Joy for protesters as Heathrow is denied 'mother of all injunctions'

Environmental campaigners seeking to stage a protest at Heathrow airport this summer claimed a huge and symbolic victory yesterday after a High Court judge massively scaled back the terms of an injunction sought against them.

The British Airports Authority (BAA), which runs the airport, was ordered to pay the costs of three groups who had challenged what was described as the most wide-ranging limit on the right to protest Britain has ever witnessed.

Meanwhile, in a separate victory for free speech, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, dismissed an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions that could have seen the Parliament Square anti-war protester Brian Haw restricted in his right to protest.

Activists hailed yesterday's two rulings as a much-needed success in the face of Britain's increasingly repressive tide of legislation limiting freedom of protest.

The airport operator had been accused of trying to restrict the movements of five million members of organisations including the RSPB, Greenpeace and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England across vast regions of London and the South-east.

If it had been granted, potential demonstrators failing to give BAA 24 hours notice of their presence faced arrest under anti-stalking legislation, not just at Heathrow but at Paddington station, the Piccadilly underground line as well as parts of the M25 and M4.

The injunction was opposed by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who hired a team of lawyers to be in court for the proceedings. London Underground and Transport for London were also awarded costs and the judge said it was "extraordinary" they had not been consulted before the injunction was sought.

But in what will be regarded as an embarrassing own goal for the airport, already reeling from a welter of criticism on everything from lost luggage to lengthy queues, the week-long Camp for Climate Action will now go ahead next week.

Organisers are seeking to highlight what they say is Heathrow's massive contribution to climate change - contributing 31 million tonnes of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere each year.

On the final day of the Heathrow hearing, Mrs Justice Swift struck out applications for injunctions against three of the groups named by BAA. These were against the umbrella organisation AirportWatch - which enjoys the backing of dozens of mainstream interest groups - the west London anti-noise group Hacan and local campaigners No Third Runway Action Group.

She imposed a much more limited injunction based on local by-laws against three men named by BAA and members of the direct action group Plane Stupid, preventing them from disrupting the airport.

Instead of covering key parts of the capital's road and rail network, the order will extend only as far as the airport's perimeter fence and property belonging to Heathrow.

BAA said it feared the camp could pose a security threat in the face of heightened terrorist fears and bring delays for up to 1.5 million passengers using the airport on one of the busiest weeks of the year. The company denied in court that it was trying to curtail civil liberties, insisting that it was merely trying to protect passengers and staff.

BAA's managing director, Mark Bullock, attempted to put a positive spin on the company's legal strategy. "We welcome the decision of the High Court granting an injunction against Plane Stupid and all those acting in concert with them for the purpose of disrupting the operations of Heathrow airport," he said.

But Mr Livingstone said: "I welcome the decision of the court to effectively reject BAA's application for an injunction so wide that it could have potentially affected millions of people. The judge clearly recognised that such an injunction would have been unreasonable and unworkable.

"As Mayor of this city, my responsibility is to uphold the elementary principles that people have the right to engage in peaceful, lawful protest and, at the same time, no unrepresentative group has the right to break the law and disrupt the journeys of holidaymakers or users of public transport. BAA tried to go far beyond this with a measure so draconian that it attacked the civil liberties of millions."

John Stewart, chairman of Hacan and one of the men named under the injunction, said: "BAA came here looking for the mother of all injunctions but what they have is the mother of all setbacks."

Joss Garman, who along with Mr Stewart and a third man agreed to abide by the terms of the injunction, poked fun at BAA's legal team, led by Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden.

"BAA's legal adviser claimed he was a legal rottweiler - today he looks like Scooby Doo. They have lost badly. They tried to seek an injunction against millions but they have failed," he said. The organisers of Camp for Climate Action, which last year targeted the UK's largest coal-fired power station at Drax in East Yorkshire, said they expected to benefit from the publicity. "People will now see this not just as a climate change issue but as a corporate power issue and a freedom to protest issue," said a spokeswoman.

Mrs Justice Swift, who disclosed she was a member of three of the organisations named in the original proposed injunction, said: "I am satisfied the terms of this injunction are no wider than necessary."

Victims of the crackdown

* 2005: The year saw a spate of police crackdowns on protesters. The most famous example was Walter Wolfgang, filmed being led out of the hall at Labour party conference after heckling a speech on Iraq by Jack Straw.

* Also in 2005: Maya Evans was convicted under legislation brought in under Tony Blair and designed to stop protests around Parliament, after refusing to stop reading out a list of the names of British dead soldiers on the steps of the Cenotaph.

* 2006: Brian Haw, who has been living in Parliament Square since 2001 protesting at US-UK foreign policies, saw his display severely reduced and placards confiscated.

* 2006: In August the same year Mark Barratt, in his mid-30s, was prosecuted for staging an "anti-war tea party" on Parliament Square.

* 2006: And in September John Catt, 80, was arrested for wearing an anti-Blair t-shirt on Brighton beach.