Actors, writers and politicians join campaigners to plant trees in Sipson village in protest to Heathrow expansion (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Actors, writers and politicians join campaigners to plant trees in Sipson village in protest to Heathrow expansion

6:00am Friday 13th November 2009

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Celebrities opposed to Heathrow expansion will plant an orchard on the site of a proposed third runway.

Actors, writers and politicians will meet in Sipson village at noon today to dig the apple trees in a protest against the contraversial project.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, the Good Life actor Richard Briers and poet laureate Carol-Ann Duffy will be among the high-profile campaigners.

Mr Clegg said: “The Government is absolutely wrong to stubbornly push ahead with a third runway at Heathrow. How can Gordon Brown go to Copenhagen and credibly call for big reductions in carbon when he has such a dire environmental track record at home?

“A third runway at Heathrow would be a disaster for the local area as well as a disaster for the whole country.”

The orchard will re-introducce Cox apples to the area. They were first bred there in the 1850’s by Richard Cox, who is buried on the site earmarked for a new runway, and whose body might be exhumed if the development goes ahead.

The celebrity planters will be joined by groups including the Woodland Trust, the RSPB, the WWF and the World Development Movement.

Greenpeace bought the land from under the noses of BAA and the Government earlier this year and offered it to members of the public. Around 60,000 people across the world now co-own the plot.

Councillor Peter Thompson, leader of Hounslow Council, said: “Gardeners know that pleasure comes not from the final results of sowing and planting, but from the joy of watching a seed or sapling grow into something in perfect harmony with its surroundings.

“Heathrow has become the intrusive shrub from a neighbour’s garden - acceptable when properly maintained, but if left to its own devices a damaging nuisance that needs cutting back.

“This orchard shows that millions of people have had enough and think it’s time to reach for the secateurs.”

Writer Alain de Botton - who will join Mr Clegg, Conservative leader David Cameron and leading climate scientists in adopting a tree - said: “I’m sponsoring a tree in the orchard because I love airports and air travel, and recognise that if our society is to tolerate them, we are all going to have to learn to fly a lot less.

“Also, apple trees, through their slow gestation and their biblical associations, subliminally carry fascinating associations of both paradise and danger.”

Alison Steadman, Gavin and Stacey actress and celebrity planter, said: “We’re re-introducing Cox apple trees to this village and building a bridge between the past and the future, because this community will have a future.

“BAA and the Government now know that if they try to build this new runway they will have to dig up trees owned by and on behalf of millions of people from every area of British society.

“Some of those people will be there to stand in front of the bulldozers if they ever roll into the new orchard. The third runway cannot and will not be built.

“Richard Cox may face the prospect of his body being dug up to build the new runway, but his famous apple is now standing in the way of BAA and the Government.”

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