Airport Debate: Middle England fights back; The airport land grab: In 2002, the Government announced proposals for Midland airport development of gigantic proportions. At the start of a special series looking at the communities involved, Chief Reporter Paul Dale examines the stormy public reaction.
Byline: Paul DaleI t didn't take long for one of the Midlands' biggest protest campaigns to get off the ground.
Within one hour of being toldby The Birmingham Post thattheir villages were in danger of being flattened to make way for an airport larger than Heathrow, the people of Church Lawford and Kings Newnham began to organise.
Disbelief gave way to anger, and then a determination to do whatever was necessary to save communities so steeped in history that they are mentioned in the Domesday Book.
The first poster appeared. Scribbled hastily on a piece of cardboard, hung by the side of the main road through Church Lawford, it contained a stark message for the Department of Transport: 'No Airport Here.'
That was on Tuesday, July 23. Four months later, the protest movement has grown beyond all imagination and spread its wings across the West Midlands. Although most attention was focused initially, naturally enough, on the prospect of a new Warwickshire airport, it didn't take people living near Birmingham International Airport long to realise that they too ought to be concerned about the DfT consultation paper.
If the Church Lawford proposal came like a bolt out of the blue, the suggestion that Birmingham might get a second runway would prove to be almost as controversial.
The idea had been a glimmer in the eye of BIA management but was considered to be such a long term project and weighed down by severe environmental difficulties that the airport had refrained from setting a date for building a second runway.
Now, courtesy of the DfT, BIA was being handed an opportunity to secure permission for massive expansion without, presumably, having to battle against Solihull Council for planning permission. Protest groups such as SOAR, Solihull Against Additional Runways, BANG, Birmingham Airport Anti-noise Group, and Friends of the Earth, joined forces to lobby support among people in Solihull, Bickenhill, Catherine de Barnes, Hampton in Arden, Coleshill, Sutton Coldfield and the eastern perimeter of Birmingham.
A petition signed by more than 20,000 people, condemning the second BIA runway, was handed in at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday.
Friends of the Earth was instrumental in ensuring an element of co-ordination between the Church Lawford and BIA protest movements, arguing that the DfT's consultation paper aimed to set community against community. It would be fatal, FOTE reasoned, for Church Lawford to campaign in favour of a second BIA runway, in order to take the heat off Warwickshire. Equally, the Bickenhill lobby would gain nothing by arguing for closure of BIA in favour of a new airport at Church Lawford.
There is little doubt that the Department for Transport was surprised by the sheer scale of protest from the West Midlands. More than 25,000 responses have been received from the region, far outstripping expectations.
DfT aviation spokesman David Stewart hinted that the Government's timetable to produce a White Paper on air travel by the Spring of next year may be affected by the size of the postbag and the need to give due consideration to public opinion.
'There has been an awful lot of reaction to the proposals from across the country. Each letter has to be considered and analysed properly,' Mr Stewart said.
A large percentage of correspondence on the desk of Transport Secretary Alistair Darling will have come from the Church Lawford campaigners, where the protest movement has eclipsed virtually anything else in the country.
Andy King, Labour MP for Rugby and Kenilworth, who knew nothing of the proposal to build a new airport in his constituency until the DfT document was published, addressed one of the first public meetings on the issue at the Benn Hall, Rugby, in the first week of August.
With every seat in the room taken, and hundreds of protesters locked outside, Mr King declared: 'There is not a hall in Rugby large enough to accommodate all of the people who would like to be here tonight.'
From that point, the campaign took off. It is now impossible to drive through the Warwickshire villages between Coventry and Rugby without seeing thousands of posters, of all shapes and sizes, but expressing a common message: 'No Airport Here.'
Mr King, who won traditionally Tory Rugby and Kenilworth in 1997, could be forgiven for wondering what impact the Government's aviation consultation might have on his future prospects. Banners carrying slogans such as 'No Blairport' and 'Not Here, Darling', hammer home the political point.
Posters proclaiming, 'a letter a day keeps the airport away', have proved particularly popular according to Ron Ravenhall, secretary of the Anti-Rugby Airport Committee.
ARAC, which has grown into a small business since the beginning of August, now boasts a fighting fund of pounds 50,000. It sells anti-airport car stickers and laminated posters at 20p each, large 'Say No' plastic boards at pounds 30 and banners at pounds 150.
Christmas cards containing a suitably festive anti-airport message are to be sent to all MPs at Westminster.
Laurie Wright, a Rugby borough councillor and ARAC publicity officer, admits that it has been difficult to keep up with demand for posters. 'We are pleased for as much support as we can get for our cause and delighted to ensure that the message is now being seen throughout the Midlands,' Mr Wright said.
ARAC secretary Ron Ravenhall, also a Rugby councillor, is overwhelmed by the public response.
'We have a petition signed by 70,000 people that will be delivered to Downing Street. We helped organise a march supported by 15,000 people and we have had 53,000 hits on our website. If the Government doesn't get the message now, it never will.
'Alistair Darling must wake up to the fact that this is much more than a campaign. It is a revolution.'
ARAC is one of several ebased protest movements, using the internet. Church Lawford & King's Newnham Online has recorded thousands of hits on its website. Visitors are left in no doubt about environmental impact by a stark factfile that claims the new airport would be one-and-a-half times the size of Heathrow, eight times larger than Birmingham airport, have 500,000 flights a year and handle 63 million passengers.
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Under threat: Farmland near Church Lawford which could be lost to an airport
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| Publication: | The Birmingham Post (England) |
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| Date: | Jan 1, 2003 |
| Words: | 1046 |
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