Just Stop Oil is wrong to target King Charles

After Just Stop Oil’s recent attack on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery, the group has become emboldened by the international publicity their actions have earned. This is clearly the explanation for today’s field trip to Madame Tussauds where, after buying tickets like good little anti-capitalists, two of its activists covered a waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake.

In a statement released by Just Stop Oil, the vandalism was justified by the protestors, who said: ‘We are here because we seek to protect our freedoms and rights, because we seek to protect this green and pleasant land which is the inheritance of us all.’ 

They noted that the Royal Family has form in expressing environmental concerns of its own, reminding us that ‘last year at COP26 in Glasgow, Queen Elizabeth said: “The time for words has moved to the time for action!”’ and that King Charles – a noted environmentalist for most of his adult life – made a passionate speech in November 2019 in which he said: ‘We are feeling the effects of all of this now, and disasters are increasing with terrifying frequency and intensity, and causing unprecedented levels of physical and economic damage.’

Charles concluded that ‘for the past, what, 40-50 years I have been driven by an overwhelming desire not to be confronted by my grandchildren – or yours, Ladies and Gentlemen, whom I mind about equally as much – demanding to know why I didn’t do anything to prevent them being bequeathed a poisoned and destroyed planet. Now, of course, we are indeed being confronted by these very children, demanding immediate action and not just words.’ 

It is hard not to agree with these sentiments, which were expressed with commendable passion and sincerity. Yet the new King has instead been greeted with the ignominy of seeing his wax model covered in cake – all in the name of a weak pun: ‘The science is clear. The demand is simple: just stop new oil and gas. It’s a piece of cake.’

As with the National Gallery protest, Just Stop Oil’s actions are both counter-productive and inconsistent. Throwing soup over Sunflowers says nothing about either Van Gogh (that notorious environmental vandal) or the organisation’s intentions – they might have asked ‘what is worth more, art or life’, but few would see this as an impressive way of getting a satisfactory answer to their question. This latest piece of attention-seeking fails both as a prank and a serious interrogation of King Charles’s environmental intentions. In a press release, Just Stop Oil acknowledges that the monarch’s absence from COP27 is due to outgoing Prime Minister Liz Truss’s intervention rather than his own intentions. It remains to be seen whether Truss’s successor will offer different counsel. But nonetheless, the group’s demonstrations against ‘a criminal government and their genocidal death project’ will continue until its demands are met.

There are arguments for this kind of publicity-seeking direct action: its application can be witty, sharp and worth the punishment that its practitioners will inevitably receive. But trying to suggest that one of Britain’s most committed environmental campaigners somehow doesn’t care – or is in thrall to the government and now has been muzzled – is madly inconsistent and intellectually negligible. The waxwork might be covered in chocolate cake, but Just Stop Oil has egg on its face – again.