BAA denies seeking blanket ban on airport protest

By John Vidal

BAA backtracked yesterday from trying to get one of the widest-ranging injunctions ever sought in Britain and denied it was trying to stop 5 million members of the National Trust and other groups going to Heathrow to demonstrate against climate change.

But BAA, which owns the airport, said it still wanted to ban the Camp for Climate Action, planned for August 14 to 21, because it was intended to disrupt the airport with direct action.

BAA said in the high court that it was seeking a broad injunction to prevent four individuals, Joss Garman, Leo Murray, John Stewart and Geraldine Nicholson, representing four small aviation watchdog groups, from going near the airport.

It argued that it needed to include their organisations and supporters in case they were part of the camp. These included the RSPB, the National Trust, Greenpeace and the Woodland Trust.

“I am seeking to bring within the definition of protesters persons acting unlawfully in the name of Camp for Climate Action,” said BAA’s lawyer, Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden. “We are only trying to injunct people who are acting unlawfully … we only wish to injunct those who wish to obstruct us or prevent us using the airport. We say there are four groups who are intending to have a climate camp - the raison d’être is to disrupt our lawful activities. What BAA does not want is people coming on to the airport to act unlawfully and, on the evidence, these four groups intend to [do] just that.”

Transport for London and London Underground said they had not been consulted over the injunction. Their counsel, Martin Chamberlain QC, told the court that the injunction was “an attempt to bind 5 million people”.

“What Mr Lawson-Cruttenden has said … is that it has been clear all along that the only people sought to be injuncted are the four named defendants,” he said. “It is quite the reverse. It has been clear all along, until the moment we arrived at court today, that in fact the people sought to be injuncted included all the members of the defendant organisations … This is unjustifiable and disproportionate.”

But the judge, Mrs Justice Swift, who said she was a member of three of the groups, said she was confused about what BAA wanted and instructed the company to return today with a skeleton legal argument to justify its case.

MPs and others said yesterday that the company was in danger of making itself more unpopular than it already was.

“This injunction is a challenge to a basic British value,” said Susan Kramer, MP for Richmond, who represents people living near Heathrow. “People who have been quietly opposed to the airport expansion are now getting fed up. This attempt at an injunction against a very reasonable group smacks of arrogance.”

Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, had earlier in the week accused BAA of being “out of their skull” and merely paving the way for hardcore protesters to invade the climate action camp.

The injunction seeks to keep protesters away from platforms 6 and 7 of Paddington station, all trains travelling to Heathrow, the Piccadilly line of London Underground, the M4 motorway and all service stations between junctions 3 and 6. Junctions 13 to 15 were also included.

Protesters would not be allowed to carry wooden poles, stepladders, spades, saws, nails, hammers, ropes, glue or whistles.

The Camp for Climate Action said the protest would go ahead whether or not BAA won its injunction.

“We accuse BAA of abusing people’s rights to freedom of expression and of pushing for the expansion of airports in the knowledge that it will lead directly to climate change and indirectly to millions of deaths,” it said.

The hearing continues.

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