protest

Manchester Plane Stupid occupy Manchester Airport

Submitted by Barry on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 13:56
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Locked around the tyre
Source: Flickr

Activists from the group Manchester Plane Stupid have breached airside security at Manchester Airport today in a protest against the expansion of the airport. The protest involves two groups. The first group of 6 people cut through the perimeter fence and created a human circle around a stationary plane using arm tube lock-ons.

A second group have used tripods to blockade the road entrance to the World Freight Terminal preventing airfreighted goods from being taken in or out. They have unfurled a banner reading: “More air freight = more climate change. Stop all airport expansion now.”

The group are protesting against the recent decision to expand the World Freight Terminal which will involve the demolition of historic homes on Hasty Lane.

Lisa Jameson from Manchester Plane Stupid said, “This isn't just about airport expansion or rising carbon emissions. This is about challenging an economic system based on the absurdity of infinite growth on a planet of finite resources, a system which prioritises bail-outs for the banks and then makes us pay for it in public service cuts. Capitalism is the cause of the problem, climate change is just a symptom.”

Following the recent decision to stop expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead airports, the aviation industry is likely to look to regional airports such as Manchester to increase profits.

“The third runway at Heathrow was stopped because ordinary people stood up to the government at the time and the aviation industry using a broad range of tactics. Direct action has historically played an important role in creating social change and will continue to do so.”

The aviation industry consistently overstate their importance in creating jobs and their contribution to the economy. The lack of tax on aviation fuel is costing the UK economy £9 billion per year. There is also a tourism deficit in the North West region of £2.2 billion. That is the difference between what Britons flying abroad spend in foreign countries and what foreign visitors spend in the North West.

Each round of airport expansion is justified on the promise of more and more jobs. In the 1990s Manchester Airport promised to create 50,000 jobs with the second runway – but the actual number was far lower. We need to begin a just transition to a low carbon economy by creating jobs in sustainable industries such as rail and renewables”

Annie McLaughlin said, “Recently, we've seen attempts by British Airways to use the courts to overturn workers' right to strike. We support the rights of all workers to fight for good conditions. It is essential that the changes needed to prevent climate change are not used as an excuse to restrict workers rights.”

The airport, which is owned by local councils, has kept local residents in the dark about the proposed expansion plans, failing to adequately inform them that their homes face demolition.

McLaughlin continued, “The proposed expansion of the freight terminal makes no sense, economically or environmentally. The existing capacity is not fully utilized and an expansion would simply be a stepping stone to expansion of the airport as a whole, which would be an environmental disaster.”

“With the planet on the verge of climate breakdown it is essential that the real cost of aviation expansion is taken seriously – currently emissions from aviation are not included in Manchester City Council's Climate Change Action Plan.”

The sticky problem will not go away

Submitted by Barry on Wed, 05/12/2010 - 16:37
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Gordon Brown has come to a sticky end. He cuts a forlorn figure: out-of-office, soon to be out-of-Parliament. His aviation policy is in tatters, the jewel in its crown – a third runway at Heathrow – is no more. The new Government has pledged to scrap it.

That decision comes at the end of a momentous campaign lasting nearly a decade, involving local communities, activists, national campaign organisations, sympathetic politicians, some trade unions and even some leading business figures. A progressive rainbow coalition if ever there was one.

You'll probably remember our mate Dan supergluing himself to Gordon Brown. The pictures should act as a warning to the new Government. Yes, Heathrow has been dropped and they're saying that there won't be any new runways at Stansted or Gatwick either. But what about the proposed expansion at Southend, London City, Manchester, East Midlands, Glasgow... need I go on?

Cancelling Heathrow is one thing. The real test comes with these regional airports. Activists stand ready. Unless Cameron and Clegg scupper these plans, they can count on a very sticky future.

They destroy the planet. We get locked up for talking about it

Submitted by Johnny on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 15:30
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Source: Flickr

4 men and 1 woman were arrested and charged on Wednesday 31st March for speaking in public about the climate effects of aviation at the reopening of Glasgow Airport Terminal 2. The group from Stop Expansion at Scottish Airports (SESA), including a legal observer and two photographers, were leaving the airport after holding a banner for a photograph outside Terminal 1 when a police van and police car pulled up and arrested 4 of the group.

Late into the night, riot police later went to the homes of the arrested without warrants. On Thursday the 5 were charged with obstructing normal airport business. All of the accused deny the charges. The group believes that those arrested were targetted because SESA is calling for a public non-violent peaceful protest at the airport on October 10.

Amelia Birrell, had riot police at her door after midnight saying that they wanted to question her son, Robbie. She said: "I think that this justice system is a joke when it locks up peaceful individuals until 6pm the next day when they are talking about such serious measures as climate change. We were made to feel like criminals when riot police searched around the whole of our house in the middle of the night. I know that the airport is a sensitive place but they are all passionate individuals worried about the future of our country and they were doing nothing to cause any disturbance. I am proud of my son, we are supposed to have freedom of speech in this country and such heavy handed policing is disproportionate and hypocritical."

This is not the first time that Scottish anti-airport expansion campaigners have been subject to heavy-handed policing tactics. In January 2009 Geoff Lamb, a pensioner from Aberdeen was been held in a cell overnight for innocently writing 'you fly, we die' in the snow in food dye. Later in 2009, Plane Stupid exposed a massive police operation to bribe and infiltrate peaceful protest groups.

The disproportionate tactics we have seen by Strathclyde police mirror those infamously used by the Metropolitan police. Arrested for voicing concerns about the aviation industry’s massive and growing contribution to climate change? Who are the real criminals here?

Call out for public shut down of Glasgow airport on October 10

Submitted by Johnny on Thu, 04/01/2010 - 17:29
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SESA banner
Source: Flickr

For several years now we've sat by and listened as MP after MSP pledged to do something about climate change. So far, they've achieved sod all, and time is running out. It's crunch time: if the authorities won't make climate change policy work, we need to, openly and together. But how, you ask? Well, we're going to start by shutting down Glasgow airport on October 10.

We've formed a new coalition, Stop Expansion at Scottish Airports, and we're calling on anyone who believes in a sustainable future to join us. There have been a number of public actions against climate change in England, but this is the first in Scotland.

We've got to do something about flying. The Air Transport White Paper and the Scottish Climate Change Bill go in opposite directions. One forecasts a massive increase in passengers and the other demands a 42% reduction in greenhouse gases. It's the politics of the madhouse.

An increasing number of people will not stand by and watch airports blast more and more emissions into the atmosphere. We will not let the airlines and the aviation industry destroy any hope of reaching targets defined in the "world leading" Climate Change Bill.

We're targeting Glasgow airport because it's the perfect example of expansion plans gone mad. Over two-thirds of flights are to airports within the UK and half of those are to London. It's right next to a major population centre, with thousands of flights over already-deprived communities. But our problem is with the industry, not passengers, which is why we've given everyone so much notice.

So form a group, get dreaming, and get advice on safe ways to plan effective action. We'll see you on October 10.

The camp, the bling and a cat called Andrew

Submitted by Anna on Mon, 03/22/2010 - 11:43
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Last week, without any fanfare or proper consultation Southend-on-sea declared that they would be expanding their airport. Southend is an hour up the line from London. It used to be the East End's top holiday destination, but like so many British seaside towns it's lost out to cheap flights, and the fall of tourism has left it with an interesting growth industry: determined resistance to the ravages of its clueless council. For a flavour of what might be in wait for the airport, here is the story of a cat, a king, and a camp called Bling...

Some years ago in Southend preparations for a road widening scheme uncovered an internationally significant archaeological site: a Saxon King's burial ground. The council decided to raid the treasure and continue with the tarmac. In outraged tribute to their forbears' desecrated goldie looking chains, the locals decided to set up Camp Bling. For 4 years they occupied the land and mounted an incredibly inspiring grassroots campaign, that saw treehouses go up and 100 residents storm a private council awards ceremony.

Eventually the council backed down, and last summer an agreement was made to limit the road widening to a token gesture of 20 metres. The site carefully packed away their defences. Then a couple of months ago the council explained that, while they wouldn't be taking the burial site, they would be going back on their word and expanding 160 metres of road. So camp was set up again, at Cuckoo Corner. Lads who had been too young to be involved in Bling sat up the beautiful beech that was threatened.

For the last three weeks people have occupied the space 24/7, holding off the chainsaws and building a small but sturdy activist centre. On the three Saturday nights before possible eviction, dozens of locals lined the road in readiness. But then the council decided to make a vicious twist with their possession order for the land- just two days before the stated court date, they posted up a hit list of 12 people who they demanded should appeared in conjunction with the case.

Many of the people summoned to court had never even stayed on the site, and one of them, well, one of them was a cat (who had featured in newspaper articles about camp Bling). But it seems that a spot of brazen incompetence doesn't immediately stop Southend council getting their way, and the judge demanded that everyone who showed up to the court case pay costs for the privilege of doing so, and threatened them with contempt of court (and the resulting loss of their assets) if they decided to protest against the tree felling.

On Saturday, just one day after Whitehall gave the final rubber stamp to airport expansion, the bailiffs came in early with fencing, security guards, cutting crew and cranes. Within a few hours the mature trees that had graced the area for over a century were decimated. 50-100 residents gathered in spontaneous protest despite the council's bullying. One man made a bid to lock onto the extraction vehicles but was pulled off.

Camp Bling and Camp Cuckoo have always been clear that their stand was about more than trees and history, however important they know both to be. Ten years after the council tried to pointlessly widen a road, half a dozen trees have been lost from a project that proposed to take out well over a hundred. And many hundreds of people have seen that resistance is fertile, that stupid decisions can be fought, and that land can be won back.

Grimshaws targetted for involvement in Heathrow third runway

Submitted by Anna on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:01
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Grimshaws, the architects firm which portrays itself as greener than green, the people who designed the Eden Project, were appointed late last year as architects for the third runway at Heathrow. No wonder three young men blacked-out their glass-fronted offices on Clerkenwell Road with tar.

Grimshaws thought the most sensible thing to do on the one year anniversary of the Government giving the go-ahead to the third runway was to have a high-level meeting with BAA. Imagine their surprise when they found their six-metre plate glass windows entirely blacked out. Not an auspicious start.

If Grimshaws thought this was just another job, then they've bitten off more than they can chew. The suave, award-winning Sir Nicholas Grimshaw has seriously underestimated the determination of thousands of people to stop the third runway ever being built. Actions like this are going to become common place as people recognise that our Government is not doing enough and start taking action themselves.

But this is not just a message to Grimshaws. It is to any firm that bids for work on the third runway. Heathrow's expansion is a poisoned chalice. Just leave it alone.

P.s. the image above is, of course, a cleverly constructed metaphor. See the tar pit. See the elephant, which is representing Grimshaws. See it struggling in the tar. There's an astute political message in there somewhere.

Post COP reflections: support activists still locked up in Denmark

Submitted by Richard on Mon, 12/21/2009 - 15:30
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Mass Arrests on Amagerbrogade
Source: Flickr

Well we're back from Copenhagen. Some of us at least: reports are still coming in that while some people were deported for such crimes as carrying a Leatherman, others were locked up for holding a small cloth roughly the size of a hand towel somewhere in the vicinity of the great and the good.

The list of those detained or deported is growing - the convergence space where I queued for the coach had a special bit of wall for notes from the deported to their friends (mostly 'get my stuff'). It's criminal that the unelected lobbyists and fully-elected arseholes that conjured up this so-called deal on the back of a napkin have their mugs in the paper while the real heroes - those who took action to stop the world going to hell in a handbasket - are facing Christmas in jail.

Greenpeace UK has asked people to write to the Danish PM and whinge like hell about the detentions. They've got one of those standard template letter things, but you can modify it, perhaps to include the name of a friend, or to widen your objection to include those deported (including the foreign correspondent of the Spanish equivalent of the BBC, sent home for filming outside the Bella Centre while wearing full press credentials).

It's probably about as worthwhile as getting all the world's leaders in one place to solve a problem they created, but it's better than sinking into post-action despair. Actually, the best thing to do if you're living in Blighty would be to go blockade the Danish Embassy until they let everyone go... but it is snowing, after all.

Plane Stupid at the PR Week awards: the movie

Submitted by Richard on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 17:48
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See what happened when Plane Stupid borrowed Virgin Atlantic's table at the PR Week awards. I don't think it's spoiling the ending to suggest that they weren't overly impressed.

Best offence is a good de-fence

Submitted by Richard on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 13:52
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More awesomeness from Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the police have released some helicopter footage showing people getting through the fences.

You'll love the bit, a few minutes in, where they complain of being "overrun at gate 3". Too bloody right: great job everyone.

Fences breached at Ratcliffe-on-Soar

Submitted by Richard on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 18:05
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...and up we go
Source: Flickr

As night draws in, the battle for Ratcliffe-on-Soar (and, indirectly, our future) continues. With police now promising (threatening?) to use new tactics on anyone who refuses to go home and cower in fear behind the sofa, swarms of concerned citizens are taking the power back all around the site.

Fences are down in multiple locations, through a combination of ingenuity, grapling hooks and ninja cyclists. 30 swoopers broke through and blockaded the train tracks by which coal arrives at the power station. We're hearing reports that 10 others were nicked hours before the protest even started by over-zealous cops. Not so keen to help the guy who collapsed with a suspected heart attack though were you officers?

There's up-to-the-minute coverage on the Climate Camp's twitter feed.