Steven Griggs

A transformative political campaign? The new rhetoric of protest against airport expansion in the UK

This article explores the logic of political protest by focussing on how, and in what form, groups reproduce themselves. It analyses how HACAN ClearSkies, a local airport protest group, has challenged the dominant ideology governing British aviation policy by articulating a new rhetoric of environmental protest. What we deem a transformative campaign extends the particularistic demand of stopping expansion at Heathrow to a more universal struggle against airport expansion per se. Using political discourse theory, we argue that the campaign was prompted by HACANs failure to stop the building of Heathrows Fifth Terminal, the emergence of a new political leadership, and the construction of an innovative political ideology. In so doing, we focus on four discursive logics: the role and practice of naming; the drawing of political frontiers; the creation of equivalences; and the campaigns ideological means of representation. The article concludes by evaluating the challenges facing the campaign.

Real Social Science: Phronesis and critical policy analysis: Heathrow's ‘third runway’ and the politics of sustainable aviation in the United Kingdom

© Cambridge University Press 2012. In recent years, air travel has become increasingly associated in the public domain with a set of negative externalities and frustrations. Where once airports were the symbolic gateways to freedom, modernity and greater economic growth, today they are synonymous with global warming, noise and air pollution, congestion, security checks and delays. Seen against this background, the Labour government’s decision in January 2009 to give the go-ahead for a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow Airport was another bold step designed to deal with the issue. But it provoked widespread condemnation, exposed splits in the Cabinet, and triggered another high-profile protest campaign against expansion by local residents, environmental and conservation lobbies, direct action environmentalists, as well as celebrities and even members of the government’s own parliamentary majority. Shortly after its election in May 1997, New Labour had resolved to deal decisively with the historical legacy of incremental planning and ongoing protest in the field of aviation. Accepting the need for firm leadership in this domain, it thus prepared the ground for the development of new legislation that would set out a strategic plan for airports for the next twenty or thirty years. In 2003, a new aviation White Paper, The Future of Air Transport, came down firmly on the side of expanding airport capacity and bolstering the aviation industry (DfT 2003). But rather than setting the conditions for consensual deliberation and rational policy-making, the consultation process and the resultant national plan heightened the antagonisms dividing various stakeholders. In fact, subsequent attempts to implement its plans met with heightened contestation and resistance, especially as this conjuncture coincided with the growing political salience of the dangers of climate change. These dangers prompted the emergence of a broader and more intense climate-change coalition, which managed to construct global civil aviation as an exemplary case of its wider war against productivism. In short, for commentators on both sides of the aviation divide, New Labour singularly failed to achieve authoritative governance (Hajer 2009), either in support of the runway or in leading opposition to expansion. Just days after entering office in May 2010, the Conservative--Liberal-Democrat coalition abandoned New Labour’s plans to expand Heathrow Airport, signalling a new round of consultation and policy formulation.

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Box 1.1: Craniometric Points 8 Box 4.1: Total IntraVenous Anesthesia (TIVA). 34 Box 8.1: Can TMS help select patients for Invasive Stimulation? 85 Box 10.1: Complications of DBS 119 Box 10.2: Possible Mechanisms of Action 121 Box 10.3: M1 ICS for PD: Tang Guidelines (Canavero 2009) 123 Box 13.1: Overview of Docs 159 Box 13.2: Assessing Consciousness Preand Post-treatment 160 Box 14.1: The DLPFC and Beyond 182 Box 15.1. TINNITUS 187 Box 16.1: NeuroPaceTM System Components 204 Box 16.2: Technique of implantation (From Smith et al 2009) 205 Box 18.1: Neuroimaging Studies of Neuropathic Pain 221 Box 19.1: Electrical field and current density 233 Box 19.2: Procedure for making a 3D realistic head model (Kim et al 2011; Seo et al 2012) 238