Two women in their 80s with a hammer and chisel made attempts to break the glass encasement holding the original Magna Carta, produced in 1215, at the British Library. Minor damage was done to the glass case in London, England on Friday at 10 am local time, but the centuries-old book remained untouched. The Magna Carta is upheld as one of the most fundamental documents of Western democracy and liberties, as it established the principle that nobody is above the law, not even the government or the monarchy. Anglican Rev. Dr. Sue Parfitt, 82, and retired biology teacher Judy Bruce, 85, one holding the hammer, one holding a chisel, tried and failed to crack the glass. Parfitt, wearing her reverend vestment, holds a sign that states, “The government is breaking the law,” while Bruce wears a “Just Stop Oil” shirt. When, after several swings, they were unable to get anywhere with breaking the glass, they can then be seen on video putting glue on their hands. “Is the government above the law?” they chant in the video. The ladies “then glued their hands together, demanding an emergency plan to just stop oil by 2030,” Just Stop Oil wrote in the caption of the video posted to social media. Just Stop Oil is an environmental activist group that has previously disrupted the nation with its demonstrations to bring fossil fuel use to an end. “The Magna Carta is rightly revered, being of great importance to our history, to our freedoms and to our laws,” Parfitt said in a statement released afterwards. “But there will be no freedom, no lawfulness, no rights, if we allow climate breakdown to become the catastrophe that is now threatened.”According to London’s Metropolitan Police, both Parfitt and Bruce were arrested. Library security reportedly intervened to prevent the suspects from causing further damage, per the Daily Mail. Conservative Policing Minister Chris Philp told the publication the stunt was an act of “extremism.” “Eco-zealots have gone from being harmless hippies to committing reckless acts of criminal damage,” he said. “The Magna Carta is symbolic of our rules-based system, which Just Stop Oil and their friends clearly have contempt for. 'We decide things in this country through peaceful debate, reasoned persuasion and democratic elections - not by vandalism or violence.”“The close links between these eco-terrorists and the Labour Party are becoming more worrying by the day.”
