Shubtill v Director of Public Prosecutions

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In the Court of Appeal

Shubtill v. Director of Public Prosecutions [2022] JCLR 46

Appeal from an order of the court of criminal appeal refusing leave to Ernest Shubtill, the appellant, to appeal against his conviction for the wilful battery of Violet Elizabeth Botts. The appellant was convicted on 17 October 2022, at London & Middx Assizes.

(Cur adv. vult)

Lord Justice Cocklecarrot M.R.: London’s National Gallery has stood for 170 years at the northern boundary of Trafalgar Square. Originally conceived by Parliamentary Commission to “give the people an ennobling enjoyment”, the Gallery houses paintings which, on any account, are the highest peaks of the grand massif that is the western cultural tradition. Cimabue’s Virgin and Child with Two Angels hangs there. So does Leonardo’s Madonna of the Rocks. The Gallery records the inevitable progress of history: Constable’s The Hay Wain graces a wall not far from Turner’s requiem to the obsolescence of sail, The Fighting Temeraire. No less fulsomely endowed is the Gallery’s modern art collection: Cézannes hangs beside Monets, who accompany Renoirs and Rousseaus. [Rousseaux? — Ed]

Accompanying, and perhaps surpassing even these, are the works of that one-eared Flemish wizard, Vincent Van Gogh. Foremost among them is Sunflowers, a painting whose sister was once the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

As might any structure which has stood in central London for 170 years, the Gallery has born witness to great changes and momentous events, both fair and foul. The erection of Nelson’s Column. The ushering in of the second Millennium. Celebration of Victory in Europe. Protests about the War in Vietnam. The suffragettes bombed it 1914. Taxpayers rioted in 1990.

So I dare say the goings on of Friday 14th October 2022 will not linger over the aeons: fairer things, and fouler ones, will soon wipe them from the collected consciousness, just as a sponge might spilt soup. But alas, these events are on our agenda for today’s proceedings so, tiresome as they undoubtedly are, it falls to me to recount them. I shall do so as briefly as I can.

Just after 11am, two young women entered Room 43 of the Gallery. Dressed in matching white tee-shirts they might have been mistaken, at a glance, for devotees of the pop-group Wham! I regret that no arguments were advanced, either way, as to whether they in fact were, but their tee-shirts read “Just Stop Oil” and not “Choose Life”, so we can suppose they were not. In any case, nothing turns on it.

Being a normal Friday at season end, the Gallery was busy enough that the women were able to escape the attention of the Gallery’s security detail. This the Gallery may have since come to regret, for the women had, concealed about their persons, containers of soup. Without ado, the women vaulted a low velvet rope, emptied their soup receptacles onto the Sunflowers, glued themselves to the wall and began shouting at everyone.

There were gasps, roars and a shout of “Oh, my gosh!” from nearby patrons, but beyond this, the bystanders — bar one — took no action. They stood transfixed. That one, the appellant, Neasden, did not. He exited Room 43, largely unobserved, and at a decent clip. We shall hear more about the appellant shortly.

The women continued with their shouting. Before long — with curious haste, I am inclined to think — the world’s media representatives arrived, with cameras, cine films and outside broadcast units. They formed a makeshift press Gallery. This scrum may have impeded Gallery security — again, a regrettable dearth of evidence or argument on the point — but by all accounts no-one: not gallery patrons, nor members of the press, nor officials of the gallery, made any effort to eject the young women, or even stop them talking. By this point they were securely fastened to the wall with Araldite™. Mr Baxter-Morley for the Gallery intimated that they could not be removed even if one wanted to.

Did you not want to, Mr Baxter Morley?

The young women warmed to their task. The more loquacious of the two, a Ms. Violet Elizabeth Botts, of Hampstead, delivered something of a monologue.

“What is worth more: art or life?” she asked, rhetorically. “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people? The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup.”

Sunflowers has an estimated value of £72m, so the answer to Ms. Primrose’s first question, for most people, if not Ms. Botts, is probably “the art”. That being said, it is not for this court to parse this young woman’s non-sequiturs, perplexing though they are, for she is not the one on trial here. So I shall return to the story, for it is at this point that the appellant returned to Room 43.

The soup

It was common ground that the soup was tomato flavoured, and manufactured by the Heinz company of Pennsylvania, but the parties have disagree sharply on the significance of this fact.