Just Stop Oil Activists Who Covered Stonehenge in Orange Powder Are Cleared of Criminal Damage Because ‘Human Rights’
Three Just Stop Oil activists who sprayed Stonehenge with orange powder using fire extinguishers have been found not guilty of criminal damage and causing a public nuisance after citing their ‘human rights’ to protest. The Mail has more.
Rajan Naidu, 74, and University of Oxford student Niamh Lynch, 23, used two colour blasters filled with cornflour, talc and an orange dye to spray the World Heritage Site during a fossil fuel protest.
The court was told the pair, along with Luke Watson, 36, targeted Stonehenge the day before last year’s summer solstice where around 15,000 people were due to gather and celebrate.
Stonehenge was cherry-picked as the target for a Just Stop Oil stunt “to provide maximum impact”, prosecutors told the trial.
They had all denied charges of damaging an ancient protected monument and causing a public nuisance during the trial at Salisbury Crown Court.
The trio accepted taking part in the protest and cited in their defence “reasonable excuse” and their rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights to freedom of speech and freedom to protest.
They told the court that the protest was a “peaceful action with good intentions”.
Following a trial, they have today been acquitted of criminal damage and causing a public nuisance.
The three protestors hugged and were seen smiling after the verdicts were delivered.
Judge Paul Dugdale thanked the jury but gave a warning to the courtroom, saying: “It is important to balance freedom of speech and allowing a heritage site to be left unmolested by the members of the public.”
The judge told the jury in his legal directions they had to assess where the “balance lies” in the case and whether a conviction would be a “proportionate interference” with the defendants’ rights.
“In any society there will be those whose opinions we agree with and those whose opinions we disagree,” he said.
“The essence of a free society and freedom of speech is that everyone’s entitled to express their opinion even when we disagree with what they say.
“If individuals disagree with what our Government is doing on certain matters they are entitled to protest about the Government’s actions or inactions.
“All of this is the essence of our free society. It’s how our society has developed over the centuries and the reality is we are very fortunate to live in a free society.
“There are times when protecting the right to freedom of speech and freedom to protest can mean that activity that would otherwise be unlawful would be regarded as lawful by the court to protect those rights.”
Worth reading in full.
That last statement is the whole problem with ‘human rights’ of course. Human rights conceived thus are a means by which judges decide that something that Parliament has made unlawful should in fact be lawful, because human rights. In a country and constitution where Parliament is sovereign what should happen instead is that human rights are something set out by Parliament as ideals (if it so wishes) and those rights are then given concrete form in the laws that Parliament makes. Judges should never have the power to override Parliamentary legislation by citing abstract principles or open-ended entitlements, and any laws, like the Human Rights Act, which give them this power should be amended or repealed. If Parliament has prohibited protests that threaten heritage sites via criminal damage – which it has – then the courts have no place disregarding this. The rule of law means everyone following the laws Parliament has made, not judges and courts making up laws to suit their preferences or because they sympathise with the cause.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
This is great news.
I am off now to paint a giant orange penis across my MP’s constituency office. No criminal damage will be done of course, because human rights.
Only if you can credibly claim that being very worried about climate change made you do it, ie, belong to the right kind of “climate change protest group”.
I would say that being concerned about others who are concerned about climate change should be enough, after all who can say where concern begins and ends?
Any particular reason why you have chosen orange?
Must be Trump supporters, I suppose.
Vandalizing a historic monument is not protest. That would be expressing one’s dissenting opinion about a certain topic in public. Covering something with orange paint doesn’t express any opinion perhaps save the opinion that it should really be orange. It’s also not speech because it’s non-verbal. Vandalizing a historical monument is also not peaceful because it’s an act of violence. And desiring to do is certainly not “a good intention”.
These people are lying and the judge is simply complicit in the crime and lying as well. There must be some procedure to deal with criminal judges in the UK and it should be started immediately for this case.
Expression: the act of setting forth ideas, opinions in words or symbols – eg cartoons, designs.
That does NOT include physical acts.
Expressing anything always involves a physical act. But it also requires using a code the sender of the message expects the recipient to understand and using a fire extinguisher to spray organge dye onto an anicent monument isn’t one. That’s just a device to attract attention to an opinion expressed in some other way.
I don’t quite understand the point of your comment, though.
Come on… everyone knows Stonehenge is a significant contributor to climate change!
And if you believe Stonehenge should be orange of course you should be allowed to paint it.
This is what human rights are all about.
No criminal damage?
So what, cleaning it off was unnecessary?
Who paid for the court costs?
The damage is the time and cost of cleaning. I’m not a lawyer but apparently none of our lawyers are either. It is a case of Tort Law, that any action that A takes which causes a loss to B, must be made good by A.
Exactly. The offenders should at least have been made to pay the costs of repairing the damage they caused while making their protest.
Should apply to all acts like this – the perpetrators pay for the necessary clean up/repairs. No exceptions [but not before Tonka Fairy’s done her protest]
I think they should have been forced to go back to Stonehenge and clean the monoliths using toothbrushes under supervision by angry Druids.
Freedom, Rights, Licence. Few know the difference. Time to get rid of ECHR and Human Rights Act – we have, or had, the Common Law to protect us, the principle being our Freedom (passive Rights) under the Common Law could not be stopped but could not be enjoyed at the expense of the Common Law Rights of others. Often illustrated with: my Right to swing my fist stops where your nose starts. Code Law… which is what the Continent, ECHR uses, and what the Human Rights Act is, provide active Rights with an obligation on some party, usually the State to provide them. These then trump passive Rights – the State must uphold my Right to swing my fist no matter the consequences. There is no Right to protest if this means action in a public place which deprives others their Common Law Rights to go about their lawful activities and enjoy their property. Allowing protests is licence, not Right, but because neither the police, politicians nor the judiciary know or care about Common Law, it has become considered an active Right which the State must provide. This leads to arbitrary decisions as to whose “Right” the State will favour… Read more »
Their weird concoction probably didn’t do any harm to the ‘stones’ but I thought these morons were all about protecting the environment. The cleaning of their muck probably damaged ecosystems that have taken hundreds, if not thousands of years to grow on the stones. Countless lichens and mosses called the stones home, all destroyed in minutes by these self serving little 💩s, but then, they are university educated and probably too thick to understand that and don’t consider these elemental parts of nature worthy of saving. Heyho, more socialist scumbags allowed to get away with crime.
Personally, I feel a fitting punishment would be to strap them to the blades of a wind turbine on a windy day. It’d be the longest 5mins of their lives.
According to the Salisbury Journal, one of the group borrowed his grandmother’s petrol car to collect the other two in London and then drive to Stonehenge to commit the damage.
And spray paint, of course, is fossil-fuel intensive in its production.
I trust that the jurors were given colouring books and crayons in accordance with their mental ages and abilities.
And an afternoon nap.
Racist! You cannot use the term ‘colouring’ as it is not only racist but perpetuating colonialism and slavery against the marginalised – ethnic minority/global majority POC. Apologise!
Ableist! You cannot use the words ‘abilities’ or ‘mental’ because this perpetuates white male patriarchy, colonialism, climate crimes, meritocracy and marginalises the marginalised causing existential hate crimes.
‘Free Palestine!’ Apologise! ‘How dare you!’
If only this was remotely funny, but it is apposite.
Happy Halloween to you too!
I was only just getting started.
Slighty off-topic. “Because human rights”. Where’s the verb? This isn’t some instagram post!
I seem to remember various police forces launching criminal investigations and going after patriots for “criminal damage” just because they painted a St George’s Cross on mini roundabouts. How on earth does a mini roundabout compare to vandalising an ancient and important part of English heritage like Stonehenge?
I don’t think climate-change-vandals or judges sympathetic to their cause really believe Stonehenge is of any importance. After all, it’s just a bunch of old stones blocking a site which could otherwise be used for windmills or something similarily beneficial. Besides, painting “racist hate symbols” on anything cannot ever fall under freedom of speech or a right to protest as both or conditional on supporting for an obviously good cause.
NB: This is not my opinion. Just an attempt to express what I believe to be the likely justification for the different treatment.
World Heritage Site built by primitive people, who knew survival depended on the sun, defaced by primitive people who think they know survival depends not on the sun but on demonising the trace atmospheric gas essential for all life on earth.
Excellent summary by Will Jones, and this sentence gets to the heart of the matter:
“Judges should never have the power to override Parliamentary legislation by citing abstract principles or open-ended entitlements…”
This particular case makes me wonder whether we can all go to the judge’s house and commit criminal damage, then claim it is our “human right to protest”, and by extension, our “human right” to commit criminal damage, as long as we call it “a protest”.
The important question here is: What precislely justifies damaging other people’s property? Stonehenge is not just an abandoned ruin but a property of the public under stewardship of the state. Why do people have a right to damage it to emphasize some point in a present-day political discussion? Are there any limits to this right to damage public property for political point-scoring and if so, what are they? Eg, what about setting Westminster palace on fire to “protest” about lack of zeal for supposed climate saving politics? Would this be within someone’s human right to freedom of speech and political protest? If not, why not? And if burning down Westminster palaces as “protest” would be considered too much, what about something more minor like breaking the glass of its windows? Or even more minor, say, blowing up some post boxes with homemade explosives? What about other violent acts? If some supposedly illegal violent acts are really legal because human rights, are the some which aren’t? What about abducting a child of the royal family and throwing it over the cliffs at Dover? That’s just a violent act which is supposedly illegal, so, should it really be legally provided it’s labelled… Read more »
Well, I mean, yeah, obviously.
Another idiot jury.
A jury acts on the direction of the Judge who must have made the point about their intentions as they committed the damage for the jury to raise this point.
It needs a retrial as all they have to prove is the people committed the damage and be sentenced and made to repay the costs of cleaning up the damage.
I presume, therefore, that it will be OK for pacifists to vandalise the Cenotaph in protest against war as long as they are exercising their human rights?
It is a dangerous precedent to create as all that should be proved is they caused the damage not what was in their minds at the time.
Otherwise a murderer could get off by saying he/she felt a bit upset that day as the boss had told them they were late and they decided to kill the boss.
What worries me is that juries simply don’t seen to understand the law sufficiently to be able to try a case effectively.
The Judge said
“The essence of a free society and freedom of speech is that everyone’s entitled to express their opinion even when we disagree with what they say.”
I’ll remember to quote that to Plod when they come knocking at my door after I’ve expressed my opinion about Arabs.
We’re Lucy Connolly’s human rights not breached in that case ?
Is it really “Human Rights” though that lets this clear criminal activity not be punished? Or is it the the ESG (Environmental and Social Governance) tentacles which have captured every company, and every institution?
Well at least they didn’t pour coffee down a drain.
If “Human rights” dictate that these people are permitted to deface an historic monument made of blocks of stone weighing 10s of tonnes each, those blocks of stone have the right to dislodge at a convenient moment and flatten them.
Ironically, the law seems to come down harder on actual, legitimate, law-abiding people doing a proper protest than it does on those committing vandalism on world heritage sites, who are treated with kid gloves.
If, say, a group of protesters against radical Islamic violence were to spray paint a mosque, then they’re guilty of “hate crime”. A mosque is, after all, considered a sacred place of worship by Muslims.
But Stonehenge is also considered a sacred site by many, being a monument to the spirit of the land and a place where ancestral connections can be made. So what is the difference? Hate crime / Right to Protest / Vandalism? Label it whatever you want to suit your own agenda.
If vandalizing Stonehenge is labelled “exercising the right to protest”, then surely Lucy Connelly’s tweet should fall into the same category?
With Rights, goes Responsibility!
Isn’t that the old adage? Well those protestors caused criminal damage, that’s not at all responsible! They knew that and didn’t care! The judgement is illogical!
It’s not so much illogical as materially untrue. Damaging other people’s property is neither free speech nor political protest.