With the 2002 Airport Proposal gathering such a wide audience, and generating so much public interest, there were some excellent review articles written in various press outlets.
Some of there are referenced as part of various articles in this archive, along with links to the full article, given copyright limitations, where the article still be accessed over 20 years later.
In the Birmingham Post there were many articles written by several staff members, also referencing what might happen to Birmingham Airport itself. Paul Dale wrote one such article during late 2002, with these words:
It didn’t take long for one of the Midlands’ biggest protest campaigns to get off the ground.
Within one hour of being told by The Birmingham Post that their villages were in danger of being flattened to make way for an airport larger than Heathrow, the people of Church Lawford and Kings Newnham began to organise.
Disbelief gave way to anger, and then a determination to do whatever was necessary to save communities so steeped in history that they are mentioned in the Domesday Book.
The first poster appeared. Scribbled hastily on a piece of cardboard, hung by the side of the main road through Church Lawford, it contained a stark message for the Department of Transport: ‘No Airport Here.’
That was on Tuesday, July 23. Four months later, the protest movement has grown beyond all imagination and spread its wings across the West Midlands. Although most attention was focused initially, naturally enough, on the prospect of a new Warwickshire airport, it didn’t take people living near Birmingham International Airport long to realise that they too ought to be concerned about the DfT consultation paper.
He went on to add
A large percentage of correspondence on the desk of Transport Secretary Alistair Darling will have come from the Church Lawford campaigners, where the protest movement has eclipsed virtually anything else in the country.
Andy King, Labour MP for Rugby and Kenilworth, who knew nothing of the proposal to build a new airport in his constituency until the DfT document was published, addressed one of the first public meetings on the issue at the Benn Hall, Rugby, in the first week of August.
With every seat in the room taken, and hundreds of protesters locked outside, Mr King declared: ‘There is not a hall in Rugby large enough to accommodate all of the people who would like to be here tonight.’
From that point, the campaign took off. It is now impossible to drive through the Warwickshire villages between Coventry and Rugby without seeing thousands of posters, of all shapes and sizes, but expressing a common message: ‘No Airport Here.’
The full article is difficult to access online, other than via a service called “FreeLibrary.com”, which has transcribed the words for online use. It is possible that the full images from the Birmingham Post for these dates will appear online in the British Newspaper Archive in years to come.
An earlier review of the campaign came from across the county border in Northamptonshire, where the Chronicle and Echo reporter Daniel Owens looks at the progress of the campaign as at 30th October 2002. His summary was part of a two page feature.
THE proposed Rugby International Airport would be the second biggest airport in the world and would handle 77 million passengers a year, making it 20 per cent busier than Heathrow.
A Government document released earlier this year revealed the need for a new airport in the East Midlands if planners ruled out an extension to existing sites in the SouthEast.
In the report, Transport Secretary Alistair Darling earmarked a potential new site which he hoped would become the hub of European air travel.
It would be the jewel in the British aviation industry’s crown, a 16-mile wide site boasting three runways, countless terminals and an infrastructure to rival that of the world’s biggest airport, Chicago.
For the locals there is one major sticking point. The site mentioned in the blueprint is currently known as Church Lawford.
Church Lawford is an unremarkable English village.
It is home to a small community, it has a village pub, а Norman castle and an old people’s home. Chicago, it is not.
If the plans go through, Church Lawford would be no more.
Memories ripped to shreds, picked up and buried beneath a runway. The winding country lanes, green fields and stunning views would go. In their place would be concrete. And lots of it.
The project would involve bulldozing a medieval church tower, three 13th century fish ponds and some bronze age earthworks. More than 140 houses would be knocked down, including 12 listed buildings.
For the villagers who have formed an action group to protest against the plans, defeat is simply not an option.
Nearly 50 meetings have taken place since the announcement just a few months ago. The public reaction has been extraordinary.
Every home carries an antiairport poster, banners adorn walls and trees.
Church Lawford is presenting the most united of united fronts.
Keeping the public informed is the name of the game for campaign leader Gordon Collett.
He said: “It is vital people are kept up to date with what is happening. We have had 49 meetings that have been attended by more than 30,000 people.
“We had nearly 10,000 people take part in a march, we had 900 people at a rally at a local school. Everyone is behind the campaign and we will keep on fighting.”
It is that kind of dedication and commitment to the cause that will be vital if Church Lawford is to beat the bulldozer and retain its place in the heart of the English countryside.