This was the banner under which protesters marched yesterday, the last day of a week long very public demonstration against runway expansion at London’s busy Heathrow Airport.

Despite the banner claiming a scientific and pacifist point of view, it seemed that from the start the event was heading towards a clash with police. Organised by a group calling itself the ’Camp for Climate Action’ it was estimated that during the height of activities over the weekend the field of tents just north of Heathrow airport attracted up to 1500 protesters and an equal number of police. Scheduled for the weekend was an activity called ’24 hours of Mass Action’ which was to start noon Sunday the 19th of August until the following day.

A supporting website (links provided at the end of this article) published a schedule for the week and included activity suggestions during the ’24 hours of Mass Action’ which ranged through ‘…protest… direct action and civil disobedience’ while at the same time indicating that they would only welcome protesters under the condition they did not cross the Heathrow perimeter fence into areas which contained aircraft and air traffic control systems.

Rumours earlier in the week fuelled fear that some activists had plans to protest within the Heathrow terminals dressed as airport workers or airline crew – which if true, would have been a less than wise choice considering that the United Kingdom has been the target of terrorist activities on the London Underground rail network - and as recently as June 30th Glasgow airport was attacked by individuals ramming into a terminal building with a vehicle primed to detonate a bomb comprised of petrol, gas cylinders and nails. While we would all probably like to believe that members of the security forces, faced with a situation where they had to discriminate between a protester and other individuals or groups who were a genuine threat to travellers, the reality is that in the heat of the moment it may not be that easy to tell the difference. Truly tragic situations have occurred in the past where many things appeared to go wrong and still remain unclear, such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground in 2005 where police later issued an apology saying that he had been mistaken for a suspect in a failed transit bombing the previous day.

The Camp for Climate Action is now in the process of shutting down without any serious and widespread clashes between police and protesters, and that, almost definitely, is a very good thing indeed.