Hatton Cross | >Re-PHOTO

Heathrow flashmob against airport expansion – 2016

Heathrow flashmob against airport expansion: On Saturday 1st October 2016 I made my way from Hatton Cross Station with protesters to Terminal 2 after we were informed that this was where the planned ‘#StayGrounded‘ flashmob protest organised by Reclaim The Power was to start shortly.

Although the location had been kept secret before the event, and most of the several hundred protesters told to gather at the underground station, Heathrow security seem to be expecting us when we arrived and the Departures lounge and had obviously decided to treat the event with a minimum of intervention so as not to give it greater publicity.

Security watched the protest standing around the area where it was taking place and only stopping protesters when they tried to go in further to the check-in area, but otherwise making no attempt to stop the protest or prevent me and the other press photographing it.

I sat somewhat uneasily in the departures lounge, discretely photographing the protesters, many of whom had come with suitcases and bags to blend in with the passengers until red handkerchiefs have the signal for the protest to begin.

When it did come the protesters quickly moved into the open space and staged a die-in, some opening their jackets to reveal ‘No Third Runway’ t-shirts.

Others took out aprons from their luggage and stood with the message ‘Climate Change Has A Death Toll’.

People began to loudly read out information about the effects on climate of air travel.

Some taking part in the die-in had brought posters and held them on their chests and others wore medical face masks to point out the pollution caused by air traffic and road traffic bringing fliers to the airport.

The readings continued and a group of protesters dressed as ‘frequent fliers’ in business suits apparently waiting to catch a plane became increasingly restive at being held up by the protests.

Some of the ‘frequent flyers’ began to move forward stepping over the protesters to reach the ‘High Polluters Club Frequent Flyer VIP Check-in’ which had been set up for them.

There they sipped champagne (from empty glasses to comply with airport restrictions), chatted idly and held up large cartoon ‘speech bubbles’ with messages including “When People have to fight to breathe clean air, the government is not fit for purpose“, “‘I got £100K bonus this year“, “I’m one of the 15% who make 70% of flights” and “I‘m flying to my 2nd home in France“.

Next came some songs specially written for the occasion which unfortunately I didn’t record and then some dances, with an an aviation version of ‘Ring a-Ring of Roses’ which of course ends with everyone falling down.

At the end of the protest came a special version of ‘Auld Lang Syne‘ against airport expansion and a little more dancing before we all left the terminal.

I took a few pictures on the way out, then went to the bus station to catch a local bus to Terminal 5 from where I could get a bus home.

But as well as the protest inside the airport I had photographed, there had also been a protest by cyclists which had been met with a huge reaction from the police, disrupting traffic for miles around and leading to wide diversions. My bus was diverted by the M4 and M25 taking over twice as long as normal.

Many more pictures on My London Diary: Heathrow flashmob against airport expansion.

Heathrow expansion is now back on the table, although only if it can be shown to be consistent with our climate change obligations. Of course there is no real chance that it ever can be, but often things like this have been fudged to allow things to happen – Heathrow itself only came about on the basis of lies that it was needed for military use. And a very significant part of this fudging is the recent Draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement published in June 2026 and the proposal to prioritise hub airport capacity and national economic growth as ‘Critical National Growth Infrastructure’.

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Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night – 2010

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night: Saturday 20th March 2010 was an unusual day for me, including protests in two parts of London I seldom visit, Hatton and Hampstead. It was also the start of a campaign on Oxford Street to get the London Living Wage for shop workers and there was a march to Downing Street against education cuts.

BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow – Hatton

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010

BA cabin crew on the first day of their 2-day strike at Heathrow held a rally outside Bedfont Football Club a short distance from Hatton Cross, where several hundred strikers came to listen to speakers, including Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary, and show their determination to fight management plans to downgrade their conditions and make BA into a cut-price airline. Others kept up their pickets at gates around the airport.

BA management under CEO Willie Walsh had refused to come to an agreement with the union, BASSA, and had threatened any workers who spoke at the meeting or appeared in media interviews with dismissal. So none of the strikers spoke at the meeting, but there was thunderous applause when speakers including local MP John McDonnell criticised BA management.

I photographed the picket at Hatton Cross on my way to catch the Piccadilly line into central London.

More at BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow.

March Against Education Cuts

A couple of thousand teachers and students met outside Kings College in Strand to call for the reversal of planned education cuts which they say abandon a generation of students and will damage our economic recovery.

Police had insisted that they march on the pavement, but the numbers and the banners made this impossible and after a hundred yards or so they moved onto the street. At Downing Street they filled both carriageways for several minutes with a short token sit-down before police and stewards persuaded everyone to move to one side of the road, but the crowd was still a little large for the space available and there seemed to be a few dangerous incidents – including a rather uncontrolled police horse – but fortunately no injuries as police appeared keen to get a lane of traffic moving past without due regard for public safety.

As speakers at the rally said, Labour had come into power on the mantra ‘Education, Education, Education‘ but 12 years later were proposing the largest cuts in education funding for a generation or more, estimated to lead to the loss of more than 20,000 jobs in Further Education, Higher Education and Adult Education. They will disproportionately affect the poorer and more disadvantaged in our society, in particular immigrants and young people who are unemployed or lacking in qualifications.

As Jenny Sutton, branch secretary of the UCU at the College of North East London pointed out the proposed cuts of £1.1 billion on education contrasted with the £21 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the £500 billion given to the banks, one of which, the 84% publicly owned RBS is now paying out £1.3 billion in bonuses.

In protest Sutton was standing against the then Education Minister David Lammy in the May 2010 election. Lammy kept his seat and she lost her deposit, but the election put a Tory-led coalition into power. Education suffered even worse in the following years.

March Against Education Cuts

London Living Wage Launch in Oxford St

The London Living Wage campaign began in 2001 and has had the support of all London mayors since. Calculated annually by the Greater London Authority it takes into account the higher living costs in London, and Living Wage employers also have to provide fair employment conditions including holiday and sick pay and allowing employees to belong to a trade union.

Although some of London’s larger employers have adopted the London Living Wage, the retail sector, one of the most profitable areas of business in London, still had many of many of its workers struggling on wages below this level.

London Citizens, a grassroots charity working for social, economic and environmental justice , has led the campaign for a London Living Wage, and held a training session for its members before coming to Oxford Circus. Here they took advantage of the recently introduced diagonal crossing system to cross and recross several times with their banners before going off in smaller groups to continue the campaign inside the larger stores on Oxford Street.

They intended to give letters to all the general managers of shops on the street inviting them to meet with London Citizens to discuss the Living Wage.

London Living Wage – Oxford St

Light Up the Night in Hampstead

‘The Commons‘ candidate for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency Tamsin Omond had organised a ‘Light Up The Night‘ candlelit march to show community solidarity against violent crime and make the streets safe for women at night.

Around 30 people, mainly women, turned up outside the Hollybush pub in Hampstead for the march, where there was a short speech by Sam Roddick, noted for her campaigning on issues related to human rights, feminism, pornography and for taking Fair Trade into hitherto unexplored areas through Coco De Mer, her Covent Garden ‘erotic emporium.

It was a wet and windy night and it was hard to to keep the candles alight as the marchers made their way down the hill from Hampstead and the streets were emptier than usual.

‘The Commons’ campaign hoped to reach people who are fed up with politicians and appeal to ordinary people, many of whom, like Roddick have never bothered with voting because they felt it made no difference. But it made little progress. The election was closely fought with Labour’s Glenda Jackson gaining a narrow victory by 42 votes over the Tory candidate, but Omond was over 17,000 votes behind both of them with only 123 votes and the turnout was low.

More at Light Up the Night in Hampstead.

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Heathrow – No Third Runway – 2008

Heathrow – No Third Runway: On Saturday 31st May 2008 I joined around 4000 people marching from Hatton Cross to the village of Sipson, doomed if Heathrow was to be allowed to go ahead with its plans for a ‘third runway’.

This was a protest I had a more personal interest in than most. I grew up under the Heathrow flight path, about two and a half miles from touchdown, and have lived in the area most of my life. I now live about the same distance from the edge of the airport but fortunately no longer on the flightpath, with just the occasional aircraft making the steep turn needed to fly over our house.

My post about the protest written in 2008 began with this paragraph:
“It is now obvious to everyone with their head out of the sand is that London Heathrow is in the wrong place. It always was, since its creation by subterfuge and lies during the last years of the war, but no government since has had the nerve to challenge the powerful aviation lobby.”

In 2010 the newly formed Coalition government did cancel the plans as a part of the deal the Tories reached with the Lib-Dems. But then the government set up the Davies Commission, chaired by Howard Davies who was at the time employed by one of the principal owners of Heathrow, GIC Private Limited. Though he resigned when he was appointed it came as no surprise when his final report recommended the building of a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow.

The government, now solely Conservative, approved these proposals in 2016 but London councils and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan applied for judicial review and the Court of Appeal ruled that the decision was unlawful as it did not take into account the government’s commitments to combat climate change under the Paris Agreement. Heathrow appealed and in 2020 the UK Supreme Court lifted the ban.

Since then nothing has happened, partly because of lack of finance and arguments about who would fund some of the huge infrastructure costs involved in the proposals outside the airport boundary. The economic costs of the dislocation during the long development would also be considerable. Covid led to a huge decrease in passenger numbers and although these have picked up, finding the investment needed to finance the project probably remains impossible.

You can read more detail on Wikipedia about the supporters of expansion and also those opposed to it.

Although the project was always clearly an environmental disaster, clearly the government and Supreme Court decisions reflected the lack of importance at the time given to our increasing climate chaos. Recent weather in the UK and around the world are now beginning to change this and a new government is going to have to do more than pay lip-service and will no longer be able to push things into the distant future. So I think it very unlikely we will ever see another runway being built at Heathrow.

You can read a lengthy account of the protest on 31st May 2008 on My London Diary, when I mention that when I was taking pictures like the one at the top of the post as a few under 3000 of us made a giant human ‘NO’ on the grass of the recreation ground I was taking pictures with one hand and holding up my ‘No’ towards the cameras on the cherry-picker behind my back with the other.

Heathrow – No Third Runway

No Third Runway – 31 May 2008

No Third Runway – 31 May 2008 – several thousand campaigners against the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport marched from Hatton Cross through part of the airport to the village of Sipson which will be obliterated if the third runway is built.

I’m not sure whether it was on this occasion or another similar event where I was approached and asked if I would like to be the official photographer at height on a cherry-picker taking the photograph of thousands below me on the ground in a giant ‘NO’ each holding up the message ‘NO’ but having no head at all for heights I was very pleased to be taking part in the event with both feet firmly on the ground. I was holding up my poster with its ‘NO’ in one hand and my camera in the other when I made this picture.

I don’t think I’ve ever had much of a head for heights. Perhaps it was my early experiences when my father was sometimes left with the baby and had to take to to work with him – even when he was up fixing roofs. I have some vague but vivid memories of being up on the roof of a house, perhaps our own, under the Heathrow flightpath with aircraft – propellor rather than jet in those days – passing low overhead. But things have worsened in more recent years as my balance has worsened, and now even low walls are a step too high.

The account on My London Diary – Heathrow – Make a Noise – No Third Runway – makes my views on Heathrow clear, beginning with the paragraph “It is now obvious to everyone with their head out of the sand is that London Heathrow is in the wrong place. It always was, since its creation by subterfuge and lies during the last years of the war, but no government since has had the nerve to challenge the powerful aviation lobby.“

It was a view backed by the politicians of all parties who came to speak at the rally, though Labour – then in government – were only (if ably) represented by local MP for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell. And although the Deputy Mayor of London was there, Mayor Boris Johnson who had promised to come had decided instead to fly off for a holiday in Turkey – just as he has done on various occasions as Prime Minister. The Archbishop of Canterbury had also been expected, but was at the last minute unable to make it and sent an envoy with his message.

Most of those marching were local residents, particularly from Sipson and Harmondsworth which would be destroyed by the development, but also from the other areas under the flightpath, which includes a great swathe of West London. Given the nature of the protest and those taking part the level of police interest in it seemed excessive, and it was noticeable that they seemed to be particularly interested in photographing and filming the photographers who were covering the protest – I several times found myself staring into the lens of the police team.

I don’t know why the police do this, nor what happens to the photographs and videos. On the only occasion I’ve bothered to send a Freedom of Information request requesting details of the photographs they have of me from a number of events where they had quite clearly taken them I received a reply stating that there were no images on record… We are not being told the truth.

*One of very few flights on the northern runway as the march went past*

Notably missing from the event were any representatives of Spelthorne Council, my local council and the only council in the area not to oppose the expansion. The Conservative MP for Spelthorne, David Wilsher also supported airport expansion against the then party line and “also denies that climate change is caused by human activities and some constituents expect him to announce his membership of the flat earth society any day soon. Best known for his introduction of the anti-gay ‘Section 28’ amendment in 1988 he replaced for the 2010 election by Kwasi Kwarteng after being implicated in an expenses scandal involving the payment of £105,00 of parliamentary expenses to a company set up with his partner to run his office. The inquiry into his expenses was suspended because of his poor health.

*John Stewart of HACAN and Geraldine Nicholson of NOTRAG perform a duet: NO THIRD RUNWAY*

You can read a full account of the march and rally with a large number of pictures on My London Diary: Heathrow – No Third Runway