Students, staff and the University react to Just Stop Oil paint demonstration

Today, Thursday 12th October, Just Stop Oil protestor Sam Holland was arrested for spraying orange paint on the Great Hall.

The national Just Stop Oil page tweeted a video of Holland spraying the paint and the subsequent arrest:

🚨 BREAKING: Leeds Uni's Great Hall Redecorated Orange.

🦺 Sam Holland, a recent Leeds graduate, took action, calling out the uni's grad schemes with super-polluters like Equinor before being dragged away by police.

👉 Students are rising: https://t.co/HZreCDMJ5O pic.twitter.com/XGqM4ps7WK

— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) October 12, 2023

Holland, a Geography and Economics graduate from the University, gave a speech whilst being carried away by police. He said: “this university is complicit in genocide. We have to act.”

Holland referenced the university’s continued links to Equinor through a graduate scheme.

Equinor is one of the main operators of the Rosebank oil and gas field.

In September, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak supported new oil and gas extraction from Rosebank. This attracted accusations from some that the government was diluting its climate pledges, and that this move was incompatible with their target of net zero by 2050.

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Just Stop Oil, a campaign group which demands no new oil and gas projects, had been heavily hinting at the use of their signature orange paint all week.

The rally was in protest to the university not signing a letter sent to them in September: “If you do not sign and return the attached letter by Friday 22nd September, students will have no choice but to bring a wave of civil disobedience to their campuses”.

University Vice Chancellors across the country were asked to sign a letter which “gives the government a clear ultimatum: either they stop new oil and gas licences, or you will be duty bound to join your students in slow marches across London to the point that you too will be arrested and imprisoned”.

Just Stop Oil are planning three weeks of resistance in London from the 29th October.

Their strategy is to march until the point of arrest. A high number of arrests can overwhelm the capacity of the Met police, who may then pressure the government to negotiate with the group.

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Opinions on campus:

The Gryphon spoke to some members of the large crowd outside the orange-splattered Great Hall.

One student said: “I think it’s a bit excessive to be honest, there’s no need”.

However her friend defended the demonstration, saying there was a feeling of “uni spirit…students are the start of a rebellion”.

Asked whether the university was doing enough to combat the climate crisis one interviewee said, “well if it has to come to this, probably not”.

POLIS Professor Mette Wiggen also voiced support for the rally.

On the university’s links to oil and gas she said, “I think they should stop immediately, they should not take funding from them at all.”

Wiggen raised the importance of protest freedoms and surprise at the heavy police presence.

She said:

“I’m really concerned about the government’s attack on rights to demonstrate and rights of assembly, human rights really”.

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In a statement to The Gryphon, a spokesperson for the University of Leeds said: “While we support the right to legal protest, we are hugely disappointed that todays demonstration led to the vandalism of a University building”. The Great Hall is a grade II listed building built in the late 19th Century.

On links to fossil fuel companies they said: “We avoid companies that are materially engaged in certain sectors, including thermal coal, the extraction of fossil fuels from tar sands, oil and gas extraction, production and refining”.

However they have continuing ties to financial providers, including Barclays and Lloyds, both of which finance oil and gas projects.

In its statement the university repeated its climate pledges, including the £174m Climate Plan which includes the target of net zero by 2030.

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The paint was quickly jet-washed from the 19th Century facade.