The Camp for Climate Action has come to an end.\u00a0 I expect it exceeded all the organisers\u2019 expectations.\u00a0 It drew attention to climate change \u2013 and, in particular, to aviation\u2019s contribution.\u00a0 But it succeeded in doing much more that.<\/p>\n
Some commentators are suggesting that it might even have signalled the beginning of a new social movement in this country concerned about climate change, consumerism and unsustainable living.\u00a0 That remains to be seen.\u00a0 But what the camp did do was capture the imagination of the press and the public.<\/p>\n
For me, the most interesting development was the way sections of the press, normally critical of climate change protests, began to write stories which were broadly sympathetic.\u00a0 Except for one or two \u2018rogue elements\u2019 within the media, there seemed to an understanding that the protestors were making valid points.<\/p>\n
There was a sense that this was David against Goliath and that David, however unconventional he may have looked at times, was bravely making the correct arguments about the future of the planet.<\/p>\n
This, of course, was the camp which Goliath, in the form of BAA, tried to stop.\u00a0 They asked for an injunction, under the Protection from Harassment Act, to try and stop five million members of environmental organisations from going to the Heathrow area to protest.\u00a0 The High Court gave them a much scaled-down judgment against just one organisation and three named individuals (including myself) based on the trespass laws.\u00a0 The judge notably refused to ban the climate camp.<\/p>\n
The activities of the police, though, during the camp did little to reassure.\u00a0 At first, they threatened to use the terrorist regulations against the protestors.\u00a0 It seems they did back away from this.\u00a0 We can only speculate that this might have happened when they – along with the government – began to realise that to use terrorism laws against the protestors would have made them a laughing stock in the eyes of the public.<\/p>\n
So the camp went ahead and was a success.\u00a0 But the worrying feeling remains that it just managed to escape the battery of restrictive laws which the government now has at its disposal to deal with challenges to its policies.<\/p>\n
John Stewart<\/b> is chair of HACAN ClearSkies <\/a>and a spokesman for Airportwatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Camp for Climate Action has come to an end.\u00a0 I expect it exceeded all the organisers\u2019 expectations.\u00a0 It drew attention to climate change \u2013 and, in particular, to aviation\u2019s contribution.\u00a0 But it succeeded in doing much more that. Some commentators are suggesting that it might even have signalled the beginning of a new social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96464,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/96464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}