Just when you thought things couldn’t get any messier in the House of Commons, protesters from Extinction Rebellion fetched up in the public gallery on Monday, took off their clothes and superglued themselves to the glass panels. Rumours abounded that they had done so by the buttocks, but in fact it was just their hands. Still, it sounds a bit like that description of resentment: it’s like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Whoever it was that ended up getting sprayed with WD40 and taken away by the police, it wasn’t Michael Gove. This manner of nude protest has a fine pedigree, on the following issues.
Climate justice
The naked bike ride is a worldwide movement, in which clothing is optional. If you have seen it, you will remember it from the double-take: “Wait, was that person naked?” that happens when naked people are fast-moving. Its mission statement had the original aim to “protest oil dependency and celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies” – a slightly woolly purpose that makes me think that some people just really like being naked on a bike.
Feminism
The Ukrainian protest group Femen made history – and international front pages – protesting against sex tourism, marriage agencies, sexism generally and – by 2012 at Davos – capitalism. I always smelled a rat because they looked so great; true protest would be stripping naked when you look like a mattress stuffed with socks. But maybe that’s a really sexist thing to say. Am I part of the problem?
Brexit
The economist Victoria Bateman started on a different wicket, trying to “punch feminism into economics” by stripping down to her gloves in the middle of a conference. She then shifted on to Brexit and Rachel Johnson followed suit. “I thought it would make a cheeky nib in the Sun,” Johnson tells me. “‘Boris’s sister flashes baps’. I wasn’t even naked! I was wearing a flesh-coloured basque. It was horrific. Overnight, I turned into La CicciolinaThe whole world thinks I got my tits out against Brexit. And I would, if I thought it would help, but I didn’t.”
Land rights
Not the classic nude protest, but an early example of the anarchic spirit: the Freedomites were Russian emigres who arrived in Canada at the turn of the 19th century hoping to escape religious persecution and soon had a beef with the Canadian government. They also used arson to protest against materialism, which is arguably the most succinct protest of all.
