Lynne Davies is not your average revolutionary. Aged 60, bespectacled, and dressed in a lively cerise fleece, she oozes suburban respectability. Indeed, in the sitting room of her semidetached house in Sipson - a village of 700 that will be demolished if the third runway is built at Heathrow airport - Toby jugs compete with carriage clocks and pictures of her grandson for space on the mantelpiece.

Tomorrow, Davies, along with 25 other, mostly retired, residents, will launch a scheme with Plane Stupid, the antiaviation pressure group, called “Adopt a Resident”. It involves an eco-activist being assigned to each home to facilitate “creative” obstruction to Heathrow expansion. That defence will be made easier by having activists like Paddy Gillett, 24, a postgraduate geography student at Leeds University, on their side. He will be one of the first to move into Sipson. Gillett has been “inspired” by other direct action protests, such as the Claremont Road occupation against the M11 link road in east London in 1994. “There’s really no limit to what we can do in Sipson,” he said. “We’ve got so long to prepare. If the runway is given the final go-ahead, building won’t start until 2012 at the earliest [because of a potential legal challenge and the protracted planning process]. We can make it very difficult for the authorities.”

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have both promised immediately to halt the construction of the third runway should they win the next general election. However, should Labour hang on, and the runway go ahead, there are signs that the local Tory-led (and antirunway) council will not go out of its way to stop residents fortifying their homes.

Read the full article in The Sunday Times.


The residents of Sipson will do whatever they need to do to win this battle, and it's looking more and more likely that the third runway will not be built.

However, the pressure must be kept on. We applaud their efforts and support them all the way.