immediately."
The pair entered the gallery at around 11 am the next day and entered room 43 with two cans of Heinz Cream of Tomato soup, superglue, and a loaf of bread. After waiting for more than ten minutes for a group of schoolchildren to move out of the way, the pair removed their jackets to reveal white shirts with Just Stop Oil slogans, threw their soup at the painting, glued themselves to the wall, and demanded to know whether art was worth more than life, food, and justice. A nervous Plummer deviated from their plan and was still talking about dying mangroves by the time the guards had cleared the gallery, meaning Holland did not get to deliver their speech. The acid in the soup eroded some of the frame's patina and left permanent pale streaks, causing £10,000 damage. A supporter filmed the act for publicity purposes.
The protest caused worldwide outrage, though some complainants were assuaged by the fact that the painting was behind glass and was itself unharmed. The pair received significant homophobic abuse from social media and right-wing newspapers following the incident, though their actions inspired several subsequent climate activists to throw food at paintings around the world, including mashed potato in Germany at a Claude Monet painting and maple syrup in Canada at an Emily Carr painting. Plummer became one of the organisation's most recognised faces, though Holland stepped back from frontline activism after seeing the effect their protests had had on their family.
The pair were arrested and charged with criminal damage and aggravated trespass and pleaded not guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court on the grounds that they had caused no damage to the painting. They were released on bail on the condition that they did not enter galleries or museums and or possess paint or adhesive substances in a public place, following which they took the Tube to a safe house still wearing their prison uniforms. Surreptitious photos of them laughing during the journey were sent to a tabloid, which resulted in further outraged newspaper stories. In an interview with Damian Whitworth of The Times published in July 2024, Plummer stated that they had felt "empowered" by the soup throwing incident, as they felt they were "seizing back power from the systems that are hell-bent on destroying us and destroying everything we know and love".

## Trial and reactions

Plummer and Holland faced a jury trial for their actions in July 2024 at Southwark Crown Court, at which Plummer represented themself and Raj Chada represented Holland. They faced Judge Christopher Hehir, who earlier that month had sentenced a trial of five activists known as the Whole Truth Five and including Hallam to multi-year jail terms for organising a rolling four-day blockade of the M25 motorway. Hehir dismissed several of Chada's defences and forbade the pair from discussing climate change or trying to justify their actions, allowing them only to argue that they were not knowingly reckless at the time. He also repeatedly reminded the jury to disregard the defendants' reasoning and to not return a perverse verdict. The jury took just over two hours to return a guilty verdict, prompting Hehir to warn the pair to expect jail time.
In September 2024, more than 100 artists, curators and academics signed an open letter coordinated by Greenpeace and Liberate Tate imploring Hehir not to sentence Plummer and Holland to prison. On 27 September 2024, the day of sentencing, several hundred supporters of Plummer and Holland held a vigil outside the court. Despite both the open letter and the vigil, Hehir sentenced Plummer to two years for their tomato soup protest and Holland to 20 months, using his closing statement to state that he was punishing Plummer and Holland for the damage they could have done to the painting. Around an hour after sentencing, further activists performed an identical protest at the National Gallery; in response to both Sunflowers protests and attacks on its Hay Wain and Rokeby Venus paintings, the National Gallery instituted a ban on liquids except baby formula, breast milk, and prescription medicines from being brought in. Matthew Taylor of The Guardian wrote on 20 December that Holland, who was serving their sentence at HM Prison Send, would be one of 40 protesters to be in prison that Christmas, though a 41st protester was returned to jail the day after.
In response to the sentence, activists from Last Generation threw soup at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Berlin, and similar protests took place outside the embassies of Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot criticised Plummer and Holland's sentences and stated that Hehir had given suspended sentences to violent criminals, rapists, and paedophiles, and that Huw Edwards and racist protesters in the 2024 United Kingdom riots had also been given suspended sentences. Nadya Tolokonnikova opined in the same paper that "breaking and destroying" was "a valid and striking artistic and political statement" and stated that Van Gogh would have approved of the protest as nature was his muse. Celia Walden, who was less sympathetic, instructed the pair and the three activists who attacked Sunflowers that day to use their words and wrote that it was "unfortunate for them" that they had drawn Hehir due to his history of sentencing protesters. In a YouGov poll conducted the week after sentencing, 37 per cent of those polled said the sentences were "about right" and 36 per cent said they were "not harsh enough".
In January 2025, Plummer, Holland, Hallam, Gaie Delap, and twelve other Just Stop Oil protesters challenged the lengths of their sentences at the Court of Appeal. The sixteen named themselves the "Lord Walney 16" after Lord Walney, an independent advisor to the government on political violence and disruption, on the grounds that their sentences were influenced by a report he produced called Protecting our Democracy from Coercion. Their appeal was supported by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, though Lord Walney described the group as "silly" and instructed them to "accept some responsibility for [their] criminal behaviour". During the first day, activists dressed in iron muzzles and long black gowns held a silent vigil outside the court, while large numbers of activists holding a sit-down protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice caused The Strand to be closed. On 7 March 2025, Baroness Carr shortened the sentences of Delap and the Whole Truth Five but upheld those of Plummer and Holland, citing damage caused to heritage and cultural assets as aggravating factors.