Grow Heathrow! Resisting the eviction

27th August 2010

Grow Heathrow! Almost half a year after launch­ing, a suc­cess­ful grass­roots cam­paign resist­ing the expan­sion of Heathrow air­port while demon­strat­ing sus­tain­able liv­ing on derelict land, is fac­ing an evic­tion threat. Read on to hear about the excit­ing cam­paign and how you can help keep the projects going…

On the first day of March this year a group of 30 peo­ple gath­ered out­side a neglect­ed plot of land on the site of the pro­posed 3rd run­way in the Heathrow vil­lage of Sip­son.

For years res­i­dents and activists had cam­paigned togeth­er to stop the expan­sion of Heathrow air­port, and now they had come togeth­er to build grass­roots solu­tions to the threat of cli­mate change and peak oil, led by the peo­ple direct­ly impact­ed on the ground.

A hole in the fence allowed the first of the group onto the land and as they put up a squatter’s rights notice on the gates, the rest fol­lowed into the site of Sipson’s new com­mu­ni­ty gar­den; ‘Grow Heathrow’ was born.

Six months lat­er and the gar­den is unrec­og­niz­able from the site that caused a spec­trum of social prob­lems for the com­mu­ni­ty before it was reclaimed. In the ear­ly days of spring, teams of peo­ple cleared, car­ried and worked togeth­er to remove 30 tonnes of rub­bish, while two six­ty ft green­hous­es were reglazed and per­ma­cul­tur­ists sowed seeds to return the land to a thriv­ing mar­ket gar­den.

A host of events have been held in the gar­den includ­ing a ban­quet attend­ed by 80 peo­ple using fresh veg­eta­bles grown on the land. And in May a fly­ing crit­i­cal mass pick­et was launched from the raised beds, where 20 cyclists stormed ter­mi­nal 5 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers on strike from BA. Shared meals with res­i­dents and activists are com­mon-place using cour­gettes, spinach, toma­toes, but­ter­nut squash, herbs, all pulled from Sip­son soil.

Now in August and as dis­cus­sions for win­ter struc­tures begin, a new notice has been hung next to the sec­tion 46 on the front gates; a court sum­mons has been served to the project.

At first rumours flew round the vil­lage and a troop of con­cerned locals fled to gar­den hear­ing that the land­lord and heav­ies had come to claim the land. They found instead Tran­si­tion Heathrow gar­den­ers pour­ing over court papers, plot­ting and plan­ning to pro­tect the space they had put so much love and time into.

Nego­ti­a­tions have start­ed to make the gar­den a long-term com­mu­ni­ty-owned space, as state­ments of sup­port come fly­ing in to the Sip­son green­hous­es.

Res­i­dent Lin­da McCutcheon said: “It’s been bril­liant to see the site on Viner­ies Close come back to life after all the social issues from before. I’ve had a lot of fun with the group at the gar­den- turn­ing it into a safe, pos­i­tive and thriv­ing place for Sip­son- you should see the yel­low cour­gettes! Tran­si­tion Heathrow has a lot of sup­port in this area and I’ll be with them over the next cou­ple of weeks to ensure this excit­ing project has a future”.

Com­mu­ni­ty gar­den­er Joe Rake said; “Grow Heathrow is part of a bud­ding land move­ment in the UK con­nect­ing strug­gles to take back con­trol of our food pro­duc­tion. In build­ing resilient com­mu­ni­ties to envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic crises we want to defend real alter­na­tives to the sys­tems of false democ­ra­cy and cor­po­rate greed.”

‘Grow Heathrow’ is call­ing for sup­port. To help you can; come to Uxbridge Coun­ty court at 10.40am on the 2nd of Sep­tem­ber, keep up to date for the out­come of the court case, sign the peti­tion on the web­site and send state­ments of sup­port to info@transitionheathrow.com.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it www.transitionheathrow.com