4th September 2009
The Climate Rush started on a one month tour of South West England at Sipson, making a procession to Heathrow Airport this morning with local residents to oppose the building of the third runway.
I was pleased as a fairly local resident opposed to further development of Heathrow to be able to join the Climate Rush and their two carts and three horses at Sipson this morning. Slightly less pleased that my own trusty steed, a 13th birthday present from my oldest brother many years ago, punctured a few hundred yards short of the Airplot site where they had been camping over night.
Greenpeace bought the Airplot site in the middle of the site for a third runway at Heathrow and invited everyone to join the plot as a beneficial owner, alongside the four legal owners, “Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK.” You can still sign up for your small piece of the site at http://www.airplot.org.uk/ , and I think most if not all of us there today have already done so. The hope is that it will make it harder for the development of the site to go ahead.
I first photographed the opposition to the further development of Heathrow in 2003, when local residents organised a march (pictures at http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2003/06/jun.htm) against the proposal for a third runway, and have attended and photographed a number of protests since.
I grew up in Hounslow under the main flight path a couple of miles from touchdown where my parents had lived since the 1930s. Although I was a plane spotter at an early age, we all realised the havoc aircraft noise was creating in our lives, even back in the 1950s. I still sometimes have nightmares about planes going over in flames (as they sometimes did) and crashes, although since Terminal 4 blocked one of the existing runways (Heathrow used to have six runways) planes no longer take off or land over my present house to the south west of the airport. Noise is still however a problem – as it is for perhaps a quarter of Londoners. We often – almost continuously on summer days – have planes making steep turns on full power shortly after take-off blasting the peace (the airport authorities usually deny it ever happens, but they clearly talk total nonsense much of the time.)
My sister lives at least twice as far from the airport as me, but the noise there is often unbearable. Even very much further away, at Vauxhall, noise is still a problem, as you can see from a recent film by Jason N Parkinson – http://jasonnparkinson.blogspot.com/2009/08/film-under-flight-path-crossroad.html
Back in the 1950s we knew Heathrow was in the wrong place, only gaining permission for development by pretending it was needed for military use (always a deliberate lie.) Every further development there has always been obtained by underhand means. When T4 was built, they gained permission by promising they would never ask for a further terminal. At the enquiry for T5, they said they would never ask for a third runway. Were they to get away with this runway (and hopefully they won’t) it would not be long before they tried for another.
Heath Row was some of the best agricultural land in Britain. It and the surrounding area was the site of some of the oldest settlements in the country – long before the Romans came – for that very reason. Many of its prehistoric sites have been lost, some under the airport, others under other developments. My grandfather had a market garden and an orchard not far away, and Cox’s Orange Pippin, the finest of all dessert apples, was first recognised as a chance seedling and cultivated by Richard Cox a mile or so down the Bath Road around 1825. Around the Airplot site are apple trees of various varieties, both eating and cooking apples, and we also ate damsons from a nearby tree.
Sipson to the north of the airport was one of several Middlesex villages I used to cycle through as a kid, although development since then has been a little harder to it than some. Neighbouring Harmondsworth, also to be destroyed if the third runway goes ahead, has rather more of its original charm, with a village green with a pub and church and, a few yards away, one of the finest medieval tithe barns.
The procession left from the Airplot site, led by local residents from NoTRAG, ( http://www.notrag.org/) though most were at work today – more were expected later in the day and at the ‘Celebration of Community Resistance’ in Sipson tomorrow. Suffragettes (including a ‘token’ male) wearing ‘Deeds Not Words ‘ and ‘Climate Rush’ red sashes carried three banners, Justice, Equity and Truth; Equity travelled on a horse-drawn cart along with a violinist.
The banners read:
JUSTICE: Rich Countries Must recognise historic responsibility for climate change.
EQUITY: Emission quotas must be per capital; the rich have no more right to pollute than the poor.
TRUTH: Emission caps must be set in line with the latest climate science.
We went south down Sipson Road to the Bath Road, and across it onto the Heathrow site, turning to walk along the Northern Perimeter Road outside the perimeter fence. There we were joined by a police car, which helpfully stopped traffic for us. A few hundred yards along we were unsure of our route, and Tamsin Omond who was close to the front of the procession, rushed across to ask the police how we could return to the Bath Road.
Once we were off the airport site the police left us and we made our way back up Sipson Way and Sipson Rd to the Airplot site. Altogether we had walked around two and a quarter miles, and the horse pulling the cart hadn’t even raised a sweat. It was time for us – and the horses – to eat some of the apples. A couple of the suffragettes climbed a tree to pick some more, but they turned out to be cookers. The kettle had been hanging over the embers of a wood fire and a few more sticks soon brought it to the boil for tea.
Later events in the day included a childrens’ activity session, a tea-party with local residents and an evening of music. Activities continue on Saturday before the Climate Rush moves on – at walking pace – to Aylesbury for events there from 8-11 Sept and continuing at other places on their route to Totnes by the end of the month. Details are at http://www.climaterush.co.uk