UK airport authority BAA is going to the high court to ban climate change protestors from staging a week-long demonstration at Heathrow airport later this month.
Environmental pressure groups say the injunction, which could reportedly see Hacan, No Third Runway Action Group, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Woodland Trust all banned from the London hub, amounts to "legal bullying".
But BAA insists that it has to protect the rights of passengers travelling to Heathrow as well as those of protestors planning to demonstrate lawfully and peacefully.
A message on the Climate Camp's website says it intends to hold "a day of mass direct action aiming to disrupt the activities of the airport and the aviation industry".
"Based on these publicly-expressed intentions, Heathrow airport, as a responsible organisation, had no alternative but to apply for an injunction to protect the smooth running of the airport and access to it for the hundreds of thousands of passengers which use Heathrow every day," a statement from BAA said.
A spokesperson clarified that the injunction would only affect those individuals wishing to "conduct harassment, trespass, obstruction and/or use any unlawful means; to deter obstruct or prevent the lawful operation and/or development of the airport; or to prevent persons from travelling to, from or at the airport".
The chairman of Hacan (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise), John Stewart, said that BAA was seeking "the mother of all injunctions".
"We've long known the airport operators to be arrogant, but trying to ban five million people from coming near them is conceited even by their standards," he said.
"This is a cut-and-dried case of corporate bullying designed to shut down peaceful protest."
Mayor of London of Ken Livingstone has already added his voice to the debate by dubbing the potential injunction as "unreasonable and unnecessary".
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