Elderly Just Stop Oil protesters target Magna Carta

Just Stop Oil protesters have targeted the Magna Carta in their latest environmental stunt.

Two protesters, aged 85 and 82, cracked the glass case surrounding the royal charter at the British Library in central London on Friday morning.

The library holds two of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta, with the others at Lincoln Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral.

Rev Dr Sue Parfitt, an 82-year-old Anglican priest from Bristol, and Judy Bruce, an 85-year-old retired biology teacher from Swansea, entered the British Library at 10.40am.

After they cracked the glass, Rev Parfitt and Mrs Bruce glued their hands together, demanding an emergency plan to stop oil by 2030.

A Just Stop Oil spokesman said: “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.”