Progress! Growth! Development! Beautiful music to the ears of politicians, who treat a downturn like someone farting in the middle of Beethoven’s Fifth. And in time with their favourite tune, Heathrow Runway Number Three is good to go. The government has backed BAA, the Spanish owners of the English airport, in it’s mission to build a third runway - a fitting number for the third busiest airport in the world. As The Daily Telegraph argued, Heathrow’s status as a “"global" airport will be undermined if it is not able to expand." So expand Heathrow, with a price tag of £8 billion and increased noise & air pollution and the destruction of the town of Sipson.
 
Sipson is no Hong Kong or New York or Paris. It’s an English village, with several pubs and over 700 homes. The government has done the maths; 700 people who stand to lose “everything”, as one landlord said, or 350 extra flights a day at Heathrow? After two days at the new runway, the entire population of Sipson could be sent to Timbuktu, a convenient solution for an inconvenient population. The government has taken poet John Betjamin’s words at face value: “Leave no old village standing, which could provide a landing, for aeroplanes to roar”.
 
Although planes are not the only things which are roaring. Activists and Green-campaigners are speaking out. This Monday saw “Climate Rush”, a 500 strong protest, with activists arriving at Heathrow in Edwardian dress - referencing the suffragette movement - to have a picnic, with a string quartet, performance artists, art installations and a giant conga line around the departure lounge. Activist group Greenpeace have bought an acre sized field right in the middle of the proposed runway site to complicate development. The land is to be sold in small segments to as many as 4,000 people, thereby slowing down any Compulsory Purchase Orders the government may issue to regain the land. Actor Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan, Conservative party green adviser Zac Goldsmith all pledged their support to the Greenpeace plan.
 
“Sticking two fingers up to the environment”, was how Mr McGowan described the decision. “Laughably hypocritical” was how Ms Thompson labelled the government’s decision. A “global embarrassment” was how the World Development Movement charity saw it. How can the government cut 80% Britain’s carbon emissions by 2050 when it will drastically increase the number of flights? The government’s ecological record already seems more like a dirty yellow than a vibrant green; a Whitehall watchdog report has warned that the government could resort to dumping rubbish meant for recycling because is not providing enough recycling facilities; in Europe, countries are setting solar energy mandates, with Germany installing over one million solar powered systems - the UK has roughly 20,000 installed systems.
 
But the Heathrow plans are not set in stone just yet. The Conservatives have pledged to scrap the runway. And London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced he's planning legal action. The people of Sipson are unlikely to gracefully hand over their house keys to airport authorities. Plane Stupid has promised to fight the development. The No Third Runway Action Group said “We intend to take on this industry and go to the courts and the EU…this is not the end… it is simply the end of the beginning." Greenpeace has labelled the village of Sipson “the battle field of our generation”. When Churchill said we’d fight them on the landing grounds, he never supposed one day we’d be fighting ourselves over the landing grounds.
 
Words: Richard Lemmer, news editor.