It concerns the two climate activists Louis McKechnie (21) and Emily Brocklebank (24). The action took place yesterday at the Courtauld Gallery in London. The two activists glued their hands to the frame of Van Gogh’s painting ‘Flowering Peach Trees’. “I loved this painting as a kid,” explains McKechnie on the Just Stop Oil website. “I still love it, but I love my friends and family, and nature more. I value the future survival of my generation more than my public reputation.”
Stop financing
McKechnie has been in the news before when he tied his hands to a goalpost during the Everton vs Newcastle United match. He already said in a interview met HLN that he would ‘do such an action again’.
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He has complied. According to McKechnie, the British government should stop financing oil fields. “We have to listen to the scientists. I’m not prepared to kill myself by the fossil fuel companies.” Activist Brocklebank also believes that action is badly needed. “Billionaires are getting richer, while nurses queue at food banks, tens of millions of people around the world go hungry and half of the world’s population is exposed to extreme danger from heat waves, floods, fires and famine.”
‘Resist or are complicit’
Both activists believe that cultural institutions can no longer watch as our society slowly collapses. “Arts institutions should close,” McKechnie says. “Art institution directors should call on the government to immediately stop all new oil and gas projects. We resist or we are complicit.” Brocklebank believes that artists are abandoning climate activists. “They’re focusing on the wrong things. We need everyone.”
A day earlier, five climate activists from Just Stop Oil were also arrested in a museum, this time in Glasgow. At the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, they had sprayed paint on the gallery’s walls and floors and glued themselves to a painting.
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‘The end justifies the means’
Gluing your hands to the Van Gogh painting is not an everyday demonstration. Is it allowed? And does it actually make sense? We asked associate professor Berend Roorda of the University of Groningen. He is a specialist in demonstration law.
“The right to demonstrate is usually interpreted very broadly,” he says. “But the fact that something falls under the law does not mean that you can break the law: even as a protester you are not allowed to commit criminal offenses or harm others unlawfully.”
If we look at the Netherlands, judges make a trade-off between the right to demonstrate and the rule that you must comply with the law, says Roorda. “For example, if an action group stands up for a larger, important theme, this can play a role in whether something is punishable or not.”
‘Step further’
Roorda believes that the action in England is going too far. “I don’t know exactly what criminal law looks like in England, but I think the activists are crossing the criminal boundaries with this. I think they are doing this consciously. The end justifies the means, they probably think. If it doesn’t work with normal protest, we’ll just go one step further.”
But whether that is the way is the question. “There is a risk that if the nuisance and damage is so serious, attention will mainly be focused on that and not so much on the content of the protest. The activists can run that risk.”
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