Camp for Climate Action, Heathrow, 2007 (2/3) By Martin Deane Photographs By Amy Scaife

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Photograph Gallery   Gallery 1,   Gallery 2,   Gallery 3.

The camp was situated next to a Sikh temple. They joined the camp from time to time and laid out a table of drinks and goodies on the day of the mass action. BAA intends to build a third runway considerably to the north of Heathrow on largely residential and agricultural land. The campsite was part of this area, as are about 10,000 houses across the town of Sipson.

This will hugely expand Heathrow in area let alone plane traffic. It will destroy about 1200 of these homes. The people of Sipson were very supportive of the camp and are campaigning against the third runway in their own right. ( www.notrag.org/frontpage.php )

The mass action was agreed to be a siege of the BAA headquarters near Heathrow and just south of the camp. The kids demonstration left earlier to walk the local streets. We were all kitted out with one page summaries of the Tyndall report attached to our hands and with some carrying large pictures of people likely to suffer from climate change.

At the camp gate there was a media scrum and lots of pictures were taken of us holding up the pages one on each hand (we had put loops on the back the day before). A banner above us read "WE ARE ARMED… ONLY WITH PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE!" ("Sounds dangerous to me, Sarge!")

Finally, the demo took off around the camp. One corner had been identified as worth trying to get beyond possible police blockades. We would have been completely hemmed in ("kettled") if we had used the main road. The demo strode up peaceably to the police lines but then kept going, despite the shouting and one or two baton-happy police. (There were 5 injuries we heard about).

The Hull "Whippets", as we had dubbed our group the day before, had grown to about 16 members and we found ourselves in the bean field next to the campsite, keeping our column going.

Two police horses were trying to head us off, as well as another column from Runcorn, and shepherd us to the footpath. We persevered in going round them, splitting up and going back on ourselves. The rallying cry of "Whippets!" went up numerous times as we tried to regroup. Eventually the horses were called off and we made for the edge of the field, got over a fence and into a residential area.

As we headed through, people saw police heading for us so it was up and over another fence again and back into the field. We kept under the treeline so the helicopter could see us less easily but we realized we had some police on our tail. They weren't trying to stop us or arrest people so we kept going. We made it through the side of the field and onto a footpath and followed it to the next residential area. Police were nearby so we had to double back a few times. Following the road most people ended up having too many police to deal with. I went down a side street and met up with a few others. No police were interested in us so we just made our way towards the main road.

Continued..... Next Page (3/3)

Photograph Gallery   Gallery 1,   Gallery 2,   Gallery 3.

Photographs courtesy and Copyright ©  Amy Scaife 2007

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