Just Stop Oil now threatening to slash artworks

The ignorant idiots who've been assaulting artwork around Europe are now reportedly threatening to start slashing paintings - despite the fact the oil in the paintings is nothing to do with the oil they are protesting about.

• Just Stop Oil considers slashing famous artworks as it threatens to 'escalate' protests | Sky News
• Just Stop Oil could slash famous paintings like Suffragettes, says spokesman | Evening Standard

Alex De Koning, a spokesman for Just Stop Oil, said it was "insane" that "more people are outraged" about the activists targeting artwork than the devastating floods in Pakistan, which displaced millions of people.

The 24-year-old - who describes himself as a climate scientist - told Sky News that the protest group may follow in the footsteps of suffragettes who "violently slashed paintings in order to get their messages across".

In 1914, Mary Richardson attacked Diego Velazquez's painting The Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver in a protest against the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Later that year, suffragette Anne Hunt entered the National Portrait Gallery and hacked away at a painting of Thomas Carlyle, one of the gallery's trustees. (Sky News)

The most ludicrous excuse is that they're going to act "like the Suffragettes"

Clearly these ignoramuses have never studied history. As my other half pointed out this morning the spokesman 

• neither understands how suffrage was actually achieved 
• nor how to get people on their side.

The FACTS are:

• the movement for women's suffrage started in 1872
• it became a militant campaign in 1906

However over the course of 42 years absolutely nothing was achieved in terms of change in suffrage prior to World War I.

Women got the vote after the First World War only AFTER women had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the war effort.

• the outbreak of the First World War saw all political activity suspended - including the suffrage movement
• After the War, Lloyd George wanted to recognise the efforts of those who had contributed to the War Effort and in 1918 Lloyd George's Coalition Government passed the Representation of the People Act 1918, enfranchising 
• all men over 21, 
• as well as all women over the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications.
In 1928 the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 equalizing the franchise to all persons, male and female, over the age of 21.

My other half said he did not understand why those protesting did not grasp that aggressive, combative and damaging protests rarely if ever achieve anything. Nor do they achieve public support if they constantly annoy the public at large.

In contrast peaceful non-aggressive protests can be much more successful.

So, he asked, why do the protestors not act voluntarily to do something of positive and public benefit to the community at large - while wearing clothing indicating they are "#Just Stop Oil" Protestors.

I think he's making a great point.

In the meantime I notice that 

• protestors are acquiring criminal records and sentences of 6 months in prison.
• the security at major art galleries and museums has been significantly toughened up since their "attack" efforts started.

National Gallery in Trafalgar Square this month (November 2022)

REFERENCE

• Just Stop Oil is both destructive and IGNORANT!
• Why throw tomato soup at a Van Gogh painting?