Shubtill v Director of Public Prosecutions
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]
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Shubtill v. Director of Public Prosecutions [2022] JCLR 46
Appeal against the conviction of Ernest Shubtill, the appellant, for the assault with an edible weapon of Violet Elizabeth Botts. The appellant was convicted on 17 October 2022, at the London & Middx Assizes.
As might any structure which has stood for so long in so vital a place, in its time the Gallery has witnessed great changes and momentous events, both fair and foul. The erection of Nelson’s Column. Celebration of Victory in Europe. Protests about the War in Vietnam. The suffragettes bombed it 1914. Taxpayers rioted in front of it in 1990.
So the paltry 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. The sooner the better. But alas, they are on our agenda today so, tiresome as they undoubtedly are, it falls to me to recount them. I shall do so as briefly as I can.
Facts
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! or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I regret that no arguments were advanced, either way, as to whether they were, but their tee-shirts read “Just Stop Oil” and not “Relax!” or “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 for the women to escape the attention of the Gallery’s security detail. This the Gallery may since have come to regret, for the women had, concealed about their persons, containers of soup, and it soon became clear they had not brought them for lunch. Without ado, the women vaulted a low velvet rope, emptied their soup tins onto the Sunflowers, glued themselves to the wall and began shouting at everyone.
Media reports tell us there were gasps, roars and a shout of “Oh, my gosh!” from nearby patrons, but beyond this, the bystanders took little action. Most stood transfixed. One did not. That one was the appellant. He exited Room 43, largely unobserved, and at a decent clip. We shall hear more about the appellant shortly.
In the mean time, 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, videographs and outside broadcast units. They formed a makeshift press Gallery. Their scrum may have impeded Gallery security — again, a regrettable dearth of evidence on the point — but by all accounts no-one: not the patrons, nor members of the press, nor Gallery staff, made any effort to eject the young women, or even stop them talking. By now, Mr. Baxter-Morley contends, they were in any case fastened to the wall securely with Araldite™ such that they could not be removed even if one wanted to.
The young women warmed to their task. The more loquacious of the two was Ms. Violet Elizabeth Bott, of Surrey. She embarked upon something of a monologue.
“Whath worth more: art or life?” she asked, rhetorically. “Ith it worth more than food? More than juthtith? Are you more contherned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people? The cotht of living crithith ith part of the cotht of oil crithith! Fuel ith unaffordable to millionth of cold, hungry familieth. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of thoup.”
Sunflowers has an estimated value of £72m, so for most ordinary people the answer to Ms. Bott’s first question 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 appellant was by this stage also in possession of soup — chicken soup, as it happens. It seems he had no more difficulty than had Ms. Botts and her confederate in spiriting materials calculated to be of use in acts of vandalism into the National Gallery. Ms. Botts was still mid-harangue when the appellant approached her and barely registered. But her confederate as the appellant opened his soup tins, but the lower court heard in evidence, and was satisfied, her confederate applauded. and emptied them onto Ms. Botts and her confederate.
There was something of a melée at this point, though less than there might have been had the young protesters’ hands not been stuck fast to the wall. By the time the police were able to take her statement Ms. Botts would prove compendious and imaginative in her complaints at her treatment bythe appellant, but in the moment the most she could muster was “That’th not fair! I’m vegan!”
And that is the long and short of it: Ms. Botts and her confederate have been dealt with separately: their conduct is not, directly, at any rate, at issue before this appeal.
The appellant was summarily convicted at the London and Middlesex assizes on charges of common assault with an edible weapon: in this case, pint of tinned chicken soup.
The defendant’s appeal is unusual so I shall take the unusual step of setting it out in full.