It’s been a long time since Banksy did anything that might be regarded as controversial, but his latest artwork may restore him to the status of a genuinely edgy artist. Beloved by teenage boys forced to do art classes everywhere, Banksy’s gentle political satire has been so mainstreamed as to become fairly toothless.
But now the anonymous graffiti artist is under investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police — and may even, finally, be unmasked if he goes to trial. It was a striking piece, showing a be-wigged judge poised to strike a prone protester holding a bloodstained placard with his gavel. Arriving on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice the morning after 890 people were arrested for demonstrating support for the proscribed organisation Palestine Action, it has been received as commentary on UK state overreach in response to a public horrified by the situation in Gaza.
Now, under the eyes of the same legal system Banksy satirised, his art work is being treated as criminal damage.
It isn’t as though the artist hasn’t daubed contentious images on contested walls before. Flower Thrower, now widely replicated on everything to coffee book covers to mugs, appeared on a wall in Beit Sahour, in Palestine’s occupied West Bank, in 2003. Depicting a masked man poised to lob a bouquet as a grenade, it’s been widely adopted as a peace symbol around the world. In 2005, Banksy painted murals over Israel’s West Bank separation wall. So there could be no confusion over the art, he made a statement saying the barrier “essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison”.
Those pieces were allowed to stay (although one piece, Slingshot Rat, later turned up in an Israeli art gallery). But Banksy using the Royal Courts of Justice as his canvas was apparently a step too far, for HM Courts and Tribunals Service who took the decision to remove it.
To be fair when a wall finds itself Banksy-ed it’s both a blessing and a curse. The artist and his fans vehemently condemn the removal and sale of his street art, but the graffitied remnants can reach hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction. They attract crowds of onlookers when they’re new, and become a site of pilgrimage for street art fans, stimulating the local economy.
They can also attract vandals and thieves. Consider the Banksy’s howling wolf in Peckham, which was nicked by masked men within hours of its arrival.
From a practical perspective, you can appreciate why the powers that be panicked and covered the image up within hours of its creation. Crowds of people outside a working court in central London would be a security issue. Round-the-clock surveillance would be required to keep the art thieves away. And almost nobody wants a largeish chunk of a Grade I-listed building to end up on the black art market.
Yet covering up also suggested, well, a cover-up.
If that was a bad look, the optics of destroying this piece are even worse. Its erasure will only confirm the public’s fury over what they see as a heavy-handed response to Palestine Action protesters, who are often elderly or disabled, war veterans and NHS workers.
I look at Banksy’s image and see the terrifying erosion of our right to protest at all in this country
Art is always subjective and a piece can have layered meanings. Personally, I look at that image and don’t see just the arrest of people peacefully opposing the proscription of Palestine Action. I see the terrifying erosion of our right to protest at all in this country.
After years of successful actions from Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, UK police demanded more powers to crush dissent — and our Government gave it to them. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 now prevents peaceful protesters from such disruptive manoeuvres as, heaven forfend, making too much noise.
Mainstays of peaceful protests such as locking on have been criminalised. Face coverings are banned at protests, all the better for facial recognition technology to be deployed. It’s not like the Met even needed the encouragement; in 2021 they arrested women holding a peaceful candlelit vigil for Sarah Everard, a woman murdered by a serving police officer.
The Public Order Act 2023, introduced days before the King’s Coronation, only increased their remit to arrest people they claim are suspected of being about to stage a protest. It was only months ago that police broke into a place of worship to arrest Youth Demand members who were simply having a meeting.
Hand-scrubbing Banksy’s art does nothing to dispel the feeling we are hurtling towards the complete criminalisation of peaceful protest. If anything, it lends it more credence.
If the powers that be had only paused to engage with the theory, they might have realised that washing away the image was an act of iconoclasm that would only make it more famous, more incendiary. The image created by the destructive act supersedes and becomes more potent. Perhaps they should have consulted us Art Historians first.
The ghostly outline of Banksy’s protester under assault by the justice system is even more striking than the original. It is a visible sign of how quickly the state will move to crush us if we dare to hit the streets and speak up.
Maybe Banksy deliberately baited the Government by putting his image where he did. If so, they have played right into his hands. You cannot simply scrub away the anger of the people. Frankly, they should be grateful it was just a bit of paint. Look what Paris is currently up to — now that’s an un-peaceful protest.
India Block is a columnist at The London Standard
