Manchester Plane Stupid Breach Airside Security in Airport Protest

Update: Ten peo­ple from the Tri­pod part of the action were arrest­ed on Mon­day morn­ing around 11am — hav­ing been there since 6.30am.

They were held for rough­ly 10 hours in cus­tody. They have been charged with obstruc­tion of the high­way and bailed to appear at Traf­ford Mag­is­trates court at 9.45am on Thurs­day 3rd June.

The six peo­ple who went air­side were arrest­ed for crim­i­nal dam­age, con­spir­a­cy to com­mit crim­i­nal dam­age and enter­ing a restrict­ed air­field. They were held for around 13 hours in cus­tody and had their hous­es searched. They have not yet been charged, but bailed to return to Altrin­cham police sta­tion on 20th August.
–
24.05.2010
Activists from the group Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid have breached air­side secu­ri­ty at Man­ches­ter Air­port today in a protest against the expan­sion of the air­port. The protest involves two groups. The first group of 6 peo­ple cut through the perime­ter fence and cre­at­ed a human cir­cle around a sta­tion­ary plane using arm tube lock-ons.

A sec­ond group have used tripods to block­ade the road entrance to the World Freight Ter­mi­nal pre­vent­ing air­freight­ed goods from being tak­en in or out. They have unfurled a ban­ner read­ing: “More air freight = more cli­mate change. Stop all air­port expan­sion now.”

The group are protest­ing against the recent deci­sion to expand the World Freight Ter­mi­nal which will involve the demo­li­tion of his­toric homes on Hasty Lane.

Lisa Jame­son from Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid said, “This isn’t just about air­port expan­sion or ris­ing car­bon emis­sions. This is about chal­leng­ing an eco­nom­ic sys­tem based on the absur­di­ty of infi­nite growth on a plan­et of finite resources, a sys­tem which pri­ori­tis­es bail-outs for the banks and then makes us pay for it in pub­lic ser­vice cuts. Cap­i­tal­ism is the cause of the prob­lem, cli­mate change is just a symp­tom.”

Fol­low­ing the recent deci­sion to stop expan­sion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead air­ports, the avi­a­tion indus­try is like­ly to look to region­al air­ports such as Man­ches­ter to increase prof­its.

“The third run­way at Heathrow was stopped because ordi­nary peo­ple stood up to the gov­ern­ment at the time and the avi­a­tion indus­try using a broad range of tac­tics. Direct action has his­tor­i­cal­ly played an impor­tant role in cre­at­ing social change and will con­tin­ue to do so.”

The avi­a­tion indus­try con­sis­tent­ly over­state their impor­tance in cre­at­ing jobs and their con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my.

The lack of tax on avi­a­tion fuel is cost­ing the UK econ­o­my £9 bil­lion per year. There is also a tourism deficit in the North West region of £2.2 billion.[1] That is the dif­fer­ence between what Britons fly­ing abroad spend in for­eign coun­tries and what for­eign vis­i­tors spend in the North West.

Each round of air­port expan­sion is jus­ti­fied on the promise of more and more jobs. In the 1990s Man­ches­ter Air­port promised to cre­ate 50,000 jobs with the sec­ond run­way – but the actu­al num­ber was far low­er. We need to begin a just tran­si­tion to a low car­bon econ­o­my by cre­at­ing jobs in sus­tain­able indus­tries such as rail and renew­ables”

Annie McLaugh­lin said, “Recent­ly, we’ve seen attempts by British Air­ways to use the courts to over­turn work­ers’ right to strike. We sup­port the rights of all work­ers to fight for good con­di­tions. It is essen­tial that the changes need­ed to pre­vent cli­mate change are not used as an excuse to restrict work­ers rights.”

The air­port, which is owned by local coun­cils, has kept local res­i­dents in the dark about the pro­posed expan­sion plans, fail­ing to ade­quate­ly inform them that their homes face demo­li­tion.

McLaugh­lin con­tin­ued, “The pro­posed expan­sion of the freight ter­mi­nal makes no sense, eco­nom­i­cal­ly or envi­ron­men­tal­ly. The exist­ing capac­i­ty is not ful­ly uti­lized and an expan­sion would sim­ply be a step­ping stone to expan­sion of the air­port as a whole, which would be an envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter.”

“ With the plan­et on the verge of cli­mate break­down it is essen­tial that the real cost of avi­a­tion expan­sion is tak­en seri­ous­ly – cur­rent­ly emis­sions from avi­a­tion are not includ­ed in Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil’s Cli­mate Change Action Plan.”

The pro­test­ers say they are locked on to halt emis­sions and are pre­pared to stay for as long as it takes to get their mes­sage across.

Notes to Edi­tors

[1] Bren­dan Sewill, ‘Air­port Jobs: False Hopes, Cru­el Hoax’
http://www.aef.org.uk/uploads/Airport_jobs___false_hopes_cruel_hoax.pdf

Plane Stu­pid / Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action
info@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com