Mee said he had not considered the possibility of a crowd turning violent against him. 'We were there to do a protest and there's that human psychology in that it's harder to abandon something you've started and as things got more violent it became harder to come down.' 'At that point there was less fear of our safety from violence in the crowd. 'You can see in the footage someone throws a sandwich,' replied Mee. The prosecutor asked: 'Within a minute of you getting on that train people are already angry, aren't they? Did you not think at that stage, it's not going where you want, should we not get off now?' Mr Blackman played footage of Mee and Ovland climbing onto the train, after which a passenger approaches shouts and throws a sandwich at them. That is the essence of being non-violent. 'The best thing to have done would have been to sit down. The crowd very quickly pacified after we were brought down.'Īsked about footage of him kicking out at a passenger who reached up to grab him, Mee said he felt guilty about breaking Extinction Rebellion's code of non-violence. 'As it happened, there were a few people who wanted to put the boot in, none of them really connected. Mee said he expected to receive a 'serious, serious beating' if got off the train. ![]() People were making death threats, I thought my life was in danger and the last thing I wanted to do was get down.' 'I went to the most catastrophic conclusion. I didn't know what the crowd was going to do, I was overreacting in my mind. 'We were up there for 18/19 minutes, waiting for the police to arrive, the pressure increasing. 'We wanted the protest to be a success and also it was scary and I didn't know what people were going to do,' replied Mee. Michael Goold, representing Mee, asked: 'When you saw there were more people than expected, why did you not get off the train?' XR activists Mark Ovland (left) and James Mee (right) were showered with coffee and coins as they refused to get down from the top of a tube train 'We were told no one would be about other than a few cleaners coming home and if we got on top of the train and staged the protest the police would arrive very quickly, the station would be closed, a special removal team would have to be called.' Giving evidence Mee said the original plan had been to block the Jubilee line for one hour, from 6am, to disrupt workers travelling into the City - but they were 45 minutes late. They unfurled a banner saying 'business as usual=death' while a public announcement told the crowd to evacuate.Įdmund Blackman, prosecuting, has said the pair were only on top of the train for 20 minutes but 48,000 people had their morning commutes affected. Inner London Crown Court has heard accounts administrator Mee, and former Buddhist teacher Mark Ovland, 38, were showered with coffee, sandwiches and coins as they refused to get down. James Mee, 37, was eventually pulled onto the platform at Canning Town station and kicked by enraged passengers during the morning rush-hour on October 17, 2019. ![]() An Extinction Rebellion activist who scaled a Tube train to protest about climate change told a court he did not get down because he feared he would be killed.
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