Just Stop Oil protesters throw soup over Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy building

Just Stop Oil protesters throw soup over Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy building
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Aden-Jay Wood

By Aden-Jay Wood


Published: 17/10/2022

- 13:06

Updated: 14/02/2023

- 10:35

Just Stop Oil said that they targeted the building because it's the Government department responsible for allowing new fossil fuel extraction

Just Stop Oil protesters have stopped traffic outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in London, and thrown soup over the building.

Just after 11:30am on Monday, 12 protesters walked on to Victoria Street in Westminster and sat down while holding banners. Some glued themselves to the tarmac and each other.


A number of other protesters then threw soup on to the front of the building.

Just Stop Oil said that they targeted the BEIS because it is the Government department responsible for allowing new fossil fuel extraction and that they used soup in “a reference to the fact that countless families in this country cannot afford a tin of soup, and famine is rife across sub-Saharan Africa”.

Signage for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in Victoria Street, central London, after a substance was thrown over it by an activist wearing a Just Stop Oil high-vis vest. Picture date: Monday October 17, 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesters have thrown soup over the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in London
Victoria Jones

An activist wearing a Just Stop Oil high-vis vest is detained by police after throwing a substance over signage for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in Victoria Street, central London. Picture date: Monday October 17, 2022.
Just Stop Oil said that they targeted the BEIS because it is the Government department responsible for allowing new fossil fuel extraction
Victoria Jones

The environmental activist group issued an invitation to the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, for talks. They also demanded that the Government halts all new oil and gas licences

A spokesperson said: “Just Stop Oil invites the Home Secretary Suella Braverman to come and meet with us and we will stop throwing soup.

“Join us on Thursday October 20 at 11am, in London, in public, to hear what is driving students, builders, engineers, care workers, vicars to throw soup at iconic paintings, to scale bridges, and to repeatedly, relentlessly block roads in the capital.

“We are ordinary people in nonviolent civil resistance in order to protect our rights, freedoms and our heritage. We seek to protect the lives and livelihoods of all humanity.”

Earlier on Monday, two Just Stop Oil protesters climbed to the top of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge which links Essex and Kent. This forced police to close it to traffic.

Monday’s actions follow over two weeks of continuous civil resistance by supporters of Just Stop Oil, with protesters spraying orange paint over the Aston Martin showroom on Park Lane on Sunday.

Since the campaign began on April 1, Just Stop Oil say that their supporters have been arrested over 1,750 times, and five are currently in prison.

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