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

Em O'Riley on 12 October 2023

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:

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.

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.

Image: James Maslin-Bosher

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.

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”.

Image: James Maslin-Bosher

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.

Image: James Maslin-Bosher

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”.

Image: James Maslin-Bosher

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.

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

‘Hell Bus’ drives home campaign against greenwashing amidst week of student activism

Em O'Riley on 11 October 2023

From Monday 9th to Wednesday 11th October, the ‘Hell Bus’ was on University of Leeds’ Campus as part of a university tour.

The installation was created by Leeds-born artist Darren Cullen for the 2021 Channel 4 show ‘Joe Lycett Vs the Oil Giant’.

In the show, Lycett, a comedian with a deftness for championing consumer rights, used his trademark satirical style to challenge the false claims of the Shell corporation.

A poster for the event describes the bus as “a travelling pre-apocalyptic satirical art exhibition taking aim at oil company greenwashing”.

Greenwashing is the act of overstating or lying about environmental credentials to appeal to consumers.

Image: spellingmistakescostlives.com

Miniature scenes and mock-posters expose the incompatibility of what these corporations say, and what they do.

Cullen mimics the style and language of their advertising, distorting their image to expose the insufficiency and misleading nature of big companies’ climate efforts.

One display features aspects of a fake strategy in “The Switch to Green Energy”. These include recovering oil from “seabird absorption”, and carbon capture by “burying 1 million bottles of carbonated fizzy drinks deep underground”.

Expert at what we might colloquially call ‘taking the piss’, the satirical work reveals the absurdity that Cullen sees in how corporations react, or fail to react, to the existential threat of climate breakdown.

Image: James Bosher

The bus name and number ‘Hell 2050’, refers to the year by which many governments and companies have pledged to achieve net zero.

One scene references HSBC, NatWest, and Barclays banks.

Accusations of greenwashing against Barclays are particularly relevant given the previous ties to the University of Leeds. Until the new partnership with Lloyds Bank was announced in September 2023, Barclays was the official banking provider.

Whilst the university defended the relationship, some students and staff said it was incompatible with the universities’ sustainability claims.

In response, campaign group Student Rebellion Leeds staged a 12 day occupation of the Esther Simpson building in November 2022.

Image: James Bosher

Their overarching demand was that the university cut all ties to fossil fuels.

In the 2022 Fossil Fuel Finance Report, Barclays ranked 7th worst bank globally, and tops UK-based rankings.

On its website, the bank states: “Barclays is dedicated to helping companies take action to address the environmental and sustainability challenges facing our planet”.

However, since 2019, the bank has made $10bn of credit available to Shell. Barclays classified this as “sustainable finance” despite Shell being the 5th largest oil and gas corporation globally.

Image: James Bosher

Environmental organisation ClientEarth reported that Shell’s 2018-2030 emissions will account for 1.6% of the 1.5°c budget.

This number is what scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say is the maximum temperature rise that will not pose a serious threat to life.

The ‘Hell Bus’ is not the only climate activism taking place on campus this week.

Tomorrow, Thursday 12th October, The Gryphon will be live-reporting from the Leeds Just Stop Oil rally at the Wavy Bacon sculpture. The post on Instagram announcing the rally had the song ‘Paint the Town Red’ by Doja Cat attached, and the caption read: “You reallyyyy dont want to miss this…”.

Just Stop Oil is infamous for its use of orange paint in demos, including this week at universities across the country.

This includes in Bristol, where a University of West England (UWE) student was arrested on Monday 9th for spraying orange paint over a University of Bristol building.

Image: Just Stop Oil

The action was in response to the university’s continued partnership with Barclays.

Just Stop Oil runs a national campaign protesting the UK government’s licensing of new oil and gas projects.

Despite pledges to divest, universities nationwide maintain problematic links to fossil fuel companies and the banks which finance them.

Research and climate activist website DeSmog found that since 2022, large fossil fuel companies have pledged £40.4m to UK universities. The universities which received the most funding were Exeter, Imperial College London, and Heriot-Watt.

School of Earth and Environment, Image: Leeds University website

In 2020, a report by The Independent revealed that the University of Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment received the second highest amount of funding from fossil fuel companies. At £11.2m, this was second only to Imperial College whose earth sciences department received £30.1m.

There was no data available on where funding comes from in 2023.

Asked about its environmental commitments, a spokesperson for the University of Leeds said: “The University is taking a robust approach to tackling climate change with a £178 million Climate Plan that sets out our actions, targets and investments to achieve net zero by 2030”.

European Film Institutions call for the Freedom of Incarcerated Iranian Dissident Mohammad Rasoulof

Owen Frost on 9 April 2020

Mohammad Rasoulof, director of the recent There Is No Evil, who was recently incarcerated in Iran, has gained international attention from many filmmakers and institutions since his Iranian jail sentence. Institutions such as European Film Academy (EFA), the Deutsche Filmakademie, Accademia del cinema Italiano-Premi David di Donatello, the Cannes Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and many others have all issued statements expressing their deepest concerns.

Rasoulof was recently imprisoned for one-year according to his lawyer, for allegedly “attacking the security of the state” following the “propaganda” content in There Is No Evil. The sentence also demanded he stop making films for two years. However, it is time for more filmmakers and directors to stand up against the Iranian government’s blatant censorship and punishment of dissident art. 

Rasoulof was unable to attend the February Berlin International Film Festival ceremony to collect his prize for There Is No Evil, a film connecting four stories about involvement in the death penalty in Iran. Executive producer Kaveh Farnam claims that the wave of political executions in 1988 was what ultimately inspired the film. Rasoulof’s own experience of lack of freedom of expression has also been noted in the film’s message of freedom and humanity under despotic regimes. 

Indeed, There Is No Evil is openly critical of the Iranian justice system and its use of the death penalty. Iran has been described by international human rights scholar Javaid Rehman in his 2018 UN General Assembly address as having “one of the highest death penalty rates in the world”. According to Amnesty International, it is still behind China as the world’s leading state executioner and leads the way in terms of the execution of minors. Homosexuality is still considered an offence punishable by death in Iran. 

The stakes were extremely high for Mohammad Rasoulof and crew, and all involved knew the risk that they were taking in defying the authoritarian regime. The film was made under complete secrecy and producer Farzad Pak thanked “the amazing cast and crew who put their lives in danger to be on this film”. The creative ways in which Rasoulof clandestinely defied the regime are astounding: with Rasoulof giving direction to scenes shot in an airport through an assistant, not having his name appear on any official documentation and shooting many scenes in remote regions of Iran. 

However, in a recent statement, Rasoulof wanted the outcry to not only affect successful directors such as himself and Panahi but also to extend to the younger independent filmmaking generation who have not got the same resources to circumvent Iran’s intrusive activities. Farnam claims that many independent filmmakers have even turned to work on the Iranian government’s own film projects due to the lack of funds at their disposal. The resourcing gap is evident: the Iranian government have the helicopters and unlimited logistical and financial systems to shut down a whole street, as opposed to independent filmmakers where this is purely “impossible”.  

This is not the first time that Iran has used its authoritarian powers to ban film directors from creating dissident films. In November 2019, action from over 200 Iranian film industry members came when Kianoush Ayari’s film The Paternal House was banned a week after its opening weekend in Iran. Well known Iranian director Jafar Panahi back in 2011 was also convicted of making “propaganda films” and sentenced to 20 years film-free.  

Rasoulof and other Iranian directors continue to make films under increasingly unfair sanctions. In his powerful Berlinale Skype speech broadcasted to the world from his daughter’s phone, he highlights that everyone “can actually say no, and that’s their strength.” It is imperative not to forget about Rasoulof’s and others’ crucial films which lobby unfair regimes across the world. We must join the outspoken film institutions in support of these oppressed directors who rightfully express their freedom of expression through art.

Image Credit: Screen Daily