Home - SR Editions - Socialist Resistance No.47

Heathrow climate camp

A week of sustainable living, debate and protest action

Sheila Malone

I couldn’t go to last year’s climate camp at Drax power station, so was determined to get down to the Heathrow protest last month, even if not for every day.

A week of co-operative, sustainable living, with workshops, debate and protest action was something to look forward to, and I wasn’t disappointed. The camp doubled the numbers at Drax to 1500 - mainly young activists. I have to own up to not staying nights, since had I bedded down on a tent floor, arthritis might have stopped me getting up again the next morning.

But daytime life was fine - from collective preparation of local, vegetarian food to recycling to composting toilets (although these seem to have been designed by a very tall man, since the only way women could sit on them was with our legs dangling in the air!)

Especially well catered for were the many children present - lots of activities for them - and I regretted that the rain had put me off bringing my five year old granddaughter, who had been pestering me to come.

Daily workshops on site discussed the huge threat facing us, as our planet heats up towards the dangerous 2 degrees “tipping point” and including the part aviation is playing in this, as the fastest growing source of polluting greenhouse gases.

But doom mongers we were not. A wealth of inventive and imaginative solutions were debated - from the evident need to switch our fossil-fuel economies to renewable energy sources, to countless ideas for energy efficiency and reduction and the need for both political and personal action.

The need for socially just solutions also ran like a thread through these discussions, as it is the poor who are already suffering most from the effects of climate change - the increasing floods, storms, drought, disease and so on This was clearly not to the liking of those with vested interests in continuing and profiting from excessive polluting .BAA had tried to stop the camp going ahead at all, by attempting to injunct five million environmentalists and protesters. But they failed, scoring themselves a spectacular own goal, which instead gave massively increased publicity and sympathy to campaigners.

I spent Saturday leafleting and talking with local residents in the neighbouring villages. These include Sipson, where at least 700 homes and a local school will be flattened to make way for BAA’s planned new runway. Others will have their noise and air pollution levels dramatically increased.

So our march the following day united long term campaigners against this expansion with overall protest against climate change. I feel this protest could have been much bigger if organised and publicised well in advance. Perhaps wider access to journalists than was allowed at the camp would have helped. But it was a powerful, peaceful and optimistic protest nevertheless.

There are currently over a dozen planned airport expansions in the pipeline in Britain . These are being driven by the Blair/Brown agenda of “predict and provide”. This falsely claims to be just keeping up with growing demand for air travel. But, as with roads, the more airports you build, the more the air traffic you create. So our quarrel is with those who are promoting and profiting from this artificially created demand - not with families taking a hard-earned annual holiday. According to the Stop Stanstead campaign, the average annual income of the mainly business and long-haul travellers from Heathrow is £54,000 and from Stanstead (mainly leisure) £51,000. These are people who can afford to hop on and off planes many times a year. However, as prices are driven ludicrously low binge flying is being held out as an aspiration for everyone.

Both airport expansion and the possibility of £10 flights around the globe are also being driven by the massive £9bn government subsidy airlines enjoy, due to tax-free aviation fuel. This is an anomaly Gordon Brown could end immediately. However, our new Prime Minister is as staunch a supporter of big business and as dishonest a politician as his predecessor.

Last year Brown commissioned the Stern report on (albeit market-led) solutions to climate change. This year he approved a Climate Change Bill aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 by 2050. On each occasion he was able to present himself as seriously tackling the issue. Yet his promotion of GDP growth at all costs (whether social or environmental) causes him to ignore even these inadequate solutions. Greenhouse gas emissions in Britain are rising, not falling. And Brown’s enthusiastic backing of aviation on the grounds that it is “good for the economy” will mean emissions from this sector will anyway cancel out all other possible savings.

This is a path to catastrophe, which we have little time to reverse. We need now to build on the success of the Heathrow camp and other growing protests.

Serious and Organised Crime: are they really serious?

New Labour’s topsy-turvy world

Jan Smith

Way back in October 2006 I was in London , standing on the pavement minding my own business when along came a policeman who started to read out to me a Section of the Serious Organised Crime & Police Act 2005. “I don’t understand”, I said. All the policeman did was to read it out again!

Then things got nasty He dragged me away and said that he was arresting me. If I hadn’t given my name and address, I would have been taken to the local police station in a van, kept in overnight and brought before the court the following morning.

What was my offence? I was standing in Parliament Square holding a piece of sheeting on which were written the numbers of those who had died in Iraq .. I certainly hadn’t caused the death of any individual unlike Blair whose “illegal” action in going along with the moron from the USA has resulted in many deaths.

Almost six months later, I received a summons to appear before Horseferry Magistrates Court . I pleaded guilty and was fined £100 plus £60 costs and now have a criminal record.

Could someone explain to me what REAL offence I have commited? What is the concern about protesting in Parliament Square . Are acts of terrorism going to be perpetrated by demonstrators holding up an old bed sheet or the side of an old cardboard box.

Was the real objective behind Blair’s legislation the desire to save him embarrassment? Did he really want to see a group of people outside Parliament telling him, on a regular basis, that he is a liar, a murderer, a fool and a knave?

The war in Iraq is, and always has been an illegal war. I now have a conviction under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. Blair on the other hand, will probably never be brought to trial. Instead he has been given the post of Middle East Envoy. That is the equivalent of asking Caligula to chair a debate on moral values.