Two protesters from the environmental activist group Just Stop Oil have been charged with criminal damage after chalk paint was yesterday (13 January) sprayed on to Charles Darwin’s grave in Westminster Abbey, London.
Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and Di Bligh, a 77-year-old former chief executive of Reading council, from Rode in Somerset, were involved in the action. Both were taken into custody at a police station in central London.
According to the Independent, both women were bailed and are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 11 February. Just Stop Oil confirmed that charges had been brought against the pair.
At around 10am yesterday, the protestors daubed the grave of Darwin, the naturalist who developed groundbreaking theories on evolution, with the words “1.5 is dead”, referring to attempts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, a temperature. The Copernicus Climate Change Service recently confirmed that 2024 was the first year on record with a global average temperature exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Bligh told the BBC: “We’ve done this because there’s no hope for the world. We’ve done it on Darwin’s grave specifically because he would be turning in that grave because of the sixth mass extinction taking place now.”
A statement from Westminster Abbey confirmed that the landmark remained open for visiting and worship throughout. “The Abbey’s conservators took immediate action to clean the grave, and there was no permanent damage. The police were called to the scene and promptly dealt with the incident,” it continued.
Two Just Stop Oil activists who glued themselves to a J.M.W. Turner painting at Manchester Art Gallery in July 2022 were acquitted last October in a Manchester court. In contrast, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland received sentences of 24 months and 20 months at Southwark Crown Court in September for throwing cans of soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery in 2022.
