Workers' Liberty

The AWL opposes the expansion of Heathrow and other UK airports as part of our working class socialist strategy for preventing dangerous climate change. New runways at Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh and Birmingham airports will almost triple the number of flights in and out of the UK over the next two decades. These flights will generate more greenhouse gas emissions that will further contribute to global warming.

Climate change is a real threat
Climate change is real. Higher food prices, Hurricane Katrina, the floods in Britain last year all indicate the growing impact of climate change on social life.
We oppose airport expansion on environmental grounds. There are longstanding concerns about noise and about air quality close to airports. However the most significant factor is the impact of aviation emissions on climate change.
Aviation contributes at least 13% of total UK carbon emissions. The government’s own figures predict that a third runway at Heathrow will generate an additional 180.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – or over 3 million tonnes of CO2 every year between 2020 and 2080.
If the government is serious about cutting carbon emissions by 60-80% by 2050, then it must halt the expansion of airports.

What about the economy?
Future Heathrow, the lobby group backed by BA, BAA as well as Unite, GMB and Balpa trade unions, says airport expansion is needed or Britain will lose out to “foreign competition”.
This xenophobia provides a convenient cover for the real reason – that airport expansion will benefit big corporations. Heathrow expansion is very clearly linked to meeting the “needs” of business people to fly directly to the key nodes across the globe or to locations within the UK.

Aviation and employment
Future Heathrow says that airport expansion will create jobs, especially locally. Around 63,000 workers currently work at Heathrow, with 10,000 more off-site. If no third runway were built, the government predicts that by 2030, on site employment would fall to 52,000. Even with a third runway, current levels will not be maintained. BAA and the airline plan cuts as it is. These can be fought by workers’ action!!
Of course halting airport expansion probably will dislocate some jobs. 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 pay the cost of these changes, to support a “just transition” for workers. This means creating alternative jobs, paying for compensation and providing genuine retraining to displaced workers.
The money spent on expanding Heathrow and other airports could be spent creating more socially useful work – and jobs that will not wreck the living and working environment - not just in the surrounding area, but for millions around the globe.
Some of those jobs could be in more ecologically friendly modes of transport. According to the HACAN Clear Skies, almost a quarter of flights from Heathrow are to destinations less than 500 km away and already well served by train. Rail travel per passenger is less polluting than air travel. New train services would facilitate mobility, create jobs but with substantially fewer environmental costs.

Workers’ real interests
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.
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”, socialists should oppose airport expansion. Opposing airport expansion means defending workers real class interests, rather than particular occupations.

The AWL is a Marxist organisation. We oppose airport expansion, and argue for a working class based approach orientated on the labour movement and local people. We want to win the labour movement to opposing airport expansion, as some – such as the PCS civil service union – already do. We want direct action to stop expansion – as part of our strategy to prevent dangerous climate change and our fight for a workers’ government.