In a week when thousands of families (including mine) in Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester are languishing without basic services due to the kind of ‘extreme weather event’ climate change will encourage, it seems particularly crass that the British Airports Authority is using crude legal bullying tactics to try to stop a peaceful protest about their expansion plans.
BAA’s injunction against the 14-21 August Camp for Climate Action, was lodged last Monday and will be heard in the High Court on Wednesday.
It is ludicrously wide, taking in five million members of 15 mainstream environmental organisations, as well as most of west London. It is also completely unnecessary, as the organisers of the camp have been very open about their plans and have been speaking to police all along.
Jenny Jones, our Green London Assembly Member on the Police Authority, has been helping to make sure the police and protestors work closely together, and has arranged extra meetings between the two this week to iron out any outstanding issues.
Everyone seems happy, so there is no need at all for the airport to be pushing for restrictions on people’s right to free movement. The police would I’m sure be much happier policing a simple camp and demo than trying to enforce the crazy terms of BAA’s injunction.
Given the scale of their over-reaction, I’m finding it hard to see what BAA think they are up to. Treating mild-mannered armchair members of groups like the Woodland Trust as potential criminals can only backfire.
The situation reminds me of the government’s attempt to ban the February 2003 Stop the War march from going into Hyde Park; the only place in London that would hold the hundreds of thousands expected to attend.
Their absurd reasoning that our demonstration would ‘damage the grass’ simply caused outrage among ordinary people opposed to invading Iraq, and thus helped to ensure we turned up in our millions instead.
BAA’s injunction has provided a similar boost to publicity for the Climate Camp. I have known about it for a while and made plans to attend, but I have this week received scores of e-mails from environmentalists who have only just got the details – from the front pages of the papers.
This unenforceable injunction can only help to increase attendance at the camp, and increase the determination of the protesters to make their point.
And it is a very good and simple point indeed: no matter what the effect on the profits of BAA, we must stop building new runways if we want to stand a chance of avoiding runaway climate change.
And this week, thanks to BAA, many more people will have decided they need to be part of the movement that can stop this madness.
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