Two Just Stop Oil protesters in their 80s have broken the glass around the Magna Carta at the British Library.
Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, an 85-year-old retired biology teacher, caused a commotion at the library after smashing the glass enclosure around the historic document.
The demonstrators then glued their hands together and demanded an emergency plan to stop oil by 2030.
Standing by the Magna Carta, the pair also held a sign which read "the government is breaking the law", and could be heard saying: "Is the government above the law?"
Elderly Just Stop Oil protesters break Magna Carta glass in latest protest
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In a video shared by the activist group, the women are seen asking people in the library to stop filming them.
The women demanded the government to "stop oil" and said they are "standing up against the abuse of power".
Just Stop Oil captioned their post on X: "Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, then glued their hands together, demanding an emergency plan to just stop oil by 2030.
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A Just Stop Oil Spokesperson said of the incident: "Clause 39 of the Magna Carta is one of four clauses still enshrined in UK common law, a so-called ‘golden passage’, that states: ‘No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or in any other way ruined, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land'.
"Contrast that with civil law as it stands in 2024, where corporations are buying private laws in the form of injunctions that circumvent the people’s rights to a trial by jury for speaking out against the crimes of oil companies.
"Today’s action comes the same week the government’s climate policy has been ruled unlawful for the second time by the UK high court. The court found there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet."
During their protest, Judy Bruce said: "This week 400 respected scientists- contributors to IPCC reports, are saying we are ‘woefully unprepared’ for what’s coming: 2.5 or more degrees of heating above pre industrial levels.
"Instead of acting, our dysfunctional government is like the three monkeys: ‘see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing- pretend we’ve got 25 years’.. We haven’t! We must get off our addiction to oil and gas by 2030 – starting now."
Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt then said: "The Magna Carta is rightly revered, being of great importance to our history, to our freedoms and to our laws. But there will be no freedom, no lawfulness, no rights, if we allow climate breakdown to become the catastrophe that is now threatened.”
"We must get things in proportion. The abundance of life on earth, the climate stability that allows civilisation to continue is what must be revered and protected above all else, even above our most precious artefacts."
