A Just Stop Oil activist and former student at the University of Oxford, Niamh Lynch, was recently cleared of causing criminal damage to Stonehenge, along with two other activists, Rajan Naidu and Luke Watson. The activists sprayed the UNESCO World Heritage site in an act of protest, using fire extinguishers filled with orange powder.
The protest took place in June last year, one day before summer solstice celebrations, which typically attract around 15,000 people to Stonehenge. Although the powder left no permanent damage, the clean-up costs totalled £620. After spraying the 5000-year-old stones, Lynch and Naidu remained at the site and allowed themselves to be arrested.
The activists were charged with damaging a public monument and causing a public nuisance. Their recent acquittal was based on their rights to freedom of speech and freedom to protest under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Reacting to her acquittal, Lynch told Cherwell that her immediate response was “relief”, adding: “The concept of going to prison is scary. But it’s categorically nowhere near as scary as the fact that one person is dying every minute from heat stress as the planet gets ever warmer.”
Discussing her motivations for joining Just Stop Oil, she said: “I just want things to be better…I refuse to believe that billions of living beings should be needlessly suffering and dying to make a few billionaires richer. I might not be able to do much, but I refuse to do nothing. I refuse to stand and watch as our world, our home, burns around us.”
Lynch previously studied Geography at Oxford, and is now pursuing a Master’s in Ecology at the University of Exeter. She attracted attention from several news publications for requesting that her trial didn’t coincide with her final exams.
Just Stop Oil is a direct action climate activist group founded in 2022 and focused on ending new fossil fuel projects in the UK. Direct action involves physical and disruptive protests: in the past, activists have made the news by throwing soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, disrupting the M25 for four days, and interrupting a West End performance of The Tempest.
In 2024, Just Stop Oil achieved its principal aim when the UK government agreed to halt licences for all new oil and gas projects in 2025. As a result, Just Stop Oil announced that it was “hanging up the hi vis” in March 2025 after three years of protest, meaning it would no longer be organising direct action or mass protests. However, some Just Stop Oil members have told the BBC that new governmental powers such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Act have also made it easier to arrest and prosecute activists.
