No Airport Here:
Season travellers of the
Airways will be familiar with the coded baggage tags that ensure one’s
suitcases arrive via the same aircraft with their owners and at the same
destination.
LHR - London Heathrow SFO - San Francisco LAX - Los
Angeles JFK - New York Kennedy LGW -
London Gatwick
But what about LMK - London
Milton Keynes ? Daily flights to New York, Cairo, Rome, Bombay and one hundred other
far away destinations ?
Don't smile because this was
very nearly the case ! If the now infamous Robert Maxwell, one-time Labour Member
of Parliament for our area, had had his way intercontinental jets would be
constantly roaring overhead.
Thirty years ago advanced
planning was calling for a new airport to relieve the strain that anticipated
demand would place on Heathrow and Gatwick in the next century. One of the best
options looked to be building London’s third airport at Cublington just south
of the area designated for the construction of a new town.
Within the triangle of roads between Stewkley, Wing and Cublington is the site of a former
North Buckinghamshire is
already on the North Atlantic route with dozens of heavy jets passing overhead
everyday but these are all well on their way to their initial cruising
altitude, flying sufficiently high to be relatively unnoticed. Had the airport
come here instead of Stansted then living in Milton Keynes would have been akin
to residing at the bottom of the runway. Perhaps Milton Keynes would have
become a replica of Crawley to the south of Gatwick. Instead of a multi-industry
the city would have been almost entirely dependent upon the airport for its
employment. It is estimated that fifty thousand people would have worked at the
airport.
It was the most efficiently
organised public protest since the anti-coral Corn Law League of 1839 the saved
us. The outward manifestation was a host of signs reading NO AIRPORT HERE. They
sprang up overnight along roads and adjacent to the railway between Bletchley
and Leighton Buzzard. But the organisation went much deeper.
The Wing Airport Resistance
Association was under the chairmanship of Desmond Fennell, later to be Justice Fennel
and head that Kings Cross enquiry, and Evelyn de Rothschild, from the family of
merchant bankers, as treasurer, the local population banded together to prevent at all costs and
airport being built on their doorstep. Many other famous names like Johnny Dankworth,
Cleo Lane and Roald Dahl, who all lived in the area, through in their
unqualified support. (Robert Maxwell, millionaire publisher and MP, joined in
but history now shows that his motives and intentions were decidedly unclear.)
They knew only too well but
they had an uphill task ahead of them for in every way Cubblington/Wing was the
best site for the airport. Had it come to North Buckinghamshire, London Milton
Keynes International Airport may not have become London's third airport at all
but the countries first airport ! There would have been no need than for Luton,
Birmingham or even East Midlands airports and much of the traffic would have
been stolen away from Heathrow.
I recently spent a pleasant
evening with WARA executive committee member Dennis Skinner in his Whitchurch
home, enjoying his hospitality about a roaring log fire, as he explained the
airport perimeter fence had been planned for no more than one hundred yards
away from where we were sitting. It is
his belief that Milton Keynes would have needed to expand south to meet the
airport, swallowing up everything as far as Leighton Buzzard. The resulting
conurbation, some planners saw it is reaching right down to Aylesbury, would be
little like the city we know today.
On another evening I chatted with
Farmer Morris and his wife from Manor Farm, Hoggeston realising we were right
in the middle of where the main runway would have been. Their family has farm
land in the village for ten generations dating back to the 1700’s. What a
personal tragedy it would have been to fall victim to a compulsory purchase
order.
Eighty year old Raptor of Dunton,
the Reverend Hubert Sillitoe, brother of Sir Percy Sillitoe head of wartime MI5,
preached hell, fire and damnation against all airport planners. He was a
popular character, if a little eccentric, and achieved fame in The Sun
newspaper who dubbed him a modern-day Elijah. They quoted one of his speeches
... This damn sacrilege we will fight on the door steps of our homes, in the
fields of our farms, at churchyard gates and church doors ! A later edition
of the paper had on its front page a picture of this campaigning cleric setting
fire to a giant copy of the government's report and reprinting his prayer ...that
these inhuman and sacrilegious proposals be so absolutely rejected and reduced
the flames of fire shall reduce this copy of the Roskill Report. The reporter
went on to describe how the flames leaped upwards as a brass band played the
funeral march. But others attracted less favourable media attention. There were
those who thought the best thing to do would be to load up their tractors with
manure and dump the lot on Downing Street. Mr Justice Roskill, detailed by
Harold Wilson's government to study the various sites for the airport, actually
received death threats. Some of the protest posters and cartoons in the
national press made no secret of the intention many had of actually turning the
campaign into a literal fight if talking failed !
I asked Mr Morris if he
thought people would have really engaged in hand to hand fighting with
bulldozers. A mild mannered man himself, he doubted if he would have actually
been involved but were certain others would. WARA not only had to tackle the
politicians and bureaucrats but also to disassociate themselves from any
threats of violent activity activities if they were to maintain credibility.
The membership of Robert
Maxwell was also hardly an asset to the group. Maxwell, as recent events now
only to clearly show, was a past master when it came to playing one person off
against another. He played WARA off against his own political party and the
local community against the planners but never failed to keep his own business
interests uppermost. It was reported in the Guardian on 15th of June 1970 that Maxwell
said to Bletchley factory worker Let's get Milton Keynes first if we can
have the airport as well so much the better !
Three days later he lost his
seat to Bill Benyon, so ending his parliamentary career, and he subsequently
left the executive committee of water.
Dennis Skinner is convinced it
was the election of a Conservative Government, under Prime Minister Ted Heath,
but finally saved the day. Wing was the best, but also the most expensive
option, in his opinion the Wilson Government had little regard for the costs.
Tories, on the other hand, weighed finances with a rather with rather more care
and eventually went for the cheaper Stanstead project.
WARA attack the finances of
the proposal on every front. It strived all along to avoid becoming a political
body, something that frustrated Robert Maxwell, but to truly represent everyone
who was against the airport. This included Buckinghamshire County Council, the
Milton Keynes Development Corporation and just about every living soul within twenty
miles of the proposed airport. There was little to be gained by stressing the
environmental issues which carried no weight in the swinging sixties. Instead
the organisation employed professionals to undertake their own investigations
then question every facet of the government's Roskill Report.
Their arguments were presented
to every member of parliament whose final decision found against Wing. While
that managed to convince them but the costing was wrong, indeed it was. Nearly a
quarter of a century later it has become clear that a London Milton Keynes
International Airport, as well as handling more than its fair share of business
and cargo traffic, would have developed into the nation's number one holiday
resort. Nobody in the 1960’s quite foresaw such an explosion in leisure travel.
There was a victory torchlight
procession from Stewkley Church on the 26th April 1971, a tree planted in the
churchyard at Whitchurch proclaims: This
tree is planted to the glory of God and in thankfulness for having been spared
the third London airport 26th of November 1972. Buckinghamshire County
Council planted the spinney at Cubblington upon the site originally intended
for the terminal building.
Little now remains of the
actual project, the signs have been taken down, the graffiti that once adorned
motorway bridges have been sponged off but in the barn at Manor Farm where many
of the rallies were held there is still a mural demanding NO AIRPORT. When I saw it a couple of weeks ago a herd of beef
cattle ambled about in their winter quarters oblivious of the fact that they
could have been jumbo jets.
But would Milton Keynes be a
better place at double its size and serving one of the world's major airports ?
Perhaps, perhaps not. It is difficult to
say. During the campaign the activities of WARA cannot have escaped the notice
of teenager Richard Branson, then a border at Stowe School near Buckingham.
Would it be better if Virgin Atlantic, together with British Airways, American Airlines and all the rest, brought
their vast needs for employment to the area ?
Next time you are sitting in the traffic on the M25 as you head off on holiday by way of
Heathrow or Gatwick you can weigh up the advantages and disadvantages then decide yourself.
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