Successful Campaigns

Campaign win! Thanks to all your support and dedicated campaigning the Economic Crime Bill has now passed through Parliament. The bill introduces a crucial register for property owned through offshore companies. This is an important step to stop tax dodging and corruption. Other important legislation is in the pipeline. This is an amazing success. We will keep campaigning until we have closed every last tax loophole. We all deserve a fairer tax system. Thank you so much for your support. You can sign up here to take part in future campaigns: https://www.taxjustice.uk/sign-up.html.

STOP PRESS - DECEMBER 2024 GALBA (Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport) is STILL fighting LBA's attempts to expand. So far, we’ve been incredibly successful in our five-year l battle. We have managed to block LBA at every stage of their expansion plans. But now LBA’s bosses have asked the government’s Planning Inspectors to overturn restrictions on night flights, at a Public Inquiry to be held in Leeds in March 2025. If LBA win they will be able to fly an UNLIMITED number of planes at night. Increasing night time flying is central to the airport's expansion plans. The reason is simple: unlimited night flying allows airlines to fly more of their planes round the clock, which means they can dramatically increase the number of flights at the airport. That’s what LBA’s appeal to the Planning Inspectors is all about. More night flights would mean more greenhouse gases from jet engines, polluting our fragile climate, when everyone knows we have to cut emissions as fast and as much as possible. The Climate Change Committee has repeatedly said that airports should not be allowed to expand because there are no large scale alternatives to the fossil fuels used to fly aircraft. OUR ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN We have successfully petitioned the Secretary of State to hold a public inquiry into the expansion of Leeds Bradford airport so that the full national impact of airport expansion can be assessed. The Public Inquiry was due to start on September 13th 2022. But Leeds Bradford Airport pulled out. Since then GALBA has been fighting expansion on many fronts. Here are some of the things we have achieved: We succeeded in calling for a public inquiry into the original planning application – causing LBA to withdraw its application. We achieved this win by using every tactic available to us, including the very best legal advice, an enormous public petition and a letter-writing campaign. We exposed hundreds of unlawful night flights at LBA over the past three summers. We were only able to do this because our dedicated and expert team literally logged every single arrival and departure at the airport – an extremely time-consuming and laborious process. Our hard work paid off because we were able to prove that the airport was not telling Leeds City Council the truth about night flight numbers and the Council was not independently monitoring them. We persuaded Leeds City Council to turn down the airport’s attempts to rewrite the rules that limit the number of night flights. This was a huge blow to the airport and we believe it only came about because Leeds City Council was not able to argue with our relentless monitoring and the detailed legal arguments that we presented to them. During this time we have kept our campaign at the top of the agenda. We’ve made politicians and the public take notice with a series of high profile demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, petitions, fundraisers and media appearances. Why is this important? As we stand on the brink of climate and ecological breakdown, airports throughout the UK are trying to expand. Leeds Bradford, Bristol, Stansted, Manston, Southampton, Luton and Gatwick are pressing ahead with expansion plans. Supporters of each expansion claim that the increase in carbon emissions is small in a national context. However, the cumulative impact would be a huge increase in emissions at precisely the time we should be doing everything in our power to reduce them. Leeds Bradford Airport expansion is a test case. The local authority has approved expansion, claiming that carbon emissions from international flights is not a matter for local authorities to consider! So we have called on the Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, to order a public inquiry so that the climate impact of expansion can be assessed in a national context. This is not just about Leeds-Bradford. Approval of this application would open the floodgates of expansion at other regional airports. The government must intervene to stop the planned expansion of regional airports if it is to meet legally binding environmental targets and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. You can hear it from the experts. Over 200 Leeds Uni Academics already agree. https://www.galba.uk/post/press-release-246-uni-of-leeds-staff-and-researchers-ask-robert-jenrick-to-call-in-lba-decision Most importantly please share with your friends and family. Tell them why this matters so much to you. Thank you from GALBA - Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport

We won! On Friday the 11th of October after more than 80,000 of us piled in we managed to get these cleaners the real Living Wage!

It's been confirmed that after 27 years, BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum’s exhibitions has ended! This is a HUGE win for the movement for fossil free culture and everyone who has played a role in this campaign, including climate activists, culture campaigners, arts workers, youth strikers - and particularly those frontline groups directly impacted by BP that we were honoured to work with. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jun/02/british-museum-ends-bp-sponsorship-deal-after-27-years

10/12/21 FINALLY, A WIN FOR WILD ANIMALS After decades of campaigning and years of waiting, Born Free welcomes UK Government plans to end the legal import of trophies from hundreds of wild animals, shot for ‘fun’. Read more here: https://www.bornfree.org.uk/news/uk-trophy-import-ban

We won! In a decision that set a new national precedent, a government planning inspector granted permission to keep Kirkby Moor wind farm running until 2027. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-49515965

Strongbow, Carling and Tennent's have all pledged to ditch plastic beer and cider rings by 2021! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/14/carling-beer-ditch-plastic-packaging-become-sustainable/

Great news! 03/11/22 The news we have all been waiting for has at last arrived! The Port of Dover recently announced that it has abandoned its plans to dredge the Goodwin Sands for landfill for their port development. As you can imagine, after six and a half years of campaigning this news is extremely welcome as it clearly shows that development does not need to come at the expense of the environment. We would like to thank you all for your encouragement, donations and support, without which we would not have achieved this positive outcome. This campaign has definitely been a huge joint effort. We would like to recognise the support provided by our MP Natalie Elphicke who understood both the need for the port development and our concerns for the marine environment. We have no doubt that she was instrumental in encouraging the Port of Dover to source the necessary landfill elsewhere. Despite this result being a vindication of all we have fought for, we know this is just a battle won, not the whole war and we will not be resting on our laurels. We are acutely aware that assurances need to be sought from all the major stakeholders including The Crown Estate, the Environment Agency and the Marine Management Organisation that they will never allow the Goodwins to be exploited ever again. Thank you again for staying with us over the past six years and we look forward to keeping you updated on our continued work to Save Our Sands. Best wishes, Joanna and Fiona

After thousands of us signed the petition, emailed, tweeted and called Jeremy Hunt and chipped in for hard hitting ad vans, the government announced it was scrapping the dangerous data sharing deal between the NHS and the Home Office! https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/09/government-to-stop-forcing-nhs-to-share-patients-data-with-home-office?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other