Workers' Liberty

If new runways at Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh and Birmingham airports are built, they will generate more greenhouse gas emissions, which will further contribute to global warming. We should oppose the expansion of Heathrow and other UK airports as part of our working class socialist strategy for preventing dangerous climate change.

The advantages to working-class people of airport expansion (more cheap travel, new jobs) could be much better got by expanding and cheapening rail and coach travel.

Money spent on expanding Heathrow, Stansted and other airports could be spent creating more socially useful jobs. Some of those jobs should create more ecologically friendly modes of transport. According to the HACAN Clear Skies report, Clogging up Heathrow’s Runways 2006, almost a quarter of flights from Heathrow are to destinations less than 500km away, and already well-served by train. The government’s own estimates say that rail travel per passenger brings 10% of the pollution of air travel.

The drive to expand airports rests centrally on “business” arguments of no benefit to working-class people.

The aviation industry in the UK

In the 2003 White Paper, The Future of Air Transport, the government gave support to new runways at Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh and Birmingham airports, as well as for new terminals and runway extensions throughout the UK. The government estimated that overall passenger numbers would rise from 180 million (in 2002), to 500 million per year by 2030.

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) figures record the total number of passengers and “air transport movements” (ATMs) i.e. flights. When New Labour came to power in 1997, ATMs were 1,703,000. Last year, the figure was over 2,400,000 — an increase of over 40%. Passenger numbers grew by 64% over the same period, to nearly a quarter of a billion (240,000,000) last year. (UK airport statistics 2007, Tables 1.0, 3.1)

Heathrow

Over a quarter of all UK flights currently go through Heathrow. However existing operations and planning restrictions limit the airport to 480,000 air transport movements (ATMs). There are also restrictions which mean aircraft land on one runway while others take off from the other runway, and then at certain times of the day they switch round – mainly to limit the noise.

Late last year the government published figures assessing the impact of a third runway at Heathrow, together with the introduction of “mixed mode” use of existing runways.

Heathrow is currently functioning very close to its ATM capacity. The opening of Terminal 5 means it can handle more passengers. The government wants to allow BAA, which owns Heathrow, to build a third “short” runway, together with another terminal building by 2020. It predicts that ATM capacity will increase to 605,000 ATMs in 2020 when the new runway and terminal would open, and to 702,000 ATMs in 2030, remaining constant after that. (DfT, Impact Assessment for Adding capacity at Heathrow airport, 2007 p.136)

In other words, according to the government’s own figures, the opening of a new runway would generate an additional 222,000 ATMs every year from 2030, an increase of 46%.

The third runway would not be suitable for the largest four-engined, wide-bodied aircraft. Therefore the new runway would probably be used by smaller aircraft making shorter flights, taking some of this short haul capacity from the existing runways and freeing space for them to take more long haul flights. (DfT 2007 p.136)

The government also wants to allow BAA to introduce “mixed mode” operations on the existing runways from 2010 until the new runway opened in 2020. If capacity was allowed to rise to 540,000 ATMs and mixed mode was introduced, the government argues that this would reduce holding delays by three minutes. (DfT 2007 p.150)

The situation is similar at Stansted, where a new runway has just been approved. Last year it handled 208,462 ATMs and nearly 24 million passengers – around 96% of its present limit. This compares with just under seven million passengers in 1998. A second runway at Stansted would be able to take up to 46 million passengers – i.e. almost doubling existing capacity. (DfT 2003, §11.24, §11.27)

Aviation and UK carbon emissions

The main reasons for opposing airport expansion are environmental. There are longstanding concerns about noise and about air quality close to airports. Expanding airports have an effect on both urban and rural environments – in the case of Sipson near Heathrow, it means the complete destruction of the whole community.

However the most significant factor is the impact of aviation emissions on climate change. In 2005 the UK emitted 554.2 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in its domestic economy, or 595.1 MtCO2 if international aviation and shipping emissions are included. (DfT 2007 pp.177-178)

In response to a parliamentary question on 2 May 2007, aviation minister Gillian Merron said that aviation represented 6.3% of UK emissions. However she added that if the effects of “radiative forcing” i.e. burning greenhouses gases at a higher altitude, are added, the figure for flights departing the UK would be approximately 13% of total UK emissions.

The paradox in government policy is stark: it supports aviation expansion at the same time that it argues for the need to drastically reduce carbon emissions to combat global warming. The government’s own Climate Change Bill accepts that 60% reductions are needed by 2050 and between 26-32% reductions by 2020. More realistically, carbon reductions of 80% are necessary to prevent dangerous climate change.

More passengers and more flights have meant that aviation emissions have been growing rapidly in recent decades. According to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, international emissions from aviation went up by nearly 50% between 1990 and 2000. It estimates that including the effects of radiative forcing, aviation will account for between 50% and 100% of the UK total carbon budget by 2050. (Anderson and others, Growth scenarios for EU & UK aviation, 2006 p.6, p.13)

The climate impact of Heathrow expansion

The government’s own figures predict from the increase in ATMs between 2020 and 2080 that this will generate an additional 180.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – or over 3 million tonnes of CO2 every year. It estimates the “social cost” of these emissions is around £4.8 billion. (DfT 2007 p.138)

The calculations include assumptions about technical progress during that period.

The introduction of mixed mode would apparently slightly reduce carbon emissions, by reducing holding times, when aircraft burn fuel while waiting to land. However if ATM capacity is increased with mixed mode — as the government favours — it will more than cancel out the emissions saved.

The government didn’t publish greenhouse gas emissions estimates for Stansted in 2003. However the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign estimates that annual carbon dioxide emissions will rise from around 5 million tonnes a year at present to 7 million tonnes annually with full use of the existing runway and to 12 million tonnes a year with a second runway.

Why we should oppose airport

expansion today

The arguments of those who support airport expansion are saturated in nationalism, stoking up the fear of “foreign competition” and losing out to European rivals. Future Heathrow, the lobby group backed by BA, BAA as well as Unite, GMB and Balpa unions, argues that Britain will lose its position in world aviation to foreign competitors in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Madrid – a bit ironic given that BAA is owned by a Spanish firm.

This xenophobia provides a convenient cover for the real case – which is that airport expansion will benefit corporations in and around London. Future Heathrow says that 70% of new businesses locating in the UK do so within one hour of Heathrow. Its propaganda talks about “Heathrow’s global gateway status plays a key role in attracting globally mobile and high value-added businesses”. Heathrow expansion is very clearly linked to meeting the “needs” of business people to fly directly to the key business nodes across the globe or to locations within the UK.

The argument is consistent with a Marxist understanding of how capitalism works. In volume 2 of Capital, Marx highlighted the circulation of capital and the costs associated with it. Capitalists can drive up profits by minimising buying and selling times, cutting the time goods spend in storage and in transit before sale – and from reducing transport times for both goods and people – including high-powered executives. Although it is not stated so baldly, it is clear that airport expansion will help increase returns to capital.

If passenger numbers do double by 2030 as projected, it will not involve most working class people taking double the number of flights. The additional capacity is designed to meet the demands largely of business.

The government and just about anyone in favour of expansion frequently quote a report on the wider economic impacts of the third runway by Oxford Economic Forecasting (OEF). The report estimated that around £7 billion a year of additional GDP in today’s prices could be generated by 2030. However The economics of Heathrow expansion, a report by Delft published in February 2008 has questioned the validity of the assumptions behind the OEF report and the reliability of its projections.

Aviation and employment

The fall back position for Future Heathrow is that airport expansion will create jobs, especially locally. Between 4% and 13% of workers in the five surrounding local authorities work at Heathrow.

The OEF report found that the number of employees of airlines, airline operators, ground services and air traffic control centres was 94,000 in 2004. If air cargo handlers, airport hotels and retailing are added on, this made 186,000 workers directly employed.

Another 167,000 workers are counted as “indirectly” employed, including jobs in the energy sector dependent on fuel purchases, construction jobs for facilities, jobs producing meals and in shops at airports. (Delft 2008 p.14, p.43)

The OEF report also revealed that aviation employment has been falling sharply. The number of employees of airlines, airline operators, ground services and air traffic control centres fell from 103,000 in 1998 by 9%, whilst the overall figure fell from 549,000 in 1998 to 523,000 in 2004, a decline of 5%.

The government’s own figures show fewer people working at Heathrow by 2030 with a third runway than there are today, dealing with more passengers. Jobs could be saved and expanded better by cutting work hours for those employed at the airport, and by expanding alternative modes of travel.

Of course halting airport expansion probably will dislocate some jobs directly and indirectly around airports. Capitalism does that all the time – look at the fall in manufacturing jobs in the UK over the past thirty years. Socialists want employers and the government to cover the cost of these changes, in other words to ensure a “just transition” for workers. This means the bosses pay for alternative jobs, compensation and genuine training to give those displaced workers alternatives at least as good as they have at present.

The argument on jobs comes down to this: support the immediate, narrow, sectional interests of workers in particular jobs, especially in the south-east of England now; but ignore the long term, general interests of the global working class, which is already the biggest victim of climate change, not only now but for the foreseeable future.

It seems to me that as a matter of defending the long-term social interests of the global working class, as a matter of basic international solidarity and as the “representatives of the future in the present”, Marxists should oppose airport expansion. Opposing airport expansion means defending workers real class interests, rather than fetishising workers’ current particular occupations.

We should join campaigns to oppose expansion, and argue for a working class based approach orientated on the labour movement and local people – and which tries to relate to those who work in the industry. Winning the wider labour movement to opposing airport expansion will pull away the veil from expansion advocates who are basically only interested in the benefits British capital. A successful campaign will help to transform the unions and attract new young activists to the movement. Oppose airport expansion!