Hull has a wonderful street art scene, some of which has a political message (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Since January I have been living and working in Hull, an overlooked city in East Yorkshire on the Humber Estuary. I am quite easily pleased when it comes to the places I live–I have yet to live anywhere that I don’t like. That being said, Hull is a vibrant city with friendly and welcoming people, lots to do, and a thriving cultural scene (I have especially become a fan of the Bankside Gallery, where you can see fantastic street art at several locations around the city). Hull gets an average number of protest stickers for a city of its size; I have already written one post about them for the University of Hull’s Department of Geography, Geology and the Environment blog, here. But the stickers keep appearing, and so will the blog posts!
Brexit-related protest stickers have been a feature on city streets across Britain (and further afield–I have seen them in Berlin, for example) since before the Referendum in 2016. The Liberal Democrats are the only major political party that are explicitly anti-Brexit (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Bollocks to Brexit is a common anti-Brexit slogan that appears quite often on protest stickers. Here it has been altered to convey a pro-Brexit message. Sometimes people interact with stickers to change or obscure their message by writing on them or scratching parts of them off (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Extinction Rebellion is a social movement that started in Britain in late 2018, and campaigns for swift action on climate change and environmental destruction. Hull has quite an active branch (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Biofuelwatch campaigns around industrial-scale bioenergy. Currently the UK government gives £1 billion of renewable energy subsidies per year to power stations which burn wood to produce electricity. This is method of electricity production is dirty, it releases carbon into the atmosphere and it encourages deforestation. Biofuelwatch wants this money to be given to methods of producing electricity that are actually renewable (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Nuclear fuel is another alternative method of producing electricity that is controversial. Stop New Nuclear is a group which campaigns against the construction of new nuclear power stations. This sticker is promoting an anti-nuclear protest called Surround Springfields in April 2019. Springfields is a site in Lancashire which produces fuel for nuclear power plants, and processes waste produced by them (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Veganism is another issue that is becoming increasingly popular in protest stickers, linked to both animal rights and climate change. This sticker is playing with the logo for Back to the Future, a popular 1985 sci-fi film. Challenge 22 is a project run by Israeli animal-rights group Animals Now. It encourages people to commit to trying veganism for 22 days, and provides support and advice (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker is also promoting veganism by focusing specifically on the cruelties of the dairy industry. It is promoting The Vegan Activist, who posts educational videos about veganism on his Youtube channel (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Fur is another key element of animal rights campaign. The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade is a grassroots, anti-fur campaign group (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Jeff Luers is an American environmental activist who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2000 for his involvement in an arson attack on a Chevrolet dealership in Oregon. It was a very harsh sentence, especially considering that no one was hurt, and he only caused about $40,000 dollars worth of damage. His sentence was reduced and he was released in 2009, but he has taken on martyr-like status for some sections of the environmental movement. This sticker looks quite old, but I would be surprised if it has been around since Luers was imprisoned more than a decade ago. The web address on the sticker no longer exists (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker is very faded, so I would expect is has been around for a few years. It is promoting an anti-war and violence message, playing on the double meaning of ‘arms’. The peace logo in the bottom left is very well known. The capital E in a circle in the bottom right, is less common, and represents Equality (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Unfortunately, not all of the protest stickers I have found in Hull are progressive. This sticker is produced by the British Movement, a neo-Nazi group founded in 1968. It has been through periods of dormancy and the leadership has changed several times since then. It seems to have a small membership at the moment, but it is still disconcerting to see its logo in Hull (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker is advertising the National Front, another far-right fascist group, founded in 1967. Like the British Movement, it has also had periods of rise and decline over the decades, and it has quite a small membership currently. Someone (or perhaps multiple people) have obviously taken offence at this sticker at some point and tried to remove it (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
I wanted to end the post on a positive note, and I love this sticker that I found on the Hessle Road. LGBTQI+ rights groups are struggling with conflict over transgender rights at the moment, but local Pride events in Britain are going from strength to strength at the moment, and Hull is no exception–the 2019 event on the 19th of July was a huge success (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
University Teacher in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh. Interested in the cultural, historical, and political geographies of resistance.
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