A prehistoric monument has become the stage for a modern debate about protest, politics, and the planet. This week, three members of Just Stop Oil walked free from Salisbury Crown Court after being cleared of causing a public nuisance for spraying Stonehenge with a harmless orange powder last summer.
The verdict — six hours in deliberation — marks another moment in the long, uneasy dance between activism and the law. Rajan Naidu, 74, Oxford student Niamh Lynch, 23, and Luke Watson, 36, had all admitted taking part in the action on 19 June 2024, the day before the summer solstice. However, they denied that their protest constituted vandalism.
Their bright-orange gesture — made with colour blasters filled with cornflour, talc, and dye — was over in minutes. The stones were swiftly cleaned for £620, leaving no permanent trace. Still, the image of Stonehenge cloaked in a haze of orange made global headlines. For some, it was an act of desecration; for others, a vivid reminder of what’s at stake in the climate crisis.
Prosecutors described the protest as “carefully planned vandalism”, arguing that the trio had caused serious annoyance and distress to the public and risked disrupting one of Britain’s most symbolic sites. The defendants countered that they had acted peacefully and with care — even researching biodegradable materials to ensure no damage to the stones. Their aim, they said, was to confront the government’s inaction on fossil fuels, not history itself.
The case hinged on a familiar but fraught question: how far can protest go before it becomes criminal? The defence cited Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights — freedom of expression and the right to protest. The judge, Paul Dugdale, told the jury to consider whether convicting the activists would be a “proportionate interference” with those rights. “Everyone’s entitled to express their own opinion,” he said, “even if we disagree.”
It’s a delicate balance, and one that the courts are now being asked to strike with growing frequency. The UK government has made no secret of its frustration with disruptive protests, tightening legislation around public nuisance and giving police greater powers to intervene. Yet cases like this one show that juries remain reluctant to equate protest with crime, especially when no harm is done.
After the verdict, the three activists embraced quietly in the dock — a small, human moment amid months of political noise. Outside the court, their solicitor Francesca Cociani called the prosecution “an affront to the right to protest,” describing the outcome as a victory for free expression. “Time and time again,” she said, “we’re seeing that right eroded.”
The protest itself now feels like an echo from another era — pre-election, pre-Leipzig floods, pre-everything — but its imagery endures. The ancient stones standing motionless under a dusting of orange became, for a day at least, a kind of accidental artwork: half ritual, half provocation.
Whether one sees the act as art, activism, or nuisance depends mainly on where one stands — politically and philosophically. But the acquittal at least acknowledges something fundamental yet increasingly contested: that the right to dissent, to make a visible mark of disagreement, still has a place in public life.
Top Photo: Courtesy Just Stop Oil