TWO Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists have been cleared of criminal damage after taking action at a London Pride march.

Arthur Clifton, 22, and Guido Wieser, 19, sprayed black and pink paint over a Coca-Cola float at the march in July 2023.

Activists from the group then laid down and blocked the float, demanding an end to all new fossil fuel projects and to pressure London Pride to stop accepting sponsorship money from high polluting industries.

At the time, JSO spokesperson James Skeet said: “Pride was born from protest. 

“It speaks to how far we’ve come as a community that high polluting industries, and the banks that fund them, now see Pride as a useful vehicle for sanitising their reputations, waving rainbow flags in one hand whilst accelerating social collapse with the other. 

Ahead of the trial at Southwark Crown Court, Mr Clifton said: “Multimillion-pound corporations like Coca-Cola are wholesale destroying my generation’s future. 

“To then use Pride and queer liberation to try and hide this is beyond evil. As long as the government keeps siding with world-ending businesses, we all need to step up and act.”

In court, Judge Griffith ruled that the jury would have no legal defences to consider.

He withdrew the “lawful excuse” defence, which would argue that the defendant had a valid reason to damage property. 

He stated that the prosecution’s evidence of four-figure remediation meant the damage could not be treated as trivial. 

The jury was limited to deciding only whether damage occurred and whether the defendants intended it or were reckless. The defendants were found not guilty at the trial’s conclusion.