The Heathrow expansion controversy
ALONGSIDE DEEPENING economic gloom, the government’s
decision to give the go ahead to a third runway at Heathrow has
dominated headlines in London. The proposed new runway will raise the
number of flights from 480,000 a year to 700,000, according to
government figures. The village of Sipson, home to several thousand
people, will be completely demolished.
The Labour government and big-business interests
backing the plan – the airline industry, British Airports Authority
(BAA), the privatised controllers of Heathrow and most British airports,
whose largest shareholder is the Spanish company, Ferrovial – are
adamant that the project is vital to the continued competitiveness of
Heathrow and the long-term prosperity of the South East. Nevertheless, a
broad constellation of forces – direct action environmentalists, trade
unions, local residents, the Conservative Party and several rebel Labour
MPs – oppose the project.
Given the widespread evidence of the damage an
increase in aviation traffic will cause to Britain’s anti-pollution
targets and the political storm that is brewing for Labour in key west
London constituencies, New Labour’s insistence on ploughing ahead may
seem puzzling. However, the answer is a refusal to acknowledge
inconvenient facts and a craven capitulation to big-business interests.
The essence of the argument in favour of expansion
hinges on the idea that maintaining Heathrow as the world’s busiest
airport is vital for the long-term health of London’s economy and, due
to the lopsided nature of the national economy, the UK as a whole.
Michael Bishop, chairman of BMI airlines, argues
that Heathrow must expand to compete with other European airports. At
present, Heathrow operates at 99% capacity, meaning that there is very
little flexibility for the unexpected, causing severe delays when bad
weather sets in. This is an undeniable problem, as anyone who has spent
time sleeping on the floor of Heathrow during foggy conditions will
testify. In contrast, European competitors operate at 75% capacity.
Charles de Gaulle in Paris hosts four runways, Frankfurt will open a
fourth in 2011. Schipoll in the Netherlands has five. This spare
capacity results in fewer delays and they are attracting greater
business than Heathrow.
This presents a strategic problem for the
government. As the UK economy is strongly service based, heavily reliant
on the global economy, making Heathrow a hub for international air
travel is essential to making ‘UK plc’ an attractive place for
international investment. The third runway will make Heathrow more
competitive by producing economies of scale and reducing overall
capacity and, thereby, delays. The airline industry and BAA have made
this the key point in persuading the government.
Some unions have also argued that Heathrow expansion
will generate much needed jobs and income in this economic recession.
New Labour has also promised that stringent anti-pollution measures will
be enforced to lessen the environmental impact.
Do the pro-runway arguments stack up? The answer is
a resounding no. Firstly, New Labour refuses to acknowledge that the
economic downturn has made its projected figure of 700,000 flights by
2030 look wildly inflated. None other than Stelios Hadjioannou, head of
EasyJet, remarked: "We are not Aldi or Lidl. It is very difficult to
stop eating in a recession but you can stop flying".
Evidence that increasing the number of flights into
Heathrow will benefit the UK economy is also thin on the ground. Most of
the increase will be in connecting flights to other destinations, so the
extra money actually spent in Britain will be minimal. Bob Ayling,
former head of British Airways, said they amount to the price of a cup
of coffee in the departure lounge. Indeed, in a poll by Continental
research only 4% of ‘business leaders’ in London thought Heathrow
expansion would benefit their businesses.
Air travel itself is one of the most heavily
subsidised forms of transport in Britain. For example, domestic aviation
does not pay fuel duty or VAT. And the all too frequent delays are as
much a result of privatising BAA (and BA), where customer service has
been cut to the bone to maximise profits, as they are of a lack of
capacity.
On the environmental front, the evidence is even
more damning. Air travel, a relatively small polluter compared to other
forms of transport, particularly the car, is much more heavily polluting
in itself. A 200-mile journey by plane produces 90kg of carbon per
passenger compared to 14.8kg for the equivalent journey by rail.
Aviation accounts for 13% of overall UK climate change impact. By 2050,
if expansion continues, it will account for half of Britain’s carbon
budget. Added to this is the impact of ‘radiative forcing’, where
aviation emissions have between two and four times the impact in the
upper atmosphere as emissions produced on the ground.
The European Commission has warned that the UK will
exceed recommended emissions of nitrogen dioxide in the area if Heathrow
expansion goes through. The Department for Transport’s own figures show
that the risks of air pollution are increased, yet transport minister,
Geoff Hoon, dismissed his own civil servants’ findings as "over
cautious". With regard to the government’s promise to combat air and
noise pollution, the same report says that, "the mitigation measures
identified to achieve air quality targets are too costly or impractical
to implement or politically unacceptable".
The prospect of increased pollution, not to mention
the destruction of Sipson, has ignited a storm of protest. There is big
opposition across west London which could cause problems for Labour in
the next general election. Labour currently holds 44 seats in London and
would need to retain a good portion of these to win. Some of these are
in very tight constituencies. Labour holds a majority of 484 in
Islington South and a tiny 184 in Battersea. Both are directly under the
new flight path and both MPs, Emily Thornberry and Martin Linton, are
among the 18 Labour MPs opposed to the third runway. Of the 13 London
Labour MPs who are in favour, twelve are in the cabinet.
The stakes have been raised as the Conservatives
have come out in opposition. Tory MP for Putney, Justine Greening,
pledged that "A future Conservative government will cancel Heathrow
expansion plans". A poll by Greenpeace found that a quarter of voters in
west London were less likely to vote for Labour because of the Heathrow
controversy. Based on a 5% swing away from Labour, it could lose
Battersea, Ealing Central, Acton, Hammersmith, Brentford and Isleworth.
The government is acutely vulnerable to political pressure on this
issue, and the building of the third runway is far from a foregone
conclusion.
Opposition to the plans includes a variety of
agendas. Groups like Plane Stupid see the campaign as part of their
broader assault on aviation travel in general. The trade unions are
split. The PCS, Unison, TSSA and RMT have campaigned against the
proposals and taken out ads in newspapers alongside Greenpeace. Unite
and GMB, representing the majority of workers at Heathrow, have taken
out advertisements with the CBI arguing in favour.
It would be wrong to single out air travel as the
greatest obstacle to cutting carbon emissions, as groups like Plane
Stupid sometimes appear to do. Such a task requires a holistic plan that
takes into account all modes of transport, energy production, recycling,
patterns of consumption and so on. However, the controversy around
airport expansion underlines one of the organic weaknesses of
capitalism: the tendency of powerful vested interests to prevent proper
planning so as to maximise profits.
Since BAA was privatised, it has spent enormous
amounts of time and money lobbying the government to allow it to expand
and boost shareholders’ profits. It cannot even compromise by sharing
out the load among other airports, as some, like London City, are in
direct competition with BAA. And the threat to further break up BAA by
selling Stansted airport means there is no incentive for it to integrate
the work of the airports it owns.
Many short-haul flights could be reduced in northern
Europe by developing high-speed rail networks. The Campaign for Better
Transport found that one third of flights from Britain are short haul,
and 20% of the destinations were served by rail, with potential for
another 20%. However, 20 years of neo-liberalism on the railways mean
that prices are prohibitively high and the private sector has no
incentive to foot the enormous capital investment needed to provide such
a service.
Capitalism cannot provide an integrated, properly
planned transport system vital to any strategy to reduce carbon
emissions. Under a socialist plan of production air, sea, rail and road
travel could be integrated to ensure maximum investment went to the
least polluting forms of travel, with urgent long-haul flights kept to a
minimum. Shorter working hours and the decentralisation of decision
making could help reduce the need for the constant movement of workers.
Longer holidays could allow people to take more leisurely and less
polluting forms of travel. Investment in local economies and universal
access to cheap housing would eliminate dormitory towns and the
nightmare of long-distance commuting. These socialist policies are the
key to a better and cleaner planet.
Neil Cafferky
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