Author: John Stewart

Today’s impressive rally against Heathrow expansion, organized by Zac Goldsmith MP, demonstrated the formidable forces that are massing once again to prevent expansion of the airport.  It will have given Heathrow Airport and their allies who want a third runway considerable pause for thought.  In the space of 40 minutes 15 leading politicians from right across the political spectrum lined up to speak.  They included the Mayor of London and two cabinet ministers, Justine Greening and Ed Davey.  And many more politicians wanted to speak but had to be turned away.

Airport expansion – like every major decision – will be a political one.  And the politics are moving away from Heathrow.  Politicians of all parties are putting Heathrow expansion in the “too difficult” box.  The Liberal Democrats are firmly opposed.  The Labour Party, under Ed Miliband and shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle, has made it clear it no longer supports expansion.  There is a powerful lobby within the Conservative Party which is urging the Party to rule out expansion for good.  The London Assembly and the Mayor are united in their opposition to it.

Look around the cabinet table:  the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Business Secretary Vince Cable, Home Secretary Theresa May, the Secretaries of State for the Environment, International Development and Northern Ireland, Ed Davey, Justine Greening and Theresa Villiers and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond are all known opponents.

This is a far cry from the opposition being confined to local authorities, local residents and environmental groups.  Heathrow has become a London-wide, indeed a national issue, a national issue where politicians know there are votes and seats to be won and lost, where they are so aware of what happened to the last Labour Government’s attempt to expand Heathrow. 

Astute people within the aviation industry like Willie Walsh, in charge of British Airways, have made their view clear that the tide has turned against Heathrow expansion.  Today’s rally re-enforced that message. 

“There have been persistent whispers that the two big business organizations, the CBI and London First, are losing their enthusiasm for a third runway”

This may be heresy.  But it simply may not matter what the Davies Commission, set up last year by the Government to look at future airport capacity, says about a third runway at Heathrow.  The tide may already have turned against the controversial project.

I was a speaker at a major aviation conference last week organized by the prestigious Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum:

http://www.westminsterforumprojects.co.uk/forums/index.php?fid=westminster_energy_environment_and_transport_forum.  When the chair asked who supported a third runway, only a very few of the 250 people present raised their hand.  This from an audience predominately drawn from the aviation industry and business.

Caste you mind back ten years, to 2003, the year the Labour Government published its Air Transport White Paper.  Business and industry overwhelmingly supported a third runway and fully expected it would be built.  Even three years ago, when the current Government dropped plans for a third runway two days after taking power, many in the business community saw this as a temporary aberration.  Normal service would soon be restored.

Now, however, a very different attitude is emerging.  Much of business and certainly most of the aviation industry still want airport expansion but they are moving away from support for a third runway.  Business people tend to be realists.  Many now believe that, in the real world, a third runway will not happen.

There are signs business now appreciates cannot be the quick, relatively cheap solution it is looking for.  It would not be ready before 2025.

Figures like the former Conservative transport minister, Steve Norris, have long recognized that a third runway is politically untenable.  British Airway’s boss Willie Walsh is planning his business on the assumption it will not happen.  All political parties are opposed to it.  As is the Mayor of London.  But, recently, there have been persistent whispers that the two big business organizations, the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and London First, are losing their enthusiasm for a third runway.  Their public position is still to support it.  In private, doubts are emerging.

There are signs that business now appreciates a third runway cannot be the quick, relatively cheap solution it is looking for.  Even if a new government gave it permission after the 2015 General Election it would be over a decade after that before it would be up and running.  And that assumes the opposition wouldn’t kill it off a second time:

http://www.hacan.org.uk/resources/reports/how.the.heathrow.campaign.was.won.pdf.

The diverse ownership of the aviation industry now gives business choices it didn’t have a decade ago.  It has begun shopping around for the best deal.

Business is also aware that the aviation industry is very different from 2003.  Then BAA owned the three London Airports.  Today, both Stansted and Gatwick have new owners.  Gatwick is making a very public case for a second runway.  The Mayor of London is backing Stansted.  Business has now got choices it didn’t have a decade ago.  It has begun shopping around to look for the best deal.

Boris gets it. The London Assembly gets it. Former transport minister Steve Norris gets it. Some business people get it.  I think Heathrow Airport – BAA as was – gets it.  Maria Eagle, Labour’s shadow transport minister, gets it. Willie Walsh certainly gets it.  

However, I came away from giving evidence to the London Assembly’s first-rate transport committee this week pretty sure that some of the people backing a third or even fourth runway at Heathrow don’t get it.  It is simple:  it will be politics – not economics, noise or climate change – that will determine where, if anywhere, new runways will be built.  I don’t mean that the decision will necessarily be narrowly party political; simply that it will based on a political assessment of how deliverable any proposal for a new runway actually is.

“It will be politics – not economics, noise or climate change – that will determine where, if anywhere, new runways will be built”.

Steve Norris has consistently argued that a third runway at Heathrow is politically undeliverable.  British Airways chief Willie Walsh has come to the same conclusion.  He is now planning his business on the basis that a third runway will not be built.  He is buying up Heathrow slots from other airlines and consolidating his Madrid base through his link up with Iberian airlines.

I think they are right.  The last Labour Government tried and failed to expand Heathrow.  It lost out to a vibrant, rainbow coalition of local residents, local authorities, MPs and peers from across the political spectrum, trade unionists and business people as well as large sections of the environmental movement including direct action activists – http://www.hacan.org.uk/resources/reports/how.the.heathrow.campaign.was.won.pdf.  That coalition is merely dormant.  It would come back.  It would come back more confident than before.  It now knows how to defeat a runway. Moreover, it knows it has provided inspiration to campaigners across Europe – from Munich to Siena – to see off their runway proposals.  This is the political reality that would face any party that tried to expand Heathrow.  Politicians are realists.  Not one would want to risk losing another 10 year battle, achieved nothing in the process.

“The vibrant campaign which saw off expansion at Heathrow last time round is likely to frighten off politicians from backing a 3^rd runway.  That is the political reality.”  

And then there are the voters.  725,000 of them live under the Heathrow flight paths, according to EU statistics (see table below).  That, incredibly, is 28% of all people disturbed by aircraft noise right across Europe.  That’s more people than live in Glasgow or Manchester.  A third runway, according to Department of Transport figures, would add at least another 150,000.

It is difficult to assess to what extent those organisations – think-tanks, businesses, trade unions – which back a third or fourth runway have thought through the political barriers to Heathrow expansion.  I suspect they instinctively feel that the Coalition’s decision to scrap a third runway and mixed-mode (more planes on the existing runways) was a one-off, an aberration, something David Cameron repents of in private.  George Osborne, they claim, is on their side.  The tide, they feel, is turning in their favour.  It is only a matter of time, they believe, before Sipson is flattened and normal service has been resumed.

That, I think, is to misunderstand the history of protest.  I was involved in the campaigns against road building in London in the late 1980s and early 1990s; road building plans that would have flattened dozens of communities.  The scale of the protests killed off major new roads as a solution to London’s traffic problems.  Equally, the national ‘anti-roads’ protests in the 1990s changed the course of UK transport policy.

The anti-expansion campaign at Heathrow over the last decade or so is likely to be equally significant.  It will frighten off any political party from supporting further expansion of the airport.  Boris knows his former constituents in Henley would be up in arms.  Maria Eagle, backed by her leader Ed Miliband, has made an astute political decision to oppose expansion.  Heathrow Airport knows it has the fight of its life on its hands to get a new runway.  That is the political reality.  If George Osborne – or Ed Balls – doesn’t get it, they are in for a very noisy wake-up call.

It’s probably the most common question we get. ‘Why don’t you move, if the noise is bothering you so much?’  It is sometimes said aggressively; at other times just quizzically.  It can be followed by the comment: ‘After all, you knew the airport was there before you moved in.’

When I respond to these questions by email, I usually start by admitting that some people could move but choose to stay before adding that many, many others have moved because of the noise.  I regularly get emails: I’ve given up the battle; I’m escaping to Brighton; I can take it no more, we’re off.  People often ask me where in London is free of the planes.  It can be tricky giving advice when they don’t  tell you their price range!  I tried to send a woman to Uxbridge who really fancied Chiswick.  And nearly bankrupted another by suggesting Marylebone.  She settled for Barking.  

The oddest request was from a couple who had become so disturbed by the noise that they wanted reassurance that Banchory, near Balmoral in rural Aberdeenshire, was not under any flight paths.  And the saddest was the mother who had struggled for years with the noise in order to keep her children at schools they enjoyed only to move back to her home town of Southend, just a year before that airport put in an application for significant expansion.

That last example illustrates the second point I make in my email responses to those who suggest we all could move.  For most people it is just not that simple.  Many have no choice for reason of income, employment, disability, age or other personal circumstances.

There are so many cases like the woman from Southend where one member of the family is driven to distraction by the noise but tries to put up with it so as not disrupt the lives of the rest of the family.  Far from being simple, the option of moving may well be the hardest decision a family ever has to take.

There is also some truth in the other point made:  that people knew what they were in for when they moved in.  Most people who have moved into a property under a Heathrow flight path in recent years will know the score though many still say they had no conception of the way the aircraft would invade their lives until they actually had to live with it.

Although on the surface it appears pretty straightforward – you can hardly miss an airport or a flight path – dig just under that surface and a more complex picture emerges.

Some people, particularly those in rented accommodation, have little real choice about the area they move into, especially if they need to be within an affordable travelling distance of work.  We have a member who had been out of work for some years.  His only option when a job came up in Hounslow was to move his family to the area.

Then there are many people who admit that they knew full well they were moving under a flight path when they bought their property 30 or 40 years ago but, in all good faith, believed the promises made by government and the airport operator that terminal 4 and then terminal 5 would be the last major developments at the airport.  They did not move to an area that had a plane coming over every 90 seconds.

And finally, possibly more than a quarter of a million people unexpectedly found themselves under the Heathrow flight paths when in 1996 the suggested point for planes joining their final approach to the airport was extended by up to 3 miles.  There was no consultation and no compensation.  Indeed, for years many in the industry and government never admitted that any change had taken place.  

There was no way that these people, living 20 miles and more from the airport, could ever have expected to be living with a constant stream of sound.  Many fled but that was not an option for the majority of people in the densely-populated, low-income estates of Stockwell, Brixton and Peckham.  As one elderly West Indian woman said to me, “Darling, at my age, it’s either here or Jamaica.  And here is now home. It’s where all my family is.”