John Barry
The International Wall in Belfast transformed into the Palestinian Wall by local artists.
Entrance to Queen’s University, Belfast. Statue of Galileo.
Planning meeting with colleagues. “Privilege is like a traffic light. It serves to protect those crossing. And if you’ve earned it you have the duty to make it work for everyone, not just for you.” In the neighbourhood where John was born, in Dublin, there was a road where lorries passed and cars went fast. A child died crossing it, and the neighbourhood mothers went to the council. They asked for a traffic light. A traffic light would be enough, they said. The administration said no, and the mothers returned to the road.
They sat on the tarmac and said they wouldn’t move until they got the traffic light. John was a little child but he understood that sometimes voting isn’t enough and writing letters isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to sit on the road and wait.
Many years later, John was the first in his family to enter university. Every morning, he left his working-class neighbourhood and went towards those buildings where everyone spoke with an accent different from his. To support himself, he worked as a kitchen porter in the British police canteen. He already had two degrees but had to hide them to get that job. Every day, he washed the dishes and thought about what he’d studied and what he was doing.Today, John is Professor of Green Political Economy at Queen’s University Belfast. He directed the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action and chaired the Belfast Climate Commission, which emerged from a collaboration between the university and the municipality. His work involves translating academic research into concrete policies. He has status and autonomy and time and influence. He’s a full professor, male, white, heterosexual. He’s protected and recognised and safe.But he hasn’t forgotten the mothers sitting on the road.That’s why he organises public events on topics that not everyone likes and opens university lecture halls to neighbourhood groups. “The university is paid for with everyone’s money,” he says. “In summer it’s empty. Why should we make people pay to use spaces that already belong to them?”
John knows not everyone can afford to do what he does. Among younger colleagues, there are those on precarious contracts, those who are afraid, and those who need the salary. That’s why he’s committed to the union, not to protect himself because his pension is fine, but to protect them.
“Many of my colleagues are Marxists and socialists and feminists,” he says, “but they leave everything inside books. For me, you can’t be coherent if you only speak in the lecture hall. You also have to turn up at protests.”John turns up at protests. He was a councillor for seven years and a leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and an Extinction Rebellion activist. He wears t-shirts with writings that bother people and speaks in language that makes elegant professors wrinkle their noses. “The planet is literally on fire,” he says. “Doesn’t this require a strong response?”As years go by, John ages in that privilege he conquered centimetre by centimetre. He publishes peer-reviewed articles and directs the research centre and appears on local media talking about climate. He works in the furrow traced by the mothers on the road and that was the most important political lesson, the one no book taught him better.“Privilege is like a traffic light,” John says. “It serves to protect those crossing. And if you’ve earned it you have the duty to make it work for everyone, not just for you.”There’s a question John has always asked himself: “Who am I?” Not what must I do, but who am I. The answer is as plain as the tarmac beneath the mothers’ feet: someone who doesn’t forget where he comes from.Sometimes in the evening, when the university empties and the lecture halls remain uninhabited, John thinks about his mother and the other women. He wonders if they understood that what he does now – opening lecture halls and protesting and using his protected position – is just a different way of sitting on the road.Politics is always the same. Don’t let the world run you over. And when you have strength and privilege and space, make room for those who come after.The mothers knew it. John learnt it from them.
John Barry’s key dates
September 1975 · Paying respects to the remains of President de Valera at Dublin Castle. A child's boredom mingled with the confused sense of witnessing something historic.
March–October 1981 · IRA hunger strikes. Ten deaths. Black flags on the lamp posts of a working-class neighbourhood. Images of the protests fill the television news.
June 1996 · Doctorate at Glasgow University on the political economy of post-growth.
June 1998 · Birth of his daughter Saoirse. "Future generations" shifts from abstract concept to real person.
October 2011-2018 · Green Party councillor. Academic, father, husband. An experience that deepens his understanding of the limits of capitalism and liberal representative democracy.