Protesters storm Edinburgh Castle citing Article 61 of Magna Carta (which doesn’t exist)

A group of anti-lockdown protesters were holed up inside Edinburgh Castle this morning after storming into the building quoting the Magna Carta and claiming they were seizing it and overthrowing the Queen.

Bemused police watched on as the 20-strong group claimed the castle ‘belongs to the people’ and they were ‘taking our power back’.

The group said their actions were justified by Article 61 of the Magna Carta – a phrase recently used by lockdown sceptics to justify ignoring coronavirus restrictions. 

The 61st clause of the medieval charter of rights briefly gave 25 named barons the power to ‘assail’ the monarch. It lasted a year from 1215 to 1216 before being expunged from subsequent revisions of the document, which has never held any legal power in Scotland anyway.

That didn’t seem to concern the insurrectionists, who documented their overthrowing of both the monarchy and Nicola Sturgeon’s devolved administration in a 13-minute Facebook livestream video yesterday afternoon. 

In the footage, a police constable asks one of the organisers: ‘How many more people are you expecting to come to Edinburgh Castle today to join your protest?’ 

When she tells him ‘it’s not a protest, we’re actually taking it back’, he replies: ‘Right, no worries.’ 

The group declared Magna Carta ‘the only law in the land’ and told passersby the Scottish people had been ‘lied to all our lives’. They added the building ‘belongs to us’ and said they had ‘taken it back’ in an effort to ‘restore the rule of law’. 

Another man then says: ‘Treason’s been going on for that long now, we can’t sit back and let everybody perish under the stupid legislation and fraudulent government tyranny, so let’s just take it all back, not just the castle.’

The woman then speaks again calling for ‘no more enslavement’ and the ‘people and commonwealth are going to be free’.

She tells viewers they are going to ‘take everybody down’, including government, the courts and ‘the crown is coming down today’.

After saying the group is ‘putting we, the people, back into power’, a second man adds: ‘We are the people.’

The woman also claims ‘corrupt, evil, satanic paedophiles are running this country’ and Scots have been kept ‘like peasants for 800 years’. 

The woman says she has put Police Scotland Chief Constable Iain Livingstone ‘on notice’ about them taking the castle.

At one stage the police officer asks the woman for her name, to which she says she is ‘not obliged’ to give, before identifying herself anyway.

A Police Scotland spokesman said on Tuesday evening: ‘Officers are currently in attendance at Edinburgh Castle and are engaging with a group of people who have gathered within the castle grounds.’

A spokesperson for Historic Environment Scotland added: ‘A group of around 20 individuals entered Edinburgh Castle this evening without payment.

‘After refusing requests to leave the premises Police Scotland were called to the site and are dealing with the matter. There are no other visitors currently on site.’