What was the point of the JustStopOil Magna Carta stunt?

The eco-activists of JustStopOil have often been caricatured as a group of middle-class students with too much time on their hands. Their latest stunt at the British Library on Friday shows how wrong that is. Middle-class pensioners with too much time on their hands are also well represented in this group, it seems.

The British public had their number all along

On Friday a duo of octogenarians made their stand against fossil fuels, with comic results. Reverend Dr. Sue Parfitt, an eighty-two-year-old Anglican priest, and Judy Bruce, an eighty-five-year-old retired biology teacher, walked into the British Library’s Magna Carta exhibit and began hammering at the glass protecting the historic document. When they didn’t manage to break it, they recited pre-prepared statements. “As a Christian,” Parfitt said, “I am compelled to do all that I can to alleviate the appalling suffering that’s coming down the line and is here already, whatever it takes, whatever the costs.” They then began chanting “Just Stop Oil” in unison, before glueing themselves to the display case.

Why Magna Carta? Some tenuous explanation was offered, about how the government — like a tyrannical King John — was acting as if it was “above the law’. But, as ever, the target isn’t that important. Just like when JSOers threw soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” or smashed at the glass over the Rokeby “Venus,” the vandalism and the spectacle and the attention-seeking are the point. 

I get the idea. These activists want to suggest that the coming climate armageddon is so serious that a bit of iconoclasm is the least they can do. But given no one sane believes said armageddon is on the horizon, they just end up looking mad — or in the case of these two elderly ladies, absolutely precious. In the clip of the stunt, as they sat down on the floor and one offered the other the glue, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was passing her a Werther’s Original.

Should we be worried about eco-radicalization among our older folk? Contrary to popular belief, there have always been a fair few gray hairs on demonstrations by JSO, Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain. As well as men and women of the cloth. Reverend Tim Hewes, in his mid-seventies, was arrested at his home near Wantage in November 2022 for conspiring to block the M25 with JustStopOil. He was given an ankle tag. Reverend Mark Coleman, a retired vicar from Rochdale, spent five weeks in jail for blocking roads in central London.

It’s perhaps no wonder that those of a more religious mindset, and those who tend to be free on a weekday afternoon, have the time and the inclination to obsess over the end of the world. What’s strange is that these people were ever taken seriously by the supposed mainstream. When Extinction Rebellion first emerged they were hailed as brave radicals, winning plaudits from everyone from Keir Starmer to celebrities to judges and the V&A. 

Meanwhile, the British public had their number all along. Which is why ordinary people tend to deal with these activists quite robustly if they happen upon one of their blockades. JustStopOil aren’t brave progressives, they are a strange — and occasionally comical — cult. Friday’s doddery antics in the British Library are all the proof anyone should need. 

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.