protest

The mother of all injunctions

By Robbie on 12/08/2007
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The British Airports Authority (BAA) effectively scored an own goal in their bid to secure an injunction against the Camp for Climate Action. As was widely reported, the original was massively reduced in scale and severity by the High Court. Initially BAA had applied for a far reaching injunction against four defendants and the members of their associate organisations.

These were Leo Murray and Joss Garman from the direct action group Plane Stupid, John Stewart - Chair of Airport Watch and Geraldine Nicholson from the No Third Runway Action Group (No TRAG). Since Airport Watch is an umbrella group including the National Trust, RSPB and other large organisations, the original injuction would have restricted the movements of approximately 5 million people.

BAA do not want next week's Climate Camp to happen obviously fearing the adverse publicity. They proposed that parts of the M25 and parts of the M4 be out of bounds to potential climate campers as well as platforms 6 and 7 of Paddington station and the entire Piccadilly Line.

As it covered so many people over such a large area, it soon became known as the 'Mother of all Injunctions'. Ken Livingstone, furious that Transport for London had not been consulted prior to BAA's application, publicly waded into the debate, saying that someone at BAA must be "out of their skull."

Unsurprisingly, Mrs Justice Swift told BAA to come back with something workable. On Monday 6th August, BAA were granted an injunction against John Stewart, Leo Murray and Joss Garman and members of Plane Stupid only. It stipulates that these persons are not allowed on Heathrow property. Despite some clever press releases from BAA declaring victory, the whole saga has really been an own goal.

The Climate Camp has received massive coverage from the mainstream press, and will now be bigger than it would otherwise have been. It is not covered by the injunction and it is perfectly legal to attend the camp. BAA's lawyer Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden, now known as 'TLC' amongst Climate Campers, had bragged of his track record of using the 1997 Protection from Harrassment Act, a law originally designed to protect women from stalkers, to gain injunctions against animal rights and weapons-manufacture protesters.

He had called himself "a rottweiler" - a market-leader in criminalising otherwise lawful behaviour. Now he looks more like Scooby Doo. The injunction granted was not the Protection from Harrassment sought, but a rather softer injuction under common, not criminal, law.

For the majority of people that will attend the camp (estimates range from 2000 to 4000 people) the injunction does not affect them. However, there are some disturbing consequences for Plane Stupid's members regarding freedom of speech. This is because anyone who breaches the injunction "in concert with Plane Stupid" is also covered.

This means that if anyone from Plane Stupid (that is anyone who has been arrested on Plane Stupid actions and spokespeople) aids, abbets or incites direct action against Heathrow until the 31st August (when the injunction expires), they will be in breach of the injunction.

Plane Stupid has already had to alter one of their workshops at the camp.
Members of Plane Stupid (such as myself) are now having to watch what they say. For example, could acknowledging the importance of direct action to the Chartist and Suffragette movements in a press interview at the camp count as incitement? Our lawyers are unsure.

The Camp for Climate Action will happen at Heathrow from Tuesday 14th- 21st August. Each time Heathrow expands, it is granted permission on the basis that it will not expand further. Terminal 4 was accompanied by a promise there would be no Terminal 5. Terminal 5 was accompanied by a promise there would be no third runway. Terminal 5 is not even open yet, but BAA are already pushing for that third runway and Terminal 6.

For the last thirty years, Heathrow residents have been continuously lied to. Meanwhile, aviation's rapid growth rate threatens to undo all our climate change efforts. The Camp will run a variety of workshops and act as an example of sustainable living. As for the rest, the injunction prevents me from commenting further.

Feet firmly on the ground: a response to the editor of The Times

By Joss on 01/08/2007
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BAA is seeking to stop me and my fellow protesters from approaching Heathrow. But there is nothing 'wild' about our claims - quite the opposite.

It is not often that you wake up to find yourself described in a Times editorial as a "semi-socialist" flat-earther but on the second day of our high court hearing in which BAA is seeking to injunct me (and Lord knows how many more Britons) from even approaching Heathrow, that is the turn of phrase the Thunderer has reached for.

Congested thinking

By Richard on 19/02/2007
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As this is an aviation-themed blog, I try to keep my ranting focused on issues relating to aviation and climate change. But today, I'm breaking this self-imposed rule to vent spleen on the pompous residents of West London and their allies in the knee-jerk media. That's right: it's congestion charging.

An article in the yesterday's Evening Standard by Valentine Low sumarises perfectly the stubborn stance taken by these ill-informed hacks. Low starts by name-dropping a few select friends and relatives for whom 'Red Ken' has made the borough of K+C nothing more than a ghetto. "Two of my son's friends... were removed from school after their parents were offered a place at a school nearer their home", he says; "the clincher was the knowledge that... they were going to have to fork out far more than they could afford just for the pleasure of driving their twins to school".

Low continues, describing a family with four children and how they've had to move into the zone (and closer to school) to qualify for the 90% reduction. 'Melissa' is quoted, tears no doubt falling thick and fast, as she describes the sheer nightmare of juggling kids, rugby kits and an urban 4x4 down the King's Road at 8:30am. He quotes a further friend, scarred for life as she has to admit taking her children on a bus (yes, a bus! shocking).

Now, much as I love reading about the suffering of Mellisa and her progeny, there's a serious side to this - and one which links back to the aviation debate. Firstly, Low assumes that the lifestyle changes his cabal have had to impliment are unintended. In Valentine's world, Livingstone never realised that the extension would penalise people who choose to live 5 miles from a bus route and send their children to school in the next borough.

Nonsense. The charge is entirely about reducing the distance and frequency you drive - particularly unnecessary school runs brought about by ill-thought out living arrangements. If you want to live a lifestyle which relies on excessive consumption of fossil fuels, then expect to pay.

Secondly, if Melissa or anyone else living on the King's Road chooses to give birth to four children, that is arguably their choice - even though her carbon footprint increases with every child. But there is a caveat - children cost money, and it is not an acceptable arguement that legislation unfairly impacts upon you because you chose to have a certain number of offspring.

No one complains when a trip to Alton Towers costs more for a family with four children than for a family with two. So why are people so surprised that the effects of measures designed to reduce your impact upon the earth's resources have a greater impact upon larger families? You made your bed, now lie in it.

What's this got to do with aviation? Well, the future will need to hold more of these measures if we are to reduce the effect of aviation on the climate, as, short of a deus ex machina techno-fix, we're going to need to reduce the existing capacity - meaning flying less than we do now, and closing regional airports, not expanding them.

That will impact upon your life - especially if you bought into the whole low-cost lifestyle, and either emigrated or bought a second-home abroad. So yes, if your parents or children live in Spain, you'll see them less. So yes, I am saying you can't nip over to Malaga for the weekend. And yes, choosing to fly will cost you.

Ken's charges are just the beginning. There's more to come, and like the residents of K+C, we will simply have to learn to deal with it.

Plane Speaking: A response to Brendan O'Neill

By Joss on 10/01/2007
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The donkey jackets have been quietly retired and the Lenin busts wrapped in newspaper and stored in the bottom draw, while that once unshakable belief in the Hegelian dialectic is nothing more than an embarrassing dinner party anecdote. Now it's all sharp suits and bursting media contacts books.

Welcome to the curious world of Spiked Online, the internet home of the Revolutionary Communist Party, where members of that 80s Marxist sect now espouse free-market ideology while stuffing their Gap jackets with corporate booty.

I have had cause this week to take a closer look at this network of commentators after Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill described me, on Comment is Free, as "deeply conservative and censorious, wishing to hold society back, shut down debate and keep the uppity oiks in their place". The Spiked gang once thought society was held back by bourgeois tendencies. Now, it seems, the fault lies with environmental protesters - particularly those under thirty years of age who think tackling climate change might be, you know, a reasonably good idea.

I wandered into the crosshairs of Spiked's AK-47 after founding a direct action group to tackle the dangerous growth in aviation. Just to put it on the record, I and my friends did not do this because we were convulsed by a desire to force people to live in Hobbit-style grass huts, wear hair shirts, howl at the moon or listen to "One Way" by The Levellers on repeat. (We'll leave the cultural reprogramming to the Revolutionary Communist Party, eh Brendan?) No, we founded the group called Plane Stupid because the world's scientists are warning that the current growth in aviation threatens to destroy what hope we have of averting catastrophic climate change. Indeed, in recent months both Oxford University and the internationally respected Tyndall Centre have warned that if aviation expands as expected, even if Britain decarbonised the rest of its economy by 2050, we still won't even meet the prime minister's most conservative emissions target of a 60% cut. Reports in The Guardian this week make it abundantly clear that Tony Blair has no intention of paying heed to these warnings, only underlining the importance of groups like my own.

The growing and diverse movement calling for radical action to halt climate-changing carbon emissions won't be silenced by corporate-funded misinformation from recently converted, free-market, anti-green disciples like Brendan. This near cultish worship of the market, espoused by Spiked and those who fund them in the boardrooms, has blocked action on the most serious of problems for too long.

Brendan chides me personally, and the exciting grassroots movement of which I am part, as "anti-progress". Is his idea of progress a world in which there are180 million deaths from climate change this century in Sub Saharan African alone (as Christian Aid predicts)? Is his idea of progress a world in which sea levels swamp major urban conurbations? Is his idea of progress one in which hundreds of millions of people struggle to find fresh water? Because for me and my friends who campaign against the growth in aviation, progress has a very different hue.

It's time to put to rest some of the tired arguments that industry stooges like Brendan have taken to trotting out. It's important to make it clear that the battle against the unsustainable growth in aviation is not a reactionary middle-class attempt to get the hoi-palloi off "our" flights. Cheap flights haven't made it easier for poorer people to travel for the first time; they've just made it easier for the wealthy to travel more often. The Civil Aviation Authority's own data shows that the average person flying in or out of Stansted, a budget airport, earns in excess of £50k, whilst people in the bottom 20% of incomes never even set foot on a plane. Meanwhile, analysis by the industry reveals that second-home owners in Spain now take five or six flights a year. There's been an enormous growth in binge-flying with the proliferation of stag and hen nights to Eastern European destinations chosen not for their architecture or culture but because people can fly there for 99p and get loaded for a tenner. All good fun, but I can't help thinking of those 180 million Africans.

And woe betide anyone working in the UK's tourism industry. Thanks to the short-break phenomenon, Britain now has a £17 billion tourism deficit. That's thousands of smaller bed-and-breakfasts, seaside restaurants and cottage industries in Britain going under because the industry keeps telling us that flying to Barcelona is glamorous. Meanwhile government currently subsidies an Irish airline to buy American planes to enable British people to spend their pounds in Spain.

Plane Stupid has become used to scathing criticisms from people with vested interests. Debate is the lifeblood of our democracy and we're keen to engage with all the arguments but if Brendan wants to be taken seriously, he might at least try to base his case on empirical evidence. As it is, his rhetoric and statistics have all the credibility of those tractor production quotas he and his fellow travellers used to get so excited about.