Watch our interview with Magna Carta protester Sue Parfitt (above) at youtube.co.uk/@peepsonline

A RETIRED priest who was arrested for allegedly causing damage to the glass around the Magna Carta in the British Library warned that climate change could lead to the “extinction of human life on Earth.”
Sue Parfitt, 82, was one of the first women to be ordained in 1994.

She spoke to the Tribune as she joined hundreds of protesters outside the High Court on Thursday.

Sitting down on the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice. They were demonstrating against heavy sentences for activists involved in disruptive action such as stopping traffic on motorways or throwing soup at paintings.

Ms Parfitt herself was one of two women in their eighties arrested after the incident at the British Library in May. “The fact is that the previous government had been taken to court for breaking the law [on climate change] and it got almost no coverage at all in the press,” she said.

“So, we went to the British Library and very peacefully we took a hammer and chisel and cracked at the glass and held up a banner saying the government is breaking the law.

“That got a lot of coverage thank goodness because it’s a disgraceful fact the government was and still is breaking the climate change law that was passed in 2008.”

She added: “It was with great effort to get arrested, we had to persuade the police to do so. They first of all said this is not an arrestable offence because we’d caused such little damage: three tiny dents in the outer case.

“But we did persuade them to arrest us because otherwise the press had no interest in us.

“We’ve since been banned from the British Library and we’re on bail because our court case isn’t until the end of 2026.”

Last week’s protest was held as The Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, Dame Sue Carr, and two other senior judges were hearing an appeal brought by 16 Just Stop Oil campaigners against what they say are overly harsh sentences.

The Crown Prosecution Service argues the disruption caused by JSO – including the blockades on the M25 – did not deserve leniency.

In Ms Parfitt’s case, the British Library reported damage to the glass which holds one of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta.

She had targeted the 1215 document – which established the principle that the king and his government were not above the law – to try make a point that governments had been found in breach of its own climate policy.

“I’d do it again. In my eighties, why wouldn’t I? I do it for you, for the younger generation because they are going to see some of the worst of the climate catastrophe – certainly your children.

“I don’t have children myself, so I don’t have grandchildren either so I do it for yours because what else that is sensible and purposeful can I be doing in my eighties than that?”

Ms Parfitt added: “I’m out here protesting because this is an utterly deplorable situation whereby we have peaceful, committed upright citizens of this country who are prepared to go to prison even to call attention to the climate catastrophe that is being largely ignored.

“And this is to save life. This is the sixth extinction event on the planet and the only one since human beings have been here and we must consider we are facing the extinction of human life on Earth”