JUST STOP OIL protesters have stopped traffic outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in London, and thrown soup over the building.
Just after 11.30am, 12 protesters walked on to Victoria Street in Westminster and sat down while holding banners. Some glued themselves to the tarmac and each other.
A number of other protesters then threw soup on to the front of the building.
Just Stop Oil said that they targeted the BEIS because it is the UK Government department responsible for allowing new fossil fuel extraction and that they used soup in “a reference to the fact that countless families in this country cannot afford a tin of soup, and famine is rife across sub-Saharan Africa”.
The environmental activist group issued an invitation to the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, for talks.
They also demanded that the UK Government halts all new oil and gas licences.
soup pic.twitter.com/S1pnGvFVl0
— Just Stop Oil ⚖️💀🛢 (@JustStop_Oil) October 17, 2022
A spokesperson said: “Just Stop Oil invites the Home Secretary Suella Braverman to come and meet with us and we will stop throwing soup.
“Join us on Thursday 20 October at 11am, in London, in public, to hear what is driving students, builders, engineers, care workers, vicars to throw soup at iconic paintings, to scale bridges, and to repeatedly, relentlessly block roads in the capital.
“We are ordinary people in nonviolent civil resistance in order to protect our rights, freedoms and our heritage. We seek to protect the lives and livelihoods of all humanity.”
Earlier today, two Just Stop Oil protesters climbed to the top of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge which links Essex and Kent. This forced police to close it to traffic.
Update from the #QEIIBridge - "we're just hanging off some ropes to make it more interesting"
— Just Stop Oil ⚖️💀🛢 (@JustStop_Oil) October 17, 2022
Our corrupt politics is responsible for this disruption, it will end when Gov #EndNewOilandGas
Donate https://t.co/HBHsudE9Sn#FreeLouis #FreeJosh #Soup pic.twitter.com/MESDOhMtuK
Today’s actions follow over two weeks of continuous civil resistance by supporters of Just Stop Oil, with protesters spraying orange paint over the Aston Martin showroom on Park Lane yesterday.
Charged
On Friday, two Just Stop Oil supporters were arrested after throwing tinned soup at one of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, the 1888 work Sunflowers, at the National Gallery in London to protest against fossil fuels.
Tomato soup covered the image, which is covered by glass, as well as parts of the golden frame.
Sunflowers is the second, more famous, Van Gogh painting to be targeted by the group, with two climate activists glueing themselves to his 1889 Peach Trees in Blossom, exhibited at the Courtauld Gallery, at the end of June.
On Saturday, three Just Stop Oil climate activists appeared in court over protests.
Anna Holland, 20, from Newcastle, and Phoebe Plummer, 21, from Lambeth, south-west London, both pleaded not guilty to criminal damage to the frame of Van Gogh’s painting in a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, Lora Johnson, 38, from Southwold, Suffolk, pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal damage at the same court after paint was sprayed on to the New Scotland Yard sign.
Since the campaign began on 1 April, Just Stop Oil say that their supporters have been arrested over 1,750 times, and five are currently in prison.
Includes reporting by Press Association
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