How Heathrow's lawyer has made a career of opposing right to protest
Saturday, 4 August 2007
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To his many enemies, Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden is the establishment solicitor who gags their protests. To his clients, he is legal barbed wire - an expert who can hold back a rabble.
For the past week, the double-barrelled former Army officer has been seeking to prevent anti-aviation campaigners from holding a "climate camp" at Heathrow. But the British Airports Authority (BAA) is just one of many corporations who have called on Mr Lawson-Cruttenden's expertise.
Arms manufacturers, GM crop pioneers and animal research establishments can all thank him for ridding them of unwanted, and sometimes violent, attention. During the past 11 years, his small London law firm Lawson Cruttenden & Co has become "the market leader" in the area.
His speciality is extending legislation intended to protect women from stalkers, the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, to protect companies, their staff and their property.
He has obtained a raft of injunctions banning protesters from targets such as Huntingdon Life Sciences and Oxford University's animal laboratory. Stringent conditions are imposed on protesters, specifying even the days and hours on which they may protest.
Two years ago, in one of Mr Lawson-Cruttenden's more wide-ranging injunctions, the High Court banned animal rights extremists from the vicinity of all 288 offices of the parcel firm DHL and the homes of 18,000 employees.
This week, the former Blues and Royals lieutenant continued his march into uncharted areas of the law by seeking - potentially - to stop five million people from pitching up at Heathrow Airport. Protesters from groups such as AirportWatch - including the National Trust and RSPB - found themselves at risk of being barred from the airport and from travelling there on the Piccadilly Line, parts of the M4 and M25, and even platforms six and seven of Paddington station.
Unless, that is, they gave 24 hours notice to police, carried no loudhailers, congregated in numbers of no more than 100 on three small patches of land at the edge of the airport, and did not pitch any tents at the Camp for Climate Action, on 14 to 21 August.
An incandescent Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, instructed Transport for London to remove the Tube from the action, which it duly did. Even so, the defence on Thursday described BAA's indefinite injunction as the most draconian ever sought in a British court.
For his opponents, the litigation was further evidence of the Old Harrovian's reputation as the scourge of protesters, who he is breaching "fundamental rights" of protest.
For his part, Mr Lawson-Cruttenden insists he is a fair-minded, free-thinking democrat. "My thesis is that protest in a liberal democracy should be conducted peacefully and lawfully," he told The Independent.
Despite his advocacy against the airport protesters, he also describes himself as an environmentalist, concerned about climate change, taking his holidays in England and cycling to work. His lurcher, Arthur, follows his almost everywhere, including occasionally into the robing room of the High Court, proving that he loves animals, too.
But, he says, he operates the lawyer's taxi-rank principle and will not turn down work in his specialism, whoever it is from, making him - in his own words - an "intellectual prostitute."
"I am a lawyer. I am a rottweiler. Give me a bone and I am going to get a bite," he said. So far his cases have run up against animal rights activists who have often represented themselves. In the case of Heathrow Airport Limited versus Garman, he is taking on protesters who have the means to hire a QC, Nicholas Blake. Judgement is on Monday. Has Mr Lawson-Cruttenden reached the limits of his favourite law?
