Just how controversial was Banksy’s new Royal Courts of Justice piece?

He’s done it again! The art jester himself, Banksy, has punched his satirical forehand right at the heart of the British establishment. Over the night of Sunday 7^th September, a stencilled statement by the most recognisable of street artists appeared on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the home of the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales.

The image portrays a protestor holding up a placard in his left hand, laying with his back to the ground, presumably pushed there by the judge above brandishing a gavel above the man’s face. The protestor’s right hand appears to shielding from the attack, or holding an open palm in declaration of defeat, but the rabid lawman doesn’t appear to be holding back, the hand not holding the gavel clenched tight. There is a blood splatter across the otherwise empty sign.

It is widely presumed that the work is a comment upon the recent relentless police arrests of protestors at demonstrations against the UK Government’s proscription of the group Palestine Action. As is now standard for any Banksy graffiti, the work was immediately fenced off and protected by security. Arguably this was to prevent damage to the work and also to protect its value (carefully removed Banksy works can be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds by the lucky owner of whichever wall has been spraypainted).

Online critics, however, immediately proclaimed the removal of the work as an act of state censorship. This perhaps wasn’t helped by the fact that the hoarding put up to protect the work was solid, stopping passers by or visitors to even momentarily view the image before it was removed from the listed architecture. Celebrated photographer Tom Hunter visited the site to document the work, but by the time he got there all that was left was a shadow outline of the image, a spectre of the one liner. “They made the image more powerful…” a comment under his Instagram post reads.

Today, Banksy’s work is more made for Instagram and rapid digital dissemination than the urban context. The speed at which works are protected then removed means none of his pieces hang around for decades like the early Bristol examples. Indeed, the most widely shared image of the work is the one published by the artist himself on his Instagram, a seemingly carefully composed early-morning photo with a cyclist and judge crossing about to pass in front of the image.

But even this is open to presumption and contest. On his A Lawyer Writes Substack, Joshua Rozenberg highlights that the judge on his phone about to pass the violent mural cannot be a genuine judge. '…no barrister would be fully robed when leaving court…' Rozenberg states, later adding that 'Judges are required to apply the criminal law to demonstrators brought before the courts. But they do not beat down helpless defendants.'

Perhaps we should assume that the judge in the image is not a literal judge, but instead represents all political and legal oversight, his figure being a symbol of the ruling class wielding power against society. But this also doesn’t stand up. We may not always agree with a legal decision, but the judiciary exists to enact Governmental law and not their own opinion. In 2016, the Daily Mail published a front cover showing portraits of the three judges who had ruled that the UK Government would require the consent of Parliament to give notice of Brexit – the headline underneath reading 'ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE'. This was condemned at the time for suggesting these individuals decided national law, rather than ruling on political declarations based on evidence. The judge in Banksy’s image, too, is being presented as the singular enemy and not the translator of government law into legal decision.

This could be dangerous. Love or hate such legal decisions, the judiciary is not who should be protested. If Banksy wanted to make his one-liner sharper and less open to presumption, instead of a judge he could he stencilled the likeness of Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper. He could have written “PALESTINE ACTION” on the sign instead of leaving it blank. But this would perhaps be too punchy for an artist who wants to suggest politics but never overtly state it, who wants to be seen as arch-commentator of our day, but not make any meaningful comment.

The problem with lack of clarity and overt meaning, especially when seemingly discussing such a critical and important political decision, is that the meaning can be adopted or bent at will. On X, the right-wing website where countless right-wing accounts have found refuge since it transmogrified from Twitter, poster-in-Chief Elon Musk – not celebrated for criticality or depth in his thinking – has spoken out. Under a post by Benonwine that read “Do you LIKE the new Banksy mural at the Royal Courts of Justice! YES OR NO?”, Musk wrote one of his own one liners: “Accurate”. We could perhaps assume that Banksy does not share many views with Elon Musk, but ..

In comedy, “one liners” may not always be the best or funniest gag, but to work they are meticulously honed and tight of meaning and clarity. Banksy’s one liners increasingly are not. If this is a work not for the city but for Instagram shares, Banksy could make more direct, clear, and punchy statements to his 13.5 million followers, one-liners that do not contain such visual ambiguity so that both right and left wingers can take the image to support their own anger. If Banksy had simply written a one liner such as 'Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, and the UK Government are idiots for declaring Palestine Action a terrorist group, we stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza' then arguably it would be more powerful and impactful than this loose, now-lost, artwork. As political artworks go, Banksy’s effort is hardly a Guernica of our age.