A climate activist once known for storming the stage of a major West End production is now being praised for tackling a very different kind of disruption, this time on the North East coast. Richard Weir, a former plumber turned Just Stop Oil campaigner, made national headlines after interrupting a performance of The Tempest at London’s Theatre Royal, warning audiences that “over 1.5 degrees is a global shipwreck.” But now Weir has been dealing with a very real shipwreck much closer to home.
00:00A climate activist best known for storming the stage of a major West End production is now being praised for tackling a very different kind of disruption, this time on the North East Coast.
00:11Richard Weir, a former plumber turned Just Stop Oil campaigner, made national headlines when he interrupted a performance of The Tempest at London's Theatre Royal in Covent Garden,
00:21declaring that Just Stop Oil, over 1.5 degrees, is a global shipwreck.
00:26He claimed the government was committing mass genocide by allowing oil production to continue.
00:32But now Weir has been dealing with a very real shipwreck much closer to home.
00:37Back in September 2025, a small sailing boat lost power in heavy seas and ran aground on Tynemouth's King Edward's Bay here.
00:45While the sailor was rescued and taken to hospital, the stranded boat was left to the elements.
00:49Days later, a storm tore it apart, scattering debris, fibreglass and rigging across the beach and into the sea.
00:56Weeks passed with no sign of official action, leaving residents worried about the environmental impact and the danger to swimmers, surfers and local wildlife.
01:06That's when Richard Weir decided to step in, rallying 10 volunteers, the retired heating engineer led a five hour operation to make the wreck safe.
01:14There's quite a few responses from people who were obviously concerned about the environmental issue that this was going to create.
01:20I said I was going to be down at 8 o'clock Sunday morning and about 10 guys and girls from the street turned up.
01:27First of all, we started with all the rigging, all the ropes and everything, because that's really the dangerous stuff that if it gets into the water and starts tangling,
01:33we even could tangle up prop shafts in fishing boats and, you know, have another one run aground.
01:41So we all met on that Sunday morning and we started dismantling the rigging, started banging up all the ropes, put them to safety at the top of the beach and then I started cutting up the hull with a cut-off saw,
01:57a petrol-powered cut-off saw because that was the only way to get into small enough pieces so we could then physically manhandle it and carry it up to the beach and take it to somewhere safe.
02:06Anyway, we worked on it for about four and a half hours, got it all cut up, got all the engine taken out, dragged that up to the top of the beach, got the fuel tank taken out, dragged that up to the top of the beach, got it all sorted and I'm obviously delighted, you know, four and a half hours of work for 10 people.
02:26It was a coincidence, yeah, absolutely, yeah, but I think the thing that links the two is that sometimes you just need to take matters into your own hands and get things done and not wait for,
02:36the council, the council, the government, an authority to do it, you know, if you want to get a message out about the fact that we're 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels,
02:47you can't wait for the BBC News or Sky News to broadcast that, you know, we need to take action ourselves, you know, take matters into your own hands.
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