Meet the OAPs (outdated age protesters) getting arrested for activism

“I believed, ‘that is going to be big. There’s not an individual on the planet who doesn’t know Stonehenge’,” says Rajan Naidu, recounting the time when he and fellow Simply Cease Oil protestor Niamh Lynch sprayed the long-lasting prehistoric construction with orange powder (a non-toxic mix of cornflour and meals colouring). It was a stunt that went viral.

Naidu was 73, Lynch 21 – at reverse ends of their lives however united of their dedication to a trigger they cared about. Afterwards, they sat silently, crosslegged by the stones within the heat June air. Time appeared to gradual proper down. After which they have been arrested. The motion didn’t cease there. It continued in every bit of press protection, each social media submit, each dialog, of their eventual acquittal.

I’m sitting with Naidu (predominant image) in the neighborhood cafe of The Previous Print Works in Birmingham as he recounts all this. It’s mid-November, a fortnight since he, Lynch and Luke Watson, one other activist who filmed the Stonehenge protest, have been cleared of inflicting a public nuisance. Rain faucets on the massive outdated home windows, whereas reggae wafts via the house. We tuck into steaming piles of chickpea curry. Together with his heat smile, white beard and vibrant cardie, he’s not how the media may need you image a protestor: younger, shouty, in search of bother. However he’s a part of a current wave of older protesters shifting these stereotypes.

“Everyone is a possible activist,” Naidu tells me, cradling his espresso. “Everyone has considerations in regards to the world, issues they’d prefer to put proper.” Equity, he says, is an intuition we’ve got from childhood. Rising up in London, the place his household moved from India when he was a toddler, Naidu remembers his mother and father’ generosity, his father’s respect for others, irrespective of who they have been, and his mom’s kindness. He spent his life working and volunteering in training, reforestation, psychological well being help, with stints on the Put up Workplace and in factories. Solely in his late 60s did he become involved within the type of non-violent civil resistance that might see him led away in handcuffs “many occasions”.

It was a on condition that once you hit retirement age, you’d earned the fitting to place your ft up. Do some mild gardening, be a part of a choir, go on a cruise. However spending the evening in a police cell, absolutely not? There had been grannies at Greenham Widespread, these silver-haired civil rights leaders, however they have been usually the exception. Largely, protest was seen because the protect of scholars, not pensioners.

And but in campaigns for incapacity rights, towards library closures and historic constructing demolitions, or opposing the rise of the far proper, older persons are taking a stand. I’ve been to conferences for these causes the place I, at 42, am one of many youngest within the room. The superior age of placard holders was significantly notable at 2025’s Elevate the Ban demonstrations that referred to as on the federal government to reverse its ban on the protest group Palestine Motion. Of 523 individuals arrested in August, greater than 50% have been over 60.

One among them was 75-year-old Jonathon Porritt CBE. “I feel that is genuinely distinctive when it comes to the historical past of social actions and campaigning of this sort. I don’t suppose there’s been that type of demographic story earlier than,” the lifelong environmentalist and former chief of the Inexperienced Social gathering explains.

At 73, Porritt retired from his job targeted on company sustainability, annoyed with the gradual tempo of change, and returned to the entrance line of politics. On the time of writing, he’s been arrested twice at Elevate the Ban occasions and counting. We chat over Zoom from Chichester, the place he’s on a guide tour for Love, Anger and Betrayal, a group of interviews with younger Simply Cease Oil campaigners.

Maybe it’s inevitable {that a} technology who got here of age at a time of optimism that they might make the world a greater place are wanting round and seeing work to be carried out. Porritt, a former trainer, is pushed by “intergenerational justice”, the concept that assembly our wants should not come on the expense of our descendants’ potential to satisfy theirs.

Everyone is a possible activist. Everybody has considerations in regards to the world

Too many older individuals, he says, “don’t appear to care in any respect about what’s going to occur to younger individuals sooner or later. That actually does anger me, I’ll be sincere, as a result of we’ve made an appalling mess of the whole lot,” he provides. “I don’t anticipate everyone to go and glue themselves to motorways to display how a lot they care in regards to the local weather, however I do anticipate them to be extra respectful of and supportive of people who find themselves taking these sorts of direct actions to focus politicians on the true nature of the disaster.”

Trudi Warner feels equally compelled by a pointy sense of duty. Warner made headlines and have become the inspiration for Defend Our Juries, the group behind the Elevate the Ban marketing campaign, after she was prosecuted for contempt of court docket sitting exterior a local weather activists’ trial holding an indication that learn: “Jurors: you will have an absolute proper to acquit a defendant in line with your conscience.” The fees have been ultimately dropped. It was with “some trepidation” that Warner, a retired kids’s social employee, stepped up as an activist. “I used to be schooled in obedience,” she says, closing her eyes in focus earlier than opening them broad. “Nevertheless it was one thing I needed to do.”

The technique of sitting with an indication is much less bodily demanding than different types of protest corresponding to marching, Warner notes. And although it could actually take as much as eight hours of sitting earlier than an arrest is made – a feat of endurance – older individuals are inclined to have spare time. Porritt factors out that whereas the threats of authorized sanctions are “nonetheless scary, undoubtedly”, they don’t weigh on him as they may different, youthful individuals with fledgling careers or dependent kids to think about. However there are actual sacrifices, dangers and penalties. Tim Hewes, a 73-year-old retired dentist and priest, spent six weeks imprisoned on remand accused of conspiring to close down the M25 motorway throughout 2022 Simply Cease Oil protests, as chronicled in his guide, Discovering Magnificence Behind Bars.

Although the prospect of doing press interviews stuffed her with dread, Warner got here to grasp that the visibility of older individuals like herself – former monks, rabbis, battle veterans – was highly effective.

“It’s more durable for the media to trash us,” she says. Their presence lends the local weather and peace actions a credibility, a gravity, a way that what they’re demanding is mainstream. The calm that older individuals have delivered to the local weather and peace actions is distinctive, too. “It’s counter cultural,”provides Warner, “as a result of in our tradition, everyone’s speeding about on a regular basis, being noisy, being consideration searching for.”

When Union, the northern faculty for creativity and activism, launched a name out for his or her first ever residency geared toward ‘elders’, because of happen in January 2026, it was booked out. Union, which had provided comparable programmes for early and mid-career individuals, devised this partly in response to demand, partly to the rise they’d observed in older activists. The organisation explores the function that ‘elders’ can play, how they may “maintain the house” for others, as director Adrian Sinclair places it, and what they need from this stage.

It’s not a younger individuals’s motion. It’s not an outdated individuals’s motion. It’s a individuals’s motion

“What’s my legacy? What do I cross on? These questions are vital to older individuals.” There may be additionally a wellbeing ingredient to it. Research present {that a} longer, more healthy life isn’t nearly staying lively or consuming nicely, it’s about having function and discovering social connection, too.

Again in Birmingham, three younger males in hoodies recognise Naidu from his Stonehenge protection and ask if they’ll be a part of us to speak. They’re followers, stuffed with admiration and stuffed with questions, which Naidu solutions graciously.

“While you see me, you see this outdated man,” he says. “I don’t outline myself on this.” However he’s reluctant to speak about himself, as a substitute speaking in regards to the “beloved group” that Martin Luther King Jr described, a group that kinds via shared values, and about mates of all ages and backgrounds who’ve greeted him as he emerged from police stations, within the chilly and darkish, with a hug and a snack.

“It’s not a younger individuals’s motion. It’s not an outdated individuals’s motion. It’s a individuals’s motion.”

Predominant picture by Jaskirt Dhaliwal-Boora