Protests – legitimate and otherwise – are inflamed by the oxygen of publicity. The decision by BAA, the operator of Heathrow, to seek a High Court injunction against environmentalists planning protests there has brought its questionable ideas and ambitions to a wide audience. Rather than reduce the likelihood of confrontation, it is fuelling the fire.

BAA has a duty to keep the airport operational, to guard against security threats, and to expedite smooth passage for the people it serves, although quite whether the 200,000 passengers passing through on an average summer’s day would notice much extra disruption is moot. BAA also has an obligation to its shareholders. Contrary to the misguided and misinformed presumptions of protesters, it is perfectly proper that BAA protects the interests of its owners. More persuasively, BAA should be able to serve the wider public good if it acts with the best interests of its owners in mind. Airports are national, not just commercial, assets. Profit is the lifeblood of valuable, self-sustaining and relatively efficient public, as well as private, enterprises.

It is less certain that BAA should have called in the lawyers in this case. An injunction that seeks to prevent as many as five million people from using road, rail and Underground links with Heathrow, as well as to stop them from coming within 100 metres of any airport building, will be hard, if not impossible, to enforce. All-encompassing edicts of this sort run counter to natural instincts, smack of control freakery and create fertile ground for accusations about official smothering of peaceful protest. Determinedly patient policing is preferable, with demonstrators left in no doubt that it is an offence to trespass and that the authorities’ obligation to maintain public order extends to ensuring that air passengers and airport employees can go about their business, or leisure, unimpeded. Injunctions, if required at all, should apply to specific, acutely sensitive, locations.

Respected organisations such as the National Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the Woodland Trust, also need to tread carefully. As members of the Airport Watch group, which is itself a member of the loose Camp for Climate coalition, they could be badly damaged by association with extremists. It cannot be assumed that all members of these wholesome and well-meaning institutions agree that air travel is unforgivably unfriendly to the environment. Many members will blanch at some of the antics envisaged. Would they like to be linked with a sitdown protest which might block airport entrances and exits?

The protesters’ proclivity for direct action should be met with questioning by the fair-minded on the presuppositions that lie at the heart of their agitators’ unease. “We cannot stop climate change without stopping airport expansion,” says one of their websites. “We rise to confront the madness of this economic system, which threatens to extinguish all life,” it adds. This is arrant flat-earth nonsense, but more can be done to show that market forces work in harmony with democratic processes. There is no point pretending that they are perfect, but they do lead to improved living standards for the empowered many, not just the privileged few. The wild postulations of semi-socialist dogmatists must also be challenged in a concerted, fact-based and convincing manner. Persuasive logic is more powerful than blunt injunctions.