Two Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists have been arrested after smashing the glass cover of a painting once famously slashed by a suffragette.
The pair were held on suspicion of criminal damage after Diego Velazquez’s The Rokeby Venus was targeted at the National Gallery in central London on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said.
In 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson attacked the painting with a meat cleaver in a protest against the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst.
JSO said students Hanan, 22, and Harrison, 20, used safety hammers to smash the glass covering the artwork.
It added: “Politics is failing us. It failed women in 1914 and it is failing us now. New oil and gas will kill millions.
“If we love art, if we love life, if we love our families we must Just Stop Oil.”
It is the latest in a string of stunts, which have seen demonstrators throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting and glue themselves to the frames of other masterpieces.
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The glass protecting Velazquez’s The Rokeby Venus was smashed at the National Gallery in London. Pic: JSO
JSO denies targeting Cenotaph
Meanwhile, the Met said they arrested at around JSO activists who were slow-marching in Whitehall, with some of those held around the Cenotaph, according to protesters and an officer.
The campaign group was accused of targeting the war memorial – which it strongly denied, saying activists had been moved to its base by police officers after shutting down traffic on the road.
A mother-of-one who was lying handcuffed at the base of the Cenotaph said: “They arrested us in the road and we were dragged to the pavement and then back over here.”
A police officer said the protesters had been moved to the area “to get them off the road”, adding: “It was for their own safety.”
JSO protesters have also been detained in Whitehall, near Downing Street
However, politicians including Tory party deputy chairman Lee Anderson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper accused the group of targeting the Cenotaph in social media posts on X.
Mr Khan and Ms Cooper later removed the posts and the Met said there were no arrests linked to the Cenotaph.
The climate change group, which is calling on the government to stop all new gas and oil projects in the UK, is currently carrying out a four-week campaign of demonstrations.
Dozens of protesters have already been arrested for actions including slow marching on major roads.
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