Just Stop The Vandalism

(Photograph: Zairon, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

In 1996, Jenny Joseph’s poem Warning was voted as Britain’s favourite post-war poem. It is not hard to see why, for it is a funny poem in which the narrator declares that after a lifetime of decorum, she will engage in unconventional behaviour when she is old. She envisages herself wearing purple, learning to spit and sitting down on the pavement when she is tired. Such conduct is permitted to the old, the poem tells us, because sobriety is for young adults who must make a living and set an example to their children. Hers is a gentle rebellion appropriate for those in the sere of life. Nowhere in the poem does the narrator anticipate committing vandalism.

Yet, two octogenarians managed just that last Friday. Church of England priest, Dr Sue Parfitt (82), and retired biology teacher, Judith Bruce (85), damaged the glass case in which one of the few copies of Magna Carta (1215) to survive is preserved at the British Library. They then glued themselves to the glass display. Both were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage. Yes, you guessed it – they are Just Stop Oil activists.

Parfitt defended her and Bruce’s actions by stating that Magna Carta is at the basis of Britain’s freedoms and rights, but if climate change turns to catastrophe, there will be no freedoms and rights. Civilisation is only possible because of climate stability and therefore the climate must be protected. Presumably, Parfitt and Bruce saw their actions as a symbolic enactment of civilisation’s destruction if the trade in fossil fuels does not cease.

Yet Parfitt and Bruce’s protest and their justification of it are hypocritical. Can you imagine Bruce’s indignation if one of her students had decided to carve an obscene message into a classroom desk? And what about Parfitt’s wrath if a bunch of youths had put stones through her parish church’s stained-glass windows? As a priest, Parfitt understands very well the importance of what is sacred, and yet for the sake of her cause she is prepared to violate the sanctity of a medieval text.

There is another contradiction within their argument. If Parfitt and Bruce are so upset about civilisation’s eclipse in the climate apocalypse, why are they doing the climate apocalypse’s work for it by taking a hammer and chisel to the glass case of what they regard as one of civilisation’s founding documents? Surely a better way to protest would be to stand next to Magna Carta as an example of what they think climate disaster will destroy, and hold up a placard with this message: SAVE CIVILISATION: JUST STOP OIL!’ This would not persuade those of us who are sceptical about Just Stop Oil’s views, but we could respect their peaceful, dignified protest.

But that is not Just Stop Oil’s modus operandi. They want through their protests to cause shock and massive inconvenience, because they do not think the government and the public are listening. They think we are sleepwalking into the total extinction of earth life. Yet their methods are causing them to be unpopular, and people are therefore more likely to ignore them or oppose them. Blocking roads with sit down protests, for instance, causes people to be late for work and children to be late for school.

What is worse is that by glueing themselves to roads, Just Stop Oil are putting lives at risk. Last November, Sky News reported that protestors blocking Waterloo Bridge temporarily prevented an ambulance with its blue lights on from getting through. When Just Stop Oil were challenged about this, they disingenuously blamed the police for blocking the road. If activists are so concerned for human life, why are they endangering it with their protests?

What is at the heart of Just Stop Oil’s methodology is a cold utilitarian logic. So what if a woman cannot get to her mother’s funeral because Just Stop Oil are sitting in the road, as long as the protest goes ahead. The end justifies the means, but that is not how most people will see it. If Just Stop Oil want to get their message through and not come across as privileged, narcissistic virtue-signallers, they ought to protest legally. Vandalising paintings, causing traffic jams and chiselling display cases is the behaviour of adult toddlers, not that of persuasive climate advocates.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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