A Pair of Local weather Activists in Scotland Smashed and Spray-Painted a Glass Case Housing ‘Braveheart’ Knight William Wallace’s Sword
Two activists from an environmental group smashed and vandalized a glass case housing the sword of Scottish knight William Wallace, the hero whose legend impressed the 1995 movie Braveheart, at a museum in Stirling, Scotland.
On March 2 round 11:30 a.m., Alexander Cloudley, a meals financial institution coordinator, and Katrielle Chan, a pupil, entered the Nationwide Wallace Monument’s Corridor of Arms, and struck the case containing the Wallace sword with mallets, chisels, and two rocks. They then spray-painted the damaged glass with the phrases “This Is Rigged,” the title of their local weather activist group.
In line with the Stirling Council, which oversees the Nationwide Wallace Monument, the sword is at present being assessed for injury. The monument additionally closed briefly, however has since reopened.
Cloudley and Chan, each from Glasgow, had been arrested on web site and charged with vandalism. They’ve pleaded not responsible. In a press release, Police Scotland mentioned that “inquiries are ongoing.”
This Is Rigged shaped in 2022 to protest the Scottish authorities’s new investments in fossil fuels, demanding that management “vocally oppose all new fossil gas initiatives in Scotland and create a transparent transition plan for oil staff.” Since January 2023, the group has been staging civil resistance protests on the Scottish Parliament’s weekly questions classes.
In an Instagram submit, the group mentioned its concentrating on of the two-handed sword, believed to have been wielded by Wallace on the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, is tied to the weapon’s symbolic worth. “600 years earlier than William Wallace defended our freedom with this very sword,” it wrote. “Now it’s time for us to face up for ourselves.”
The rock utilized by This Is Rigged of their motion on the Nationwide Wallace Monument. Picture: @thisis.rigged on Instagram.
Their motion additionally references the suffragettes—specifically British painter Ethel Moorhead, who, in 1912, attacked the case holding the Wallace sword with a stone to demand the best to vote for girls. One of many rocks utilized by This Is Rigged campaigners in final week’s motion was inscribed with a message that echoed the notice Moorhead wrapped her stone in.
The This Is Rigged rock learn partially: “We should as soon as once more battle for what is correct, no new fossil fuels and a good transition now.”
This newest motion follows the spate of protests late final 12 months that noticed environmental teams, most prominently Simply Cease Oil, attacking artistic endeavors in museums to boost consciousness in regards to the local weather emergency.
In a joint assertion launched in November 2022, 92 museum leaders, whereas holding that cultural establishments ought to stay websites for “social discourse,” decried such protests as “dangerous endangerment.” They added: “The activists liable for them severely underestimate the fragility of those irreplaceable objects, which should be preserved as a part of our world cultural heritage.”
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