Boris' Airport?

Listening to the radio this lunchtime, and the airwaves have been packed with news on the "Boris Island" airport, telling us how the Mayor of London has come up with the idea to build a new London Airport on an island in the Thames Estuary, eventually leading to a closedown of Heathrow, not to mention the ridiculous City Airport.

The case for the airport is compelling. Rather than having aeroplanes coming in over densely populated areas, with all the problems of noise and dangers of accidents, they would fly over the North Sea, with no one to disturb. I once read somewhere that Heathrow is the only major international airport to be on the 'wrong side' of the city it serves in this respect; I don't know how true this is, but living under the final stacking zone for Heathrow I can believe the noise bit. Yes, the mud flats of the Thames Estuary would be damaged, but proper steps could be taken to mitigate any environmental damage. The infrastructure which would be built to supply this airport will be an added bonus, especially at a time when we could really do with some capital investment. What a good thing Boris has thought up this genius scheme.

Hmm...

Only he hasn't. The idea for an airport in the Thames Estuary almost predates the arrival of commercial airlines. It was first seriously proposed in 1943, although perhaps understandably the government at the time had more pressing concerns to deal with, such as winning the Second World War. The idea really took off (sorry) in the mid 1960s, when several locations in Essex were used to challenge the Labour government of Harold Wilson's preferred site for a third London airport of Stansted. This argument went back and forth, until in 1972, the Tory government of Edward Heath grandly announced the creation of "the world’s first environmental airport” at Maplin Sands, by Southend.

Ted Heath: A Pioneering Eco-warrior?

However, the scheme floundered upon the usual mix of local resistance and spiralling costs, and the less usual oil embargo imposed by OPEC after the Yom Kippur War.

A new tactic for NIMBYism?

With Heath losing power after the February 1974 general election, Wilson was back again, and before long his Environment Secretary, Peter Shore, was announcing the scrapping of the whole scheme and moving everything back to Stansted. Apart from (or perhaps Because of) an attempt by the GLC in the late 1970s and early 1980s to promote the idea, the estuary airport was dead in the water (apologies again).

Until the mid 2000s. The last Labour government seemed hell bent on adding another runway to Heathrow, despite the opposition of just about everyone around.

Rebel Labour MP using the Parliamentary Mace to bludgeon some sense into the Transport Secretary

Against this backdrop, many began to dust off the old plans for an airport in the Thames. Like many things from the 1970s (such as stagflation, Doctor Who, strikes, hung parliaments and police brutality) this idea seems to be undergoing a bit of a modern revival. Where next...

Hmm, maybe not...

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All facts are either personal knowledge, or taken from Aviation: proposals for an airport in the Thames estuary, 1945-2011 (Accessed 18/01/12, http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04920) All pictures are from Google Image Search