LAWN DISORDER
Hose-wielding woman puts a dampener on Chelsea oil protest
A CHELSEA Flower Show visitor sprayed Just Stop Oil protesters with a hose after they had thrown orange paint over a display.
Three women climbed over a rope barrier yesterday to stage a protest at the RBC Brewin Dolphin Garden, designed by Paul Hervey-Brookes.
The incident prompted some visitors to shout abuse, with one man heard saying: “Oh no, you morons – all you’re doing is ruining them, you prats.”
Others at the London site could be heard shouting for security before a woman grabbed a hose and doused the protesters with water. But some yelled in support, one saying: “I’ll join.”
Met Police officers arrested the women – named by JSO as Stephanie Golder, 35, Naomi Goddard, 58, and Rosa Hicks, 28 – for criminal damage.
Ms Goddard, a retired landscape engineer from Hebden Bridge, West Yorks, could be heard saying: “What is the point in a garden if you can’t eat?
“What is the point in tradition if society is collapsing around you?” One man interrupted, shouting: “Rubbish.”
Another protester, thought to be Ms Golder, could be heard telling the crowd: “Stop putting your heads in the compost.” Emilia Randall, 23, who saw yesterday’s protest, said: “At first, a girl walked under the rope. Someone called for security. There were three of them.
“There were some people calling for security and going, ‘Oh, not this’. Some people were cheering them on.”
The incident came after the group, campaigning to end all new fossil fuel projects in the UK, interrupted the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield last month. And on Wednesday, six activists were arrested on Marylebone Road, Central London, JSO said.
A spokesman for the group said after yesterday’s protest: “This is not a one-day event, this is an act of resistance against a criminal Government.”
Ms Goddard said in a statement: “There is a better, cleaner, safer future, but only if we fight for it.”
Ms Golder, from Southend, Essex, added: “I disrupted the Chelsea Flower Show to ask the visitors, exhibitors and the RHS to pick a side; to stand for good over evil, life over death, right over wrong; to stand with the young and the billions in the global south whose lives are being cut short by climate collapse.”
The Chelsea Flower Show began on Monday and ends tomorrow.