Trial by jury is a glory of the British constitution. On occasion a jury has conscientiously given a perverse verdict in defiance of a judge’s direction. That happened in 1670 when two Quakers, William Penn and William Mead, were acquitted by a jury of preaching to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street, City of London. The jury stuck to its verdict even when the judge had them locked up for two days without “meat, drink, fire and tobacco”.

The case was rather different yesterday when a jury at Bristol Crown Court acquitted four defendants charged with criminal damage when a statue of the 17th-century merchant Edward Colston was pulled down in June 2020, battered, splattered with red paint and thrown into the dock. The defence counsel had invited the jury “to be on the right side of history”; the judge had told the jury to disregard such rhetoric about the weight and consequences of their decision, and to try the case purely on the evidence in front of them.

One defendant had said that because the statue represented a man involved in the slave trade, toppling it was “an act of love for my fellow man”. But where will this kind of love lead now?

As we report today, English Heritage has said that Sir Joseph Banks, the great botanist and founder of Kew Gardens as a scientific institution, was an “enabler of slavery”. Does that mean the plaque to him in Soho Square may be splashed with red paint or his house in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, assailed by a mob? Are the very glasshouses of Kew Gardens safe from the stones of those who hate its great patron?

Some people think that Sir Winston Churchill was a racist. We know they think so because in 2020 “Racist” was scrawled on the plinth of his statue in Parliament Square. A man convicted of damaging it then was fined £200 and told to pay £1,200 in compensation. Justice was done, though in a magistrates’ court with no jury.

Last year, six Extinction Rebellion protesters were cleared of causing criminal damage, despite a jury being told by the judge that there was no defence in law for their actions. Environmental activists now regularly argue that a climate “emergency” allows them to stop trains and traffic in protest and to cause damage.

It is an insidious argument that undermines the safety of property and the public’s right to go about their business, whether it’s to get to work or to attend a hospital appointment. For juries to think that statues are on trial and not the defendants in court would be laughable if its consequences were not so serious.