Paralympian. Drugs cheat. And now Ireland’s most notorious eco-warrior!
He has glued himself to a plane, blocked a motorway and flown a drone over Heathrow. Meet the one and only James Brown...
THE sheer fear in James Brown’s face was palpable. With the roaring sound of flights taking off and landing in the background, he held his smart phone in one hand, filming himself for a Facebook Live stream, and with his other hand he tried to keep himself steady.
Given that he was sitting on top of a plane bound for Amsterdam, this was no easy task. Granted, the British Airways flight was parked up at a gate in London City Airport, nonetheless it was a ridiculously dangerous stunt for a man who is partially blind.
The details of how this Irish climate protester actually managed to clamber on top of the plane on Thursday afternoon are still unclear. It’s thought that he bought a ticket and was booked onto the lunchtime flight to Holland, but after walking up the steps to the front door of the plane, he somehow threw himself on to the roof, possibly with the help of a fellow passenger.
He stayed there for more than an hour before being taken down and led away by police. For over five minutes he filmed himself from his precarious perch, explaining why he had put himself in such danger.
‘This is all about the climate and ecological crisis,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘We’re protesting against government inaction on climate and ecological breakdown.
‘Oh good, there’s security coming, I can see that. I don’t know how they’re going to get me down from here, but I hope they don’t take too long because this is f***ing scary, also a bit cold.
‘I can’t believe I got on to the roof of this thing. I just have to tell myself that I’m not going to fall. This is for my kids, it’s for everybody’s kids, all the young people who face a horrendous future.
‘I’m going to have to stop the live stream,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘I’m too scared.’
It didn’t take too long to work out the identity of the man on top of the plane. Brown is a prominent member of the Extinction Rebellion movement and has already been arrested twice this year for his part in various protests in England.
The 54-year-old is also a former Paralympian cyclist who won a bronze medal for Ireland at the London games in 2012, but rather shamefully was banned from the sport in 2016 for two and a half years after he admitted evading a drugs test.
Sport Ireland and Cycling Ireland found he committed a violation of Article 2.3 of the Irish Anti-Doping Rules — evading sample collection, or without compelling justification, refusing or failing to submit to sample collection after notification as authorised under these rules or other anti-doping rules.
Brown admitted the violation and engaged in a consultation process with Sport Ireland regarding the appropriate period of his ineligibility. The offence warrants a four-year ban but it was reduced to two years and six months based on Brown’s degree of fault and the seriousness of the violation.
Originally from Portaferry in Northern Ireland, he apparently now lives in the town of Devizes in the south-west of England. From there he runs Mobiloo, a charity that provides mobile attended toilet facilitates for people with disabilities at events around the country.
‘I’m James, Mobiloo’s co-founder and catalyst,’ he explains on the charity’s website. ‘Being part of the Mobiloo Team is the best thing I‘ve ever done. It is a privilege and an honour to lead such committed, compassionate and fun people who want to change a small but important bit of our world.’
It would seem Brown is intent on changing more than just the availability of loos for everyone. For a number of months he has been heavily involved in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Known as XR and officially launched in England at the end of October 2018, it states it ‘is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse’.
They began in November 2018 by blockading five bridges across the River Thames in London and last April they occupied other prominent sites throughout the city, including Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus and Parliament Square, bringing large swathes of thoroughfares to a standstill.
Up until last Thursday, Brown had been arrested twice for his XR activity. Back in July he was one of 16 people taken into custody after a protest in Bristol that blocked a motorway. And then just last month he was arrested again after a foiled plot to fly drones over Heathrow in a bid to shut it down.
The ‘Heathrow Pause’ drone protest against the airport’s planned third runway, was a splinter group of XR. However their attempts to disrupt flights were successfully thwarted by Heathrow’s new military-grade anti-drone system.
Before being detected, Brown decided to give up and removed the batteries and his drone from the air because he said was ‘conscious of his poor sight.’ He then sat in a terminal coffee shop and notified the police himself. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. He told reporters that although he feared prison, the price was worth paying if more people woke up to the climate crisis. He also explained that he had stopped flying his drone because he thought, given his sight issues, it might be difficult to fly the device safely and didn’t want to put anyone at risk.
Neither of his arrests have put the Portaferry man off remaining fully committed to the XR cause. In fact, they appear to have fired him up even further. On September 23 he posted a passionate rallying cry to his Facebook page.
‘The situation is getting dire. We need radical system change — it is the only hope,’ he wrote. ‘The only way to achieve this is through peaceful rebellion. That means DISRUPTION, ARREST, PRISON, it has proved successful in other historic contexts and this is the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced. If you’re doing nothing then please
‘This is for all the young people who face a horrendous future’
‘We need radical system change, it’s the only hope’
His actions were ‘reckless, stupid and dangerous’
ask yourself why. If you’re coming to London on 7th October, please be prepared — this phase is not going to be a party. Understand the “theory of change” — rebellion is our only option. Xxx’
This week the ‘rebellion’ finally made it’s way to Dublin, as well as scores of other cities around the world, albeit in a far more muted fashion than has been happening in England. Starting on Monday, they occupied Merrion Square with a small collection of tents, a yurt, a few marquees and several portaloos.
The site formed the main hub of protests this week, with food, talks and music events all timetabled for each day. The first event saw a pink yacht dragged through the streets with the message ‘tell the truth’ printed on it. And up to 1,000 people walked from the Dáil on Kildare Street back to Merrion Square. It was an orderly enough march, and despite there being no overnight camping allowed by Dublin City Council, no moves were made by gardaí to throw the occupiers out.
They said they would respect people’s right to peaceful protest and would facilitate efforts to do so, while the council said it would be working alongside gardaí in order ‘to assist minimising disruption to the public and supporting the public safety’.
Throughout the week there were several demonstrations, including a slow bicycle ride throughout the city by about 100 concerned riders. On a number of occasions roads were blocked off, causing severe traffic disruptions.
Midweek there was a silent ‘fashion walk’ past Trinity College and on to Penneys department store on O’Connell Street, where customers were handed leaflets with facts on fast fashion. The walk then made its way back to Grafton Street, where they went into Brown Thomas to deliver their message.
On Thursday it seemed to culminate when XR protesters chained themselves to the gates of Leinster House. Dozens of gardaí formed a human chain around the activists and the locks attaching them to the railings were cut off.
The first arrests of the week were made by officers over the course of the night.
Yesterday morning, gardaí said four males and one female were arrested during the incident and taken to Pearse Street Garda station before being later released without charge.
Meanwhile in the UK, the rebellion has been a decidedly more heated affair. Scotland Yard revealed that more than 1,100 people have been arrested since the beginning of the week-long protests there. This latest Extreme Rebellion kicked off at Westminster, where protesters glued themselves to government buildings and roads.
By Thursday it had turned its attention to London City airport, where they attempted a ‘Hong Kong-style occupation’ of the terminal building, with hundreds of people blocking the main entrance. Those arrested at the airport included Phil Kingston, an 83-yearold climate activist who said he was protesting for his grandchildren and their generation. Another man forced an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin to turn around on the runway after he refused to sit down.
But James Brown’s demonstration was by far the most dramatic — his video from the top of the plane had reached over 37,000 views as of last night.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, however, made no bones about what she thought of the action and described it as ‘reckless, stupid and dangerous.’ Then yesterday XR took its fight to the BBC’s headquarters in central London. Dozens of them camped outside the New Broadcasting House, preventing anyone from getting in or out of the main entrance. Their banners declared that they were demanding the broadcaster end its ‘silence’ on climate change.
It’s hard to know where XR will go from here. While their demonstrations and stunts have garnered the desired publicity — in the UK at least — there seems, so far, to be a rather benign response to the movement.
Naturally many of those commuters affected by the traffic chaos have had plenty to say. And others have dismissed them as the usual ‘tree-huggers’ or ‘jobless hippies and crusties’ who always turn up to these events.
However, climate change is an extremely hot topic, as it should be. We saw that here in our own recent elections when The Green Party made unexpected gains. And then there has been the ‘Greta Thunberg effect’. The 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl has captured the imagination of millions around the world, hailing her dogged climate activism — although there are those who have denounced her as a clueless child who should return to her studies and leave the politicking to the grown-ups.
But then, she wouldn’t be making a such an impact unless she was properly polarising.
It is less than a year since XR was launched and some are claiming it has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements. It is certainly categorical about its aims and how it plans to achieve them.
‘We promote civil disobedience and rebellion because we think it is necessary — we are asking people to find their courage and to collectively do what is necessary to bring about change,’ states its strategy.
‘We aren’t focused on traditional systems like petitions or writing to our MPs and more likely to take risks (eg arrest/jail time). We don’t want or need everyone to get arrested — for some this is not a good idea — but we do want everyone involved to support civil disobedience as a tool.
‘We are promoting mass “above the ground” civil disobedience — in full public view. This means economic disruption to shake the current political system and civil disruption to raise awareness. We are deeply sorry for any inconvenience that this causes.’
Members say their inspiration comes from historical grassroots campaigns like Satyagraha, the non-violent resistance used by Gandhi in South Africa and during the Indian independence crusade. They also cite the American civil rights movement, Occupy and the suffragettes.
Whether you believe them to be a bunch of ‘eco-nutters’ or the beginning of a radical movement that will actually yield results, there’s no denying that they are growing.
Let’s not forget, it’s only 100 years or so since many people thought the suffragettes were a group of women severely touched in the head.
And while they have members like James Brown on board — a partially-sighted Irishman willing to throw himself on top of a plane and cling to it until he’s forced down — they’re unlikely to disappear any time soon.