Skip to main content
A splash of protest
Just Stop Oil activists aren’t out to destroy art, they are here to save us. We should thank them not jail them, argues LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Just Stop Oil supporters sit on the floor after throwing soup over two of Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers paintings at the National Gallery in London, September 27, 2024

LUDI SIMPSON and I were at university together in the 1970s, connected by our involvement in left politics. Then we lost touch. In recent years we found each other again and were relieved to discover that, unlike a number of our contemporaries, we have not drifted to the political centre. Our radical roots remain firmly anchored.

Ludi’s, though, flowered in a more courageous way than mine. Last Friday, he was arrested, not for the first time, alongside two other Just Stop Oil activists, after throwing vegetable soup on two of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings in the National Gallery. 

The paintings are being featured as part of the Poets and Lovers exhibition there. Just Stop Oil uses non-violent civil disobedience and direct action to achieve its objective — an end to oil, gas and coal by 2030.

Support the Morning Star
You can read five articles for free every month,
but please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber.
More from this author
Angie Zelter
Features / 16 April 2025
16 April 2025
Activist Angie Zelter has been arrested more than a hundred times. She’s not stopping now, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
LABOUR’S LOST HERO: Tony Benn in Grosvenor Square, London,
Features / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025
Yanis Varoufakis and Jeremy Corbyn laid out a roadmap for peace, justice and equality as they celebrated the legacy of inspirational socialist Tony Benn, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Pro-Palestinian protesters demanding the release of Columbia
Features / 3 April 2025
3 April 2025
Such betrayals to the authorities are strikingly at odds with the history of Jewish persecution, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Us President Donald Trump waves to supporters from his limou
Features / 1 April 2025
1 April 2025
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Similar stories
JAILED: Eco-protesters support Anna Holland and Phoebe Plumm
Features / 21 October 2024
21 October 2024
Just Stop Oil has been criticised for targeting the work of Van Gogh, but it’s inaction on climate that’s putting great paintings at risk, argues LINDA PENTZ GUNTER