Chained to the cause: Cork climate activist Orla Murphy on what motivates her

The Cork-born Just Stop Oil activist has the courage of her convictions: At the age of 21, she has already been in prison in both Ireland and the UK. 

She has been strip-searched by police, held for hours in police cells and has been in court every week recently for different climate justice actions. But none of this discomfort or danger has deterred her from trying to sound the alarm on our climate crisis.

She said that her treatment by the Irish criminal justice system was much harsher than in the UK because there, activists have more strength in numbers.

Ms Murphy moved from Ireland to Glasgow for last year’s COP climate change summit. She is now keen to return to Ireland and help inject a new spirit of activism on home turf.

“I love Ireland, I love the people. I feel a responsibility to do something in Ireland,” Ms Murphy said.

I had to leave because there wasn’t a movement and I didn’t know how to build it myself so I had to go and find it. 

Born on a dairy farm near Whitechurch outside Cork city, Ms Murphy, who is now vegan, once dreamed of being a farmer. 

She milked cows and helped birth calves and enjoyed the physical labour of farming.

Her veganism is inspired by respect — for other animals and for the planet.

She went to school locally in Whitechurch and Blarney before spending two years at Bruce College in Cork city.

But chronic fatigue syndrome changed her life after it struck when she was 15, leaving her bed-bound for three months. 

The illness stopped her from sitting her Junior Cert and Leaving Cert and redirected her path in life.

“It completely shattered what I thought my life was going to look like. At the moment I just try to do the right thing, day by day.

“Chronic fatigue has been rough."

Despite chronic fatigue, Ms Murphy surprised herself by being physically able to take part in the oil refinery actions at NuStar refinery in Clydebank near Glasgow and at Grays in Essex.

“I thought ‘there’s no way my body can do that’ — running, climbing a ladder and climbing up at height and with a bag. But my friends were doing it and I wanted to be there so I thought I’d try.” 

While being chased by a police officer at Grays, she managed to scale the structure.

“I didn’t expect to be able to. It was terrifying but it felt so good to be able to. I had to drop out of so many things I really wanted to do because my body would not let me but I was able to do this. 

"I was able to climb up on those pipes and stop the supply of oil and it felt really good. Especially to be with these people I really love.

“It was nice to be there together but also really terrifying. The pipes are digging into your back, you can’t move your head, your neck is sore.

“When the police came up, a grown man put his whole weight on me. And I was powerless to stop him.!

I had to remain quiet and non-violent because that’s central to our protest. They put a harness on me, I was limp from shock, they lifted me down like a ragdoll.

Ms Murphy was convicted for her part in this protest at the Grays oil terminal in Essex this week.

She was fined £284 after being found guilty of aggravated trespass.

Her team had argued the defense of necessity, that although activists knew they were doing wrong, their actions were necessary to prevent the much greater harm of climate catastrophe.

A GP told the court that air pollution was killing people in the UK, and making chronic health conditions like asthma worse, while internationally, every gram of CO2 going into the air was making droughts worse, making floods worse.

At least 36m people are at risk of starvation across the Horn of Africa due to successive droughts while floods have recently killed people and destroyed large swathes of Pakistan and Nigeria.

But Ms Murphy said the judge did not accept that the defence had proved the necessity for their actions, saying that climate change was not an imminent threat.

“You have to wonder why 21-year-olds are putting themselves at risk of prison constantly. That’s how bad the situation is,” she said.

“I saw an interesting quote recently and it was ‘activists are just people who decided to do something.’ 

“Every activist I met is just someone who is doing what they think they can because they’re terrified about the climate crisis and they can see injustice after injustice happening, and they’re doing what they can to call attention to it. We can all do something. 

“I think people are really beaten down. After the recession in 2008 and austerity crushing communities, it’s had an effect and people don’t think that they can do any more, that they don’t have a voice, that they don’t have agency.

“But maybe we just need to believe in our abilities again."

Ms Murphy’s first brush with the law for her activism was in Ireland when she threw paint at the Department of Agriculture building in Kildare St in Dublin in December 2020.

She was arrested and released on bail conditions which banned her from the Dublin 2 area and other Government buildings.

She pleaded not guilty to criminal damage for spray painting 'It's all for show' on the Department of Agriculture and that case was eventually dismissed in May, 2021.

“That I was brought to court on €100 of criminal damage on a first offence is insane. They dropped the case in the end because I refused to plead guilty and the guard refused to turn up in court because of media attention.” 

But not everyone has the protection of the media. It’s wrong.

While still on bail for that alleged offence, Ms Murphy, then 19, broke her bail conditions and entered Dublin 2. 

There, she livestreamed a graffiti attack on the Department of Foreign Affairs in March, 2021, in protest at climate inaction with fellow Corkman and Oxford University biology student Zachery Lumley, then 21, from South Lodge, Ballinlough.

They were charged with criminal damage after spray painting the words ‘no more empty promises’ across the entrance and splattering paint on the building.

They pleaded not guilty at Dublin District Court and used a "lawful excuse" defence based on their beliefs that their actions were necessary to protect lives at risk from the climate crisis.

But Judge John Hughes rejected their argument, saying that their action was “audacious and shocking” and caused damage “to one of the finest buildings in the country".

They were each fined €2,000 and must pay another €2,000 in compensation to the State.

Although technically spared jail, Ms Murphy refused bail conditions which included a strict ban from Dublin 2, the seat of government, and spent five weeks in the Dochas women’s prison, including 10 days in solitary confinement.

“I could have signed bail and would not have had to go [to prison]. But I refused to sign the bail that would ban you from your capital. I don’t think you should be banned from somewhere the government sits.

“I wanted to go and see what it was like because I knew if I kept protesting the State would keep sticking me in prison so I didn’t want to be afraid of this.

“People in prison are quite nice. There are very few bad people in prison. Most are in there for stupid offences or are on remand.

“It's not the other prisoners, it’s the system that will eat people up, treat them awfully, and not care.” 

In prison, Ms Murphy was shocked to see a trans woman locked in her cell all day because she was considered a “sexual assault risk”.

Another woman locked alone in a padded cell would scream in distress through the night, she said.

Although she was in solitary confinement for 10 days, first due to routine covid quarantine and then because there was no other bed for her, once she was released to the main prison she was fortunate to be placed in a privileged house with pregnant women and mothers where there were less restrictions.

“I was lucky not to be in a worse area,” she said.

Parallels with the suffragette movement

Just Stop Oil, the group Ms Murphy is now a full-time activist with, has been grabbing headlines internationally with many recent protests, including throwing soup over Van Gogh’s iconic 'Sunflowers' painting, which remained unharmed in the action, storming a racecourse, and gluing themselves to everything from goalposts to oil tankers to bridges.

It is hard not to draw parallels with the suffragette movement and imagine that history will smile just as fondly on the few who are standing up now, demanding a fairer world.

Despite the hardships Ms Murphy has endured in this fight over the past two years, she said she would not change them.

“It’s not nice to see the suffering, or experience what I’ve experienced. 

“There’s pain and grief because we’re collectively going through so much now. But then there’s the love you feel for the people you do it with and the power and the strength you get from doing the right thing, for doing what you can now. 

"I couldn’t be anywhere else at this time.”