Just Stop Oil activists who threw Heinz soup at Van Goghs banned from protests

Three Just Stop Oil activists have been banned from protesting in London pending their trial for allegedly throwing soup over two Vincent Van Gogh paintings.

Stephen Simpson, 71, Mary Somerville, 77, and Phillipa Green, 24, threw canned Heinz soup over the artist’s Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888 at the National Gallery in London on September 27, Southwark Crown Court heard.

It came just hours after fellow Just Stop Oil activists Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were sentenced at the same court for throwing tomato soup over the latter artwork in October 2022.

Simpson, of Belmont Crescent, Shipley, West Yorkshire, Somerville, of Lilycroft Road, Bradford, West Yorkshire. and Green, from Penryn, Cornwall, appeared in court on Monday charged with two counts each of damaging the frames of Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.

Simpson and Somerville, who attended court in person, and Green, who appeared remotely from Stratford Magistrates’ Court, all pleaded not guilty to the charges and were released on conditional bail pending their trial on January 5 2026.

Judge Alexander Milne banned the three defendants from taking part in protest action within the M25 until the date of their trial. The defendants’ lawyer, Raj Chada, argued the ban was a “disproportional” infringement on their right to protest because London is “the seat of government”.

Judge Milne said: “The application of the defendants’ right to protest is a relative one – and there seems to be a great deal of blurring between the exercise of that right and the commission of criminal offences.

“This court is not banning them from lawful protest anywhere else in the UK, but I will ban them from participating in any protest within the M25.”

A pre-trial review