The Just Stop Oil (JSO) activist and spring 2023 Dazed cover star Phoebe Plummer has been arrested by the Met Police, following a slow march protest in London this morning (June 7). Plummer was one of 54 JSO supporters marching in six groups across the capital, drawing attention to scientists’ warning that it is now too late to stop the total loss of Arctic summer sea ice.
On Monday (June 5), Plummer received bail conditions that forbade her from protesting “on any roadway within the UK”, after being arrested at a similar march. Video of her latest arrest shows her peacefully complying, after officers burst into a central London cafe, where she was allowed a final sip of her coffee (how generous).
“I’m being arrested right now at a cafe,” says Plummer, in the video (below). “We got off the road when they asked us to, when they issued the Section 12, but I have bail conditions not to protest on any road in the UK. This is a completely draconian overreach of power. Marching has always been part of our democratic process. Our freedom and our democracy is under threat by this government.”
Plummer goes on to note that she’s being arrested for demanding the same thing as the UN, IPCC, and other “internationally-respected scientific bodies”: “No new fossil fuel licences.” After blowing a kiss as she’s led out of the cafe, she then continues to advocate for the right to protest while handcuffed on the street. “I can’t stand by and do nothing whilst the government takes a course of action that they know is going to kill millions of people,” she adds. “People are needlessly suffering and dying, and that’s why I broke my bail conditions today.”
In March, it was announced that the UK has officially been downgraded on an international index of civic freedoms, partly due to the anti-protest laws that have recently increased police powers, including the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Act. Following her arrest, Just Stop Oil speculates that Plummer may be remanded to prison for breaking her bail conditions, “for the sake of a safe, liveable future for all”.
Earlier this year, Plummer – who famously doused Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with tomato soup – told Dazed that increasingly authoritarian consequences for protest won’t stop JSO activists. “We’re not going to be intimidated by prison sentences,” she said, “when there’s so much more at stake.”
Read Dazed’s full interview with Just Stop Oil here.