Ladies and gentlemen this is the final boarding call for passengers flying from JFK New York to Milton Keynes International, please make your way immediately to Gate One Nine Six Seven !
Inviting Billy J Kramer to sing about the planes of Milton Keynes I am going to take a chapter from Not The Concrete Cows and reproduce it here exactly as it was back in 1994.
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.
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 World War Two airfield from which the Royal Air Force flew against the might of the Third Reich. It is up on this site the proposed airport was planned, only six miles from Milton Keynes. But the project intended extending to a staggering seven and a half thousand acres, bulldozing flat everything in the way. The destruction would have included obliterating the entire village of Stewkley, claimed to be the longest village in England, and rehousing it's eleven hundred residents.
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.
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 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.
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.
