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Grow Heathrow’s 5th Birthday: Saturday 28th February 2015 was the fifth anniversary of the occupation by local people and campaigners opposed to the building of a third runway at Heathrow of a derelict Berkeley Nursery site in the village of Sipson, one of the local vill,ages that would be lost to airport expansion.

The site, which was only finally evicted in 2021, though half of it was lost two years earlier, had four main aims. It was a symbolic resistance to economic, ecological and democratic crises, developed community and resource autonomy, developed a model for future non-hierarchical, consensus-based communities and aimed to root the grassroots radical values of the Third Runway resistance in the Heathrow villages.

It played an important role in the continuing fight against building a third runway and was an important community resource in the area, as well as inspiring others around the world to see that it was possible to live in different ways. As a National Geographic article stated in 2018 “Grow Heathrow has taken great efforts to open its doors to local villagers, politicians, students, and anyone interested in learning about alternative ways of living.”

I still miss Grow Heathrow and the people and ideas I met there, still occasionally think about getting on my bike and cycling there. I’ll probably take a ride some time through Sipson and on to Harmondsworth in a month or two when the weather is warmer, but of course the community garden is no longer there.

To celebrate its fifth birthday Grow Heathrow held a special day with workshops, guided tours of the site, music, workshops and a party. I’d visited the site a few times previously and it was interesting to see how it had developed, but I was particularly interested in some of the workshops.

A song about the Battle for Heathrow – Locals fought against Terminal 4, were promised it would the last,
then against T5, were promised there would be no more expansion, then defeated the third runway.

In 2015 I wrote about local MP John McDonnell praising them their activities and contribution to the fight by locals against the third runway, and noted that this is “a battle which it looks as if it may need to be taken up by direct action again.” And now we are back at it again eleven years later.

*A speech from local resident and supporter of Grow Heathrow, Tracy*

*Judges at work on the cake competition*

It was inspiring to listen to Tristram Stuart, one of the pioneers of the radical food movement, and to activist Ewa Jasiewicz who I had photographed on many previous occasions, but it was a presentation by the much missed David Graeber that made the greatest impression on me. He “took us through some ideas about democracy and how we need to find new ways to eliminate unnecessary control, with examples from the Spanish civil war and the current revolution in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), where the constitution is based on the ideas of the late Murray Bookchin.“

And then it was time for the party. I’ve written much more on My London Diary and of course there are many more pictures from my afternoon at the site.

Grow Heathrow’s 5th Birthday

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Sipson Celebrates Third Runway Victory: On Saturday 28 August 2010 residents of Sipson and the neighbouring Middlesex villages of Harmondsworth and Harlington held a Family Fun Day to celebrate the successful end to their campaign against BAA’s plans to create a larger airport at London Heathrow by building a new runway and destroying their villages.

One of the first acts when the new Tory Lib-Dem coaltion came into power was to cancel the plans for the expansion of Heathrow by the building of a third runway, which had been agreed under New Labour. It was perhaps one of the few positive results from the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with leading MPs from both parties at least those in the London area having earlier campaigned against the plans.

The fight against expansion had been long and hard, involving what leading campaigner John Stewart of HACAN described as ‘a ‘Victory Against All The Odds’, putting “success down to three main things: the building up of what it calls the largest and most diverse coalition ever to oppose expansion of an airport in the UK; a willingness to challenge the economic case for expansion; and a determination by the campaigners to set the agenda.”‘

In 1999 the owners of Heathrow, the largely Spanish owned BAA plc – the company formed by the privatisation of the British Airports Authority and now the Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited, had pledged at the Terminal 5 inquiry that they would never ask for a third runway. But only three years later they had brought forward massive plans for airport expansion, including a third runway.

And although again they had promised they would not call for a sixth terminal the plans soon included one, along with ground areas for standing aircraft and a relocated motorway spur that would cover most of Harlington, Sipson and Harmondsworth, as well as subjecting a further area of West London to increased aircraft noise and excessive pollution. BAA even declined to rule out making a request for a fourth major runway at Heathrow.

The first large-scale protest march took place in June 2003 and their were many further actions, including a mass protest at Heathrow in May 2008 and many smaller events, lobbies and meetings. The Climate Camp had come to Harmondsworth in 2007, Greenpeace who bought a local orchard as their ‘Airplot’ and direct action campaigners such as ‘Plane Stupid’, ‘Camp for Climate Action’ and ‘Climate Rush’ all gained publicity for the case against expansion.

But Heathrow didn’t give up, and kept up the lobbying to persuade the Tories to give the project the go-ahead. The government set up an Airport Commission with a employee of one of Heathrow’s major owners having to leave his job with them to chair it. As intended this came up with preferring expansion at Heathrow in 2015, and this was adopted as government policy in 2016. But when it became clear that Heathrow would have to come up with the money, their plans were cut down – and in 2017 they dropped the plans for Terminal Six.

After a judicial review in 2020 ruled that the plans for expansion were unlawful because they had not taken into account the commitment to combat climate change, the government announced it would not appeal. But Heathrow did, took the case to the Supreme Court who in December 2020 lifted the ban so the planning application could go ahead.

Covid then came to the rescue, with the drop in passenger numbers meaning plans were put on hold. But according to Wikipedia, from which some of the above information comes, “as of June 2024 the third runway is still planned with a projected completion date around 2040.”

Back in 2010, although celebrating victory, campaigners and local residents were clear that the fight had to go one, and it has done. It seems rather unlikely giving the increasingly clear nature of our global climate catastrophe that Heathrow will ever get a third runway. Although the celebrations in 2010 may have been somewhat premature I think it was then that Heathrow really lost the battle. Since then we have been seeing the thrashings of a dying great beast.

You can read more about the Family Fun Day, organised by Hillingdon Council and NoTRAG on 28 August 2010 and see many more pictures on My London Diary at Sipson Celebrates Third Runway Victory.

Tag: Harlington

Grow Heathrow’s 5th Birthday – 2015

Sipson Celebrates Third Runway Victory – 2010