Environmental activists, communities and local authorities are preparing for a campaign of opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, ahead of a decision on the expansion of the world’s third biggest airport.

Residents of villages threatened by the expansion have already been taking part in training for direct action, activists said, while four local councils have amassed a £200,000 war chest to fight expansion through the courts.

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A decision is expected on Tuesday, with Heathrow’s third runway deal expected to beat proposals for a second runway at Gatwick. But both plans have opponents, and there are those who are against any airport expansion at all.



Sheila Menon, of the activist group Reclaim the Power, which recently staged a “die-in” protest at Heathrow’s terminal 2, said Department for Transport data showed that just 15% of the population take 70% of flights. “This is about a wealthy minority who are driving the need for expansion,” she said.

“The people who are paying for that are on a local level, people living around airports who are having to deal with the local noise and air pollution; on a national level, the taxpayer is subsidising the aviation industry to the tune of £10bn a year through tax subsidies; and then globally, the countries who are feeling impact of climate change first and hardest are the countries of the global south who have least contributed.”

But none will feel the impact of Heathrow expansion immediately more than the residents of villages set to be partly or wholly razed to make way for a third runway. About 800 homes will be demolished, and thousands more will be made uninhabitable, campaigners say.

One of the villages under threat, Harmondsworth, has been home to Neil Keveren’s family for generations. His home will be 54 paces from the new boundary fence. “I’ll be looking at it out of my kitchen window, and all the houses opposite me, and the ones close beside – and beside that and beside that – will be destroyed,” the 55-year-old said.

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“I’m part of the fabric here, this house isn’t for sale,” he said. “If the politicians can’t do it, and do as they say when they’ve been elected, if democracy fails, then we’ll just have to be left with direct action. What else is there?

“I don’t think that Theresa May and the electorate of this country have the stomach for seeing our elderly citizens being forcibly removed from their homes, and I know a good half a dozen who are not going to shift.”

In the next-door village of Sipson, a group of about a dozen activists have been encamped on an abandoned market garden site since 2010. Alex, 29, a spokesman for the Grow Heathrow camp who declined to give his surname, said the activists were united with locals in opposition to Heathrow’s expansion.



“Local people have said they’re not going to leave their houses, and we’ll show them how to make that as difficult as possible for developers to do that. We’re happy to spread peaceful resistance among the local people,” he said.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Climate activist group Reclaim the Power at a ‘die-in’ protest at Heathrow. Photograph: Neil Hall/Reuters

“We’ve already given local people training on how to lock [themselves to objects] and these kind of things, and we’ll keep doing that. I think the more likely it looks like [the expansion] is going to happen, the more likely they will want to learn that stuff. When the threat is much greater they want to learn how to fight it.”

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Plane Stupid has carried out actions against Heathrow’s expansion, including invading the airport’s northern runway in the summer of 2015 and, in February this year, blockading the entrance tunnel to terminals 1, 2, and 3. A spokesman for the group, who gave his name only as Cameron, predicted more activism.

“The climate catastrophe that we are heading towards if we continue to expand climate-intensive industries is something that sits very highly in people’s minds,” he said. “People are willing to take extreme action to stop carbon emissions because the government won’t.

“Just with the same conviction people like Neil [Keveren] have to saving their homes, environmental activists have to saving the environment, and the planet. There’s no point of having short-haul flights to the south of France if you don’t have a home in Norwich because it’s flooded out.”