STANSTED PROTESTER IS IN FOR THE LONG HAUL

[Copyright Paul M.S. Hopkins 2008. A version of this article appeared in the Harlow Star. The article may not be reprinted or distributed other than for individual and personal use, either electronically or in hard copy, without permission from the author]

Few airports have been the subject of as many environmental protests over so many years as Stansted, located in beautiful country north-east of London. Long-term campaigner Paul M.S. Hopkins tells his story

“Past estimates of the demand for additional airport capacity have proved false. Current estimates are, I believe, likely to prove equally wrong. The slowdown in the growth of passenger traffic and the bankruptcy of two airlines recently has strengthened my conviction that…”

These words go to the heart of the current controversy in Britain about airport expansion – freedom to fly versus saving the planet, with all the issues arising under those headings.

I might have used them as an objector at the 2007 public inquiry into expansion at Stansted, London’s third airport. As it happens, I used them in a proof of evidence in 1982 – and about the same airport!

Sadly, it demonstrates how the world turns – and gets back to the same place. We environmental protesters have to be in it for the long haul (no pun intended).

A quarter of a century ago, I was objecting to the proposal to turn a former USAF base with a long and still usable concrete runway into a major airport for London. This plan had been defeated once and in the 1980s was revived, this time successfully (if you‘re the airport operator).

Stansted today caters for around 24 million passengers per annum – the third greatest volume in the UK after Heathrow (67 mppa) and Gatwick (34 mppa).* The government has just approved more use of the runway to 35 mppa. Next year, a public inquiry will be held into the provision of a second runway, which could make Stansted as big as Heathrow is now. 

My 1982 proof of evidence asserted: “If additional capacity has, in the longer term, to be provided, it should be at Heathrow rather than at Stansted. The Heathrow area is environmentally ruined by the existing airport and additional traffic cannot have the same impact there that would result from development at Stansted in the peaceful countryside – and close to the peaceful towns – in West Essex.”

This sounds a bit NIMBY-ish, perhaps. And I was there to make a case for saving the nearby town of Harlow from damage. But in 2008 it remains a live issue.

Stansted and its surrounding villages have absorbed so much, but they cannot accommodate ever more aircraft indefinitely.

The question is whether a new runway is needed either at Stansted or at Heathrow (or can be allowed in spite of environmental objections). The Labour government’s 2003 white paper on air transport, the foundation of current policy, declares that both should be built. The Conservatives have announced that if they come to power they will build neither.

So it seems that my objecting career may at last end in success. The Tories aren’t my natural hinterland, but I’m with them on this one. “To build one more runway may be regarded as a misfortune. To build two looks like carelessness,” as Oscar Wilde nearly said.

* Figures are from Air Madness by Cedric Pulford (2008)

Paul M.S. Hopkins has written about Restoration theatre in The Adventures of Sir Samuel Tuke, published by Ituri