Hintergrundbericht zur Klage London Heathrow
Rage against the flying of the night
Seven years ago, Ruth Hatton had everything. Married to a City accountant and mother of two young children, she lived in the comfortable suburb of East Sheen in south-west London and worked in IT.
She loved going to the opera and theatre, devoured authors such as Trollope and Hermann Hesse, and enjoyed enviable reserves of energy competing for her local swimming club, playing tennis and rowing. Also a passionate cook and gardener, Hatton was about as politically active as Jemima Puddleduck: there were simply too many other diversions in her life.
Yet within a year she was on anti-depressants and fearing for her sanity. "I thought I was going mad," she says, "the noise of the planes at night had become so bad that I couldn't sleep for weeks on end. The subject had become a no-go area with my husband and I had resorted to putting on a rainforest tape with apes calling and wate trickling to try and drown out the sound of planes."
The outcome of her three year fight is expected within the next two weeks when the European Court of Human Rights rules on her bid to ban night from using London's Heathrow airport.
"The noise was all the worse during the day as it seemed the planes were taunting me after making my nights so terrible", says Hatton. "I had put up with the increase of noise for a year when finally I just couldn't take any more. I remember in the middle of the night getting up, going downstairs and weeping on the sofa with rage.
"After living in the neighbourhood for 11 years, suddenly in 1993 everything changed with new nightflight regulations and there was this bombardment of noise assaulting the house from four in the morning."
Hatton called the Heathrow Noise Line frequently only to be told, she says, that nothing had changed and that it must be her. British Airports Authority, which runs Heathrow, also told her that she did not qualify for a grant for triple glazing as Sheen was not considered noisy enough - even though the noise came from aircraft fly - so low over her house that in so low over she flew into Heathrow herself she could see the children's swing in her own back garden.
To her surprise she found herself transmogrifying from an apolitical, happy suburban woman to a raging eco-warrior. She started contemplating fantastie plots - such as blocking the approach tunnel to Heathrow with hire cars. Someone suggested dressing in pyjamas and going to Downing Street. But this she dismissed as being too tame.
"I felt that HACAN [Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise], which has been the main campaigner against noise, was being too polite and nice, and anyhow they were snowed under with the terminal Five inquiry which was going on at the time," she says.
"And I had visions of camping on the runway - me, of all people, a through-and-through traditional Conservative from working-class roots.Me, who had been appalled by the women at Greenham Common.
"I surprised myself as I am not a radical, but what really goaded me into fighting the court case were the lies the government told. "Perhaps the biggest was their persistent claim between 1993 and 1995 that they were intent on keeping noise levels below those in 1988.
(Davon können wir in Offenbach auch ein Lied singen. Jedesmal, wenn die Fraport Gazette "Start" aufgeschlagen wird)
Yet night flights increased enormously - by almost 8,ooo between 1988 and 1994 - and with them the noise.
"Had they been honest and admitted that after the regulations changed in 1993, yes, there were more night flights, I would have sold up and moved. "As it was, BAA and the government didn't tell the truth, although we knew there was an increase. It was like being in an Orwellian nightmare where you listen to all the "facts" they give you, but the reality is totally different.
"So I simply got to my wits´ end and resented being treated like an idiot and a mad woman. I wrote to ministers in the Tory government as well as Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown, and everyone expressed sympathy but did absolutely nothing!" Despairing of the Tories, Hatten voted Labour in the 1997 general election, hoping, she recalls, that the party might care more about ordinary people. "But I was naive and absolutely livid when, within days of the election, the papers printed pictures of Tony Blair with Bob Ayling, the British Airways boss. (Ja, ja, auch das kennen wir sehr gut.)
"To me this showed that Labour, too, was on the side of big business and wanted to expand Heathrow regardless with Terminal Five, which would mean even more noise. I felt so betrayed that at the following local elections I voted for the Monster Raving Loony party."
(Was bleibt einem denkenden Menschen übrig)
However, Hatton resisted lunacy herself and stopped short of sitting in front of jumbo jets or blockading Heathrow. Instead she spearheaded a new battle that has led to the imminent decision from Strasbourg. This follows the unanimous decision in May (2000) by seven judges in Strasbourg's European Court of Human Rights that Hatton had a case on two counts: Articles 8 and 13 of the Convention of Human Rights.
The fact that the Strasbourg judges even heard the case is a feat in itself, as only one in 150 cases ever reaches this stage. It also reflects the seriousness of the issue and deep concern elsewhere in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, over night flights and noise levels at their own airports.
Briefly, the court will rule en whether the government has violated Hatton's right, enshrined in Article 8, "to respect for private and family life at home without interference by a public authority". Second, it will address Article 13 which provides that everyone whose rights and freedoms... are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority".
The Strasbourg case follows four judicial hearings into the matter in England. In the first three, a joint action by local authorities and HACAN against the, 1993 legislation - that introduced a "noise quota" - succeeded. Each time the government appealed. But when the case finally reached the Court of Appeal, the previous verdicts were overturned. In the words of the Strasbourg court, the Appeal Lords considered that "the government had provided adequate justification for encroaching on the right to sleep by allowing more night flights".
However, Hatton claims the Lords in 1996 failed to give reasons for their refusal of leave to appeal after HACAN lost the fourth judicial review. Despite its eventual victory, there were serious embarrassments for the government along the way.
One judge, Mr Justice Sedley, who presided over the third judicial review in 1995, dismissed the government's first consultation paper on noise levels in 1995 as "a farrago of equivocation" and devious and deeply unattractive" in its presentation and reasoning. This was further exacerbated when a top official at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions implied that the widespread public concern about night noise at Heathrow was "not significant in any scientific terms".
Elizabeth Duthie, head of the aviation environmental division at the environment department, was giving evidence at the Terminal Five inquiry, but her comments infuriated HACAN which, together with the 12 local councils and hundreds of afflicted private individuals, raised £125,000 to fund the Strasbourg case. "There was a feeling of utter disbelief," recalls Rod Kebble, editor of HACAN Clear-Skies News, "and members felt insulted. We were putting up with all this noise and there was the government, which was meant to be looking after our interests, telling us that we were making a fuss about nothing."
Cynics might ask whether Hatton is a closet radical wanting her 15 minutes of fame. Or a paranoiac fantasist cooking up conspiracy theories with as much relish as her bouillabaisse. Or do the facts bear out her claims that the government and BAA were being less than honest?
To meet, she is a spirited (she describes herself now as "fiery"), articulate, engaging 37-year-old. Yet there is a whiff of vanity when she says:
"I feel great about taking on the government. I want to give thern a bloody nose, force thern to give ordinary people their dernocratic rights and listen to the facts."
But what are the facts? Hatton claims she was constantly told that the noise and number of flights had not altered after the law changed in 1993. In brief, the new regulations allowed flights between ll pm and 7am, with limits on the numher of aircraft movements, and, between 11.30pm and 6am, with limits on noise.
This was called the Quota Count period when noise was to be measured in what were called QC points. Before 1993 the only limit had been on night movements until 7am, and 8am on Sundays. However, the new regime cut even the Sunday limit back by an hour to 7am as well.
So have the QC points increased? BAA and the Civil Aviation Authority claim they have no figures pre-1993 for the llpm-7am period. Yet, figures submitted to the Strasbourg-court by Hatton's legal team, and allegedly taken from official runway logs, tell a different story. Hatton claims the QCs totalled 16,144 in 1988, more than doubling to 39,096 last year for the llpm to 7am period.
The environment department says the permitted annual QC limit for the 11.30pm to 6am period is just 9,750, which implies that most noise occurs between 6am and 7am - almost 3o,ooo QCs over the year. Indeed, according to the BAA website, on the morning of June 6 this year, 40 flights arrived at Heathrow between 5.55am and 7am, some landing at one-minute intervals.
And it seems Hatton had a point about the number of aircraft flying over her house. Between llpm and 7am, according to figures from National Air Traffic Services, there was an increase from 15,323 flights in 1992, the year before the law changed, to 18,918 in 1994, the year after the change - an increase of almost 3,500. This was the year in which Hatton became almost demented by night flights.
Ruth Hatton is fighting for a night ban - particularly the 16 flights using Heathrow daily between 4am and 6am but the government insists it is already working to reduce night noise.
David Stewart, for the environment department, says: "The current five-year regime from 1999 is the most restrictive yet and we have cut the winter and summer quotas at Heathrow by 20 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. These restrictions are among the most stringent for any major European Union airport."
When asked, British Airways declined to put a figure on the losses it might face if a night ban were imposed. The information, says a representative, is "commercially sensitive".
Meanwhile, BAA shifts the onus of responsibility on to the government, "We look to the government to determine what the appropriate balance is... between the people who are disturbed by night flying and a major international airport, with its need for a limited number of night flights which the airlines and passengers clearly demand," says Jon Phillips, for the company.
Whatever the outcome, Hatton thinks the fight has been worth it. "If we lose the case," she says, "I shall be very sad and disappointed. But it was worth getting this far as we've rattled some cages. No one took us seriously till we got to Strasbourg."
(Nun haben Sie gewonnen).
