OPINION - Good on Just Stop Oil for going after hypocritical Taylor Swift, but do leave Stonehenge alone

Granted, the equinox celebrations at Stonehenge are hokum, a modern take on pre-Christian celebrations of the sun. As Rosemary Hill, author of the best modern book on Stonehenge, points out, no one knows what ceremonies it was built for. “Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge go back at best to the midsummer fairs of the 17th century. Most of the druid orders were founded in the Seventies and Eighties.” Yet she also points out the place is also associated with a tradition of English radicalism dating from the Diggers.

I’m not sure that this tradition is quite what the pair — one Oxford student, one 73-year-old Quaker — who sprayed orange coloured cornflour over the stones are channeling. Just Stop Oil (JSO) says stone circles were built all over Europe, “showing we have always co-operated over vast distance — we’re building on that legacy.” Really? What it actually looks like is a stunt to capture attention at one of those events guaranteed to attract the attention of press photographers, what with the tiresome invention, “King Arthur Pendragon”, et al.

But on the bright side, JSO has also targeted Taylor Swift’s private jet this morning. That is actually quite a useful gesture: if there is one thing more insanely annoying than eco-activists, it is those environmentally aware celebrities flying from one appointment to another, burning whole swathes of rainforest as they go. Yes, Prince Harry.

But the activists don’t confine themselves to cheering us up by throwing orange paint at what they thought was Taylor Swift’s jet. They do actual damage. In the case of Stonehenge, the harm will probably be minor, but experts say that the dye may have damaged those frightfully rare lichen on the monument and the markings below. It goes to join those other protests by environmental activists, in this case to persuade the Government to enter a binding treaty to ban fossil fuels by 2030 which almost certainly do more harm than good.

The groups’ — not just JSO — endeavours have targeted almost every harmless human pleasure. Last year it was the Chelsea Flower Show, which was simply baffling; the same year it was the Grand National, where the 14-minute delay to the start of the race appears to have made the horses much harder to control and may have caused subsequent harm. In this the activists were channelling Emily Davison, who threw herself under the King’s horse at the Derby and did nothing to extend the suffrage. Rather, people were confirmed in the impression that these women were dangerous lunatics.

Then there are art attacks, which even the Pope, environmentally friendly as he is, has censured. They had an effect all right: if you go to any gallery you’ll have to wait in a queue to have your bag searched. The pumpkin soup thrown over the Mona Lisa or the attack on the Rokeby Venus did nothing to persuade us about climate change.

An academic study in 2022 by Michael Mann suggested that climate protests alienate people more than win them over.

Is anyone surprised? These things are an exercise in diminishing returns. There is a good case that the militant suffragettes retarded female suffrage rather than advanced it. The same may be true now. But not in the case of the Taylor Swift jet. Go, JSO.

Melanie McDonagh is an Evening Standard columnist