Manchester & Heathrow Climate Rush picnics

North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter Air­port

While 500 pro­test­ers occu­pied the domes­tic depar­ture lounge at Heathrow air­port at 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan, oth­ers tried a simul­ta­ne­ous occu­pa­tion at Man­ches­ter air­port.…

At the North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter air­port between 50 and 100 peo­ple attempt­ed to occu­py the domes­tic depar­tures lounge but found large num­bers of police screen­ing entry at the doors. The police cor­doned off pro­test­ers in an area away from pas­sen­gers.

The group spelled out ‘fly­ing kills’ in coats, scarves and an umbrel­la on the floor. A man with a cel­lo and a woman with a vio­lin played music by the com­pos­er Han­del while oth­ers ate food from a pic­nic ham­per. How­ev­er, frus­trat­ed at being moved out of pas­sen­gers sight one of the pro­test­ers attempt­ed to breech police lines and was arrest­ed.

Supt Dave Hull said: “Despite repeat­ed attempts to con­tact the organ­is­ers, they failed to engage with us. There­fore, offi­cers did not know how many pro­tes­tors would attend so we had to pre­pare for a range of con­tin­gen­cies. One man was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of a pub­lic order offence.”

For VIDEO footage see
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1586371503/bctid6995110001

Around 50 cli­mate change activists gath­ered in Ter­mi­nal 3 of Man­ches­ter Air­port last night to protest against air­port expan­sion and domes­tic flights. The demo mir­rored the Cli­mate Rush ‘Din­ner at Depar­tures’ protest at Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 1 at the same time. ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/2009/01/418105.html)

There are around 32 flights a day between Man­ches­ter and the Lon­don hubs, despite the high speed rail con­nec­tion. ( http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1026945_plea_to_scrap_london_air_link)

The pro­test­ers dressed in Edwar­dian peri­od arrived to find Ter­mi­nal 3 locked down with around 70 police offi­cers, includ­ing For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. They were read parts of the Riot Act before enter­ing a ‘des­ig­nat­ed protest area’.

For­mer Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil­lor, Vanes­sa Hall, who attend­ed the North­ern Cli­mate Rush said:

“ With the speed of inter­ci­ty trains there is no longer any just or sen­si­ble rea­son to take domes­tic flights. All expan­sion plans, includ­ing those at Man­ches­ter and Heathrow should be shelved. Pas­sen­ger num­bers at Man­ches­ter Air­port have been falling for at least the last 6 months.”

She added, “In a time of reces­sion and cli­mate cri­sis, gov­ern­ment mon­ey should be spent on improve­ments to rail, trams, and bus­es, not on sub­si­dies and infra­struc­ture for the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Avi­a­tion accounts for 13% of UK glob­al warm­ing emis­sions and is the fastest-grow­ing source of green­house gas­es. Air­lines pay no tax on avi­a­tion fuel, cost­ing the pub­lic purse an esti­mat­ed £10 bil­lion.

Man­ches­ter Air­port claims it intends to go car­bon neu­tral by 2015 — but this will not include the emis­sions from the aero­planes.

www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk

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Heathrow Ter­mi­nal One Cli­mate Rush Pic­nic a suc­cess!

I arrived at Heathrow ter­mi­nal one with alot of trep­i­da­tion and cau­tion. Not know­ing what to expect, I dressed in a suit and tie to avoid attract­ing inter­est. It did not work.

I entered the ter­mi­nal and when up to domes­tic depar­tures to see what was hap­pen­ing. I found a place to sit and enjoy a cof­fee whilst wait­ing. Being near the place where alot of BAA secu­ri­ty guards were gath­er­ing, I over­heard them try­ing to guess who was a pro­test­er and who was a passenger…it was very fun­ny know­ing I sat yards away and they had did not realise.…

The air­port was in a state of some con­sid­er­able alert. It seems that Cli­mate Rush and a dev­il­ish­ly crim­i­nal plan to have a mil­i­tant pic­nic (by most­ly women) in depar­tures had BAA on the run.

The cops were anoth­er mat­ter. FIT crews were on the upper gang­ways and over 100 police occu­pied the depar­tures lounge when i arrived about an hour before. Even more arrived as I sipped my cof­fee and read the Guardian.

After twen­ty min­utes, two cops saun­tered over to me and ask whether they could search me. I asked why. they said there is a protest planned and they were look­ing for cli­mate chaos extrem­ists. I said I was wait­ing for a friend. After find­ing noth­ing and believ­ing my sto­ry, they let me go. I decid­ed to move to Cafe Rouge where every­body was gathering…safety in num­bers I thought. soon as I got up there, there was anoth­er 30 cops watch­ing absolute­ly every­one…

As the min­utes count­ed down, I moved with under­cur­rents down into the depar­ture check in area and was joined by about 50 or 60 peo­ple who start­ed to lay out a ban­ner and a well stocked organ­ic and home cooked pic­nic. Ten min­utes lat­er, the bulk of pro­test­ers arrived and the depar­tures check in filled up fast. Real pas­sen­gers moved aside and the police moved in to encir­cle the pic­nic. By this stage close to 500 cli­mate rush pro­test­ers were spread­ing them­selves out in a ever widen­ing cir­cle. The strings Quar­tet began play­ing and a few peo­ple start­ed play­ing with a big ball which looked like the plan­et.

The BAA cor­po­rate media descend­ed and so did lots of TV cam­er­a’s hop­ing for an inter­view. at one such so many inter­views were being giv­en, it became dif­fi­cult to move around. Speak­ing with some of the orga­niz­ers, they claimed an enor­mous suc­cess in sus­pend­ing the oper­a­tion of ter­mi­nal 1. It cer­tain­ly looked like a suc­cess to me.

A while lat­er and after most of the food had been eat­en (flushed down with a lit­tle wine), every­one rose to their feet and start­ed chant­i­ng. After Stanstead, the gov­ern­ment, media and police were say­ing that every­one was an extrem­ist and pos­si­bly eco-ter­ror­ists. So the pro­test­ers, most­ly women (some in the 50 and 60’s) start­ed chant­i­ng ” do we look like ter­ror­ists?” and ‘down with BAA’

After one hour, the cops were clos­ing the cir­cle fear­ing a block­ade or a long-term occu­pa­tion. I feared we were all going to be hemmed in and arrest­ed so I decid­ed to retreat with my video cam­era intact and get back home.

Wor­ried about what I had walked away from, I rang a friend who said that every­thing was alright. the demo had fin­ished 15 min­utes after I left and there had been no arrests. In fact the cops relaxed and got quite bored as cli­mate-rush activists offered them food!

http://www.climaterush.co.uk/