A bust of Queen Victoria at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum has become the latest target of left-wing climate protesters in the United Kingdom. 

Demonstrators covered the statue of the queen with porridge and jam, exclaiming in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “Freedom begins with breakfast and if you can’t understand that, we’ll shove it in your face. Food is a human right, and we call out the rotten systems under which we are suffering.”

“We refuse to be dragged back to the Victorian era. Diseases of starvation including scurvy and rickets are on the rise. This crisis in public health is a direct result of our government’s chronic inaction on the crisis of food insecurity in Scotland, caused by greed and profiteering and exacerbated by climate collapse,” they added.

The protestors proceeded to spray paint the base of the statue with the word “C—” in pink before gluing themselves to the bust.

Queen Victoria, who ruled the British Empire from 1837 to 1901, was the longest-reigning monarch after Queen Elizabeth II. Ruling the British empire at its zenith, her reign is associated with a period of industrial, technological, and military advancements that permeated through the Crown’s colonies which covered a quarter of the world’s surface. 

British press outlets identified the two female activists who defaced the statue as 30-year-old Sorcha Ni Mhairtin and 23-year-old Hannah Taylor. 

According to the Scottish outlet, STV News, a spokesman for the organization that operates the museum, Glasgow Life, detailed that, “On Police Scotland’s advice, we temporarily closed Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum earlier this afternoon after climate protestors covered a bust of Queen Victoria in porridge and jam and spray-painted an offensive word on the plinth below the statue.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Police told the outlet that the two women “have been released on an undertaking to appear at Glasgow Sheriff Court at a later date. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.” The Procurator Fiscal is the public prosecutor in Scotland and has the power to levy fines. 

The demonstration organized by the environmental and food activist group, This Is Rigged, is apparently part of an ongoing campaign by protestors seeking lower food prices in Scotland. 

On February 19, Ms. Mhairtin, along with several other demonstrators, occupied the royal dining room at the official residence of the British Monarch in Scotland, the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The demonstrators held signs in Galeic reading, “the people are mightier than a lord”, and “change begins in the kitchen, not the boardroom,” the British outlet, Sky News, reported at the time.

The group is reportedly demanding the Scottish government decrease the cost of baby formula to March 2021 prices and fully fund “community food hubs” for every 500 households in Scotland.