Arya News - British police have arrested four protesters who threw a custard and apple crumble at the display case housing the crown jewels in the Tower of London.
Dec. 7 (UPI) -- British police have arrested four protesters who threw a custard and apple crumble at the display case housing the crown jewels in the Tower of London.
Take Back Power said in a news release that members of the new nonviolent protest group, which appears to be an offshoot of the climate change group Just Stop Oil, had "smothered the dessert over the display case around 9:50 a.m. local time Saturday morning.
The protesters then held a sign reading "Democracy Has Crumbled -- Tax The Rich" before they were "taken into custard-y" by police, the group said.
Take Back Power said police arrested the two members who actually threw the dessert as well as two others present at the time.
The particular display case targeted, the BBC noted , houses the Imperial State Crown worn by King Charles III during formal ceremonies.
Take Back Power identified the two protesters involved in the protest action itself as 21-year-old Miriam Cranch, a retail worker from Leeds, and Zahra Ali, a 19-year-old student from London.
Unlike the climate change protests that have swept through global cultural sites in recent years, Take Back Power instead called for a tax on Britain"s ultra-wealthy.
"Britain is broken because the super-rich are pocketing billions, whilst working people struggle to get by," Cranch said in a statement.
"This wealth inequality is leading us towards civil unrest, and it doesn"t have to be this way. Billionaires should not pay a lower tax rate on wealth they generate doing nothing, than those of us working jobs. It"s time ordinary people get a say on how to tax wealth with a permanent House of the People."
Directly remarking on the wealth amassed by the British monarchy, Ali said that homeless people have died "on the very streets that King Charles passed on his way to the coronation."
Take Back Power has launched a fundraising campaign to aid its efforts, so far raising about $75,000 since Friday.
"The super-rich are not paying their fair share because the tax system is rigged," the group said in the fundraiser. "Since 2008, the wealth of the super-rich has increased four times faster than average household wealth, while more than a third of us now earn less than needed to make ends meet. The scales need balancing. We need to tax the rich."
The protest at the Tower of London has drawn a lot of interest, particularly in the wake of theft of France"s Napoleonic jewels from the Louvre Museum in October.
The creation of Take Back Power comes after three years of headline-making protest actions by climate change demonstrators.
However, the art news website Urgent Matter reported last month that climate change groups many of the world"s most visible climate change protest groups have coordinated an end to their direct-action campaigns in the past year.
Such climate change groups had cited a lack of effect of their protests, mounting legal costs and the "evolving landscape of climate activism."