Just Stop Oil of protesters Di Bligh, 77, and Alyson Lee, 66, sat beside the grave of Charles Darwin. (Image: PA)
Two activists pictured sitting on Charles Darwin’s defaced grave have boasted in a secret meeting that they thought their protest was “brilliant” and that they would do it again “like a shot”.
Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and Di Bligh, a 77-year-old former chief executive of Reading Council, were charged by police after Darwin’s grave in Westminster Abbey was sprayed with orange chalk paint on January 14.
The message “1.5 is dead” was scrawled on the memorial to the scientist in reference to 2024 being the first year in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
“I jumped at the chance to do this cultural action because I thought it was so brilliant”, Lee told JSO members during a meeting infiltrated by Daily Express.
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Di Bligh said she would deface Darwin’s grave again ‘like a shot’. (Image: EXPRESS)
Alyson Lee said the protest was ‘brilliant’. (Image: EXPRESS)
“It felt fantastic” the veteran climate activist, who was formerly a member of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, added. “On a selfish point it felt so good because I hadn’t done any action for so long”, she told the meeting.
“My motivation for doing this particular action comes from the profound grief that I live with about the complete inaction of any b*****, really, doing anything useful about anything in the world”, Bligh told the meeting of 77 activists.
“Would I do it again? Not half. Like a shot is the answer”, she added.
Both women were charged with criminal damage and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in February.
Bligh delighted in telling those attending the online meeting that the Metropolitan Police were forced to deploy a large number of officers in response to their act of protest.
“They sent an awful lot of police to arrest us because of course they never know what Just Stop Oil is up to”, she said.
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Bligh and Lee being held outside Westminster Abbey. (Image: PA)
Bemoaning her time in custody, she complained that her police interview finished in the early hours of the morning.
“My interview finished at half past two in the morning, by which point I was completely wasted… it had been a really long day”, she said.
Lee finished her account of the day’s events by telling her fellow JSO members that she relished being active in the climate movement.
“It keeps me sane knowing that I’m trying to do something about this situation”, she said.
“It satisfied my need to be an upstander… it felt really good and I thought it was really worth it”.
Following the action in Westminster Abbey, a spokesperson for the church said they did not anticipate there would be any permanent damage caused.