The English don't do "people power". We do "people like us" power - or, as Karl Marx would call it, bourgeois revolution. And the local council meeting that rejected Stansted airport's expansion plans was just such an uprising.
This wasn't Dad's Army, although the mood of cheerful defiance owed something to the home guard of Walmington-on-Sea. No one actually whistled "Who do you think you are kidding, Mr O'Leary?" but it was a close-run thing. This was, in any case, a force more frightening: an army officered by sensible women in perms and pearls, who had decided to fight against the menace from the air; but like the home guard, they were fighting to save not just their homes, but the whole of civilisation.
For this wasn't just a "nimby" row. It was a political revolt against global warming. The protests against the proposed airport expansion were not just about the noise and the people. They were, over and over again, protests against the whole idea of budget air travel, from the people who actually use it all the time.
The budget airlines, as a recent survey has shown, don't let poor people travel who would otherwise stay at home. They let the middle classes travel more often than they would otherwise do. What is saved on air fares is spent on second homes. This afternoon, the middle classes announced they didn't want it any more.
The north-western corner of Essex, where Stansted airport lies, is not in the least bit like the southern strip of the county. It is mostly countryside, and occasionally rather grand. The footballers all live closer into London. Some of the towns have still not got pedestrianised shopping centres; there are plenty of 4x4s, but they block country lanes as often as they clog up school runs here.
Although Uttlesford is a rock-solid Conservative seat, with a majority of more than 10,000 even in 1997, it also has a thriving quakerish tradition of CND and Amnesty groups, and both these strands came together to oppose the airport expansion.
Ten years ago, Stansted was a local amenity: good-looking, quiet, and quick to get through. But Ryanair and the growth of budget travel have changed all that. The airport is now a crowded, noisy shopping mall, like Christmas all year round. The traffic has doubled at least, and the villages around it are quietly depopulating.
Now BAA want to put in a second runway, and, in the interim, to make full use of the one runway that exists. It also proposes to enlarge the terminal to handle 35m passengers a year instead of 25m.
This has practically no benefits to the local economy, which is already at full employment. It will price the local poor completely out of the housing market. It will make the roads more congested and overstretch the railway. The noise will gradually depopulate the villages.
But it wasn't this which really fired the protestors. It was the sense that air traffic is not just vulgar and greedy, but immoral. It is damaging the planet. Councillor after councillor spoke up about the implications of the Stern report. How can the government both wish to reduce carbon emissions and boost air travel, they asked, in a very polite way. I have never heard a less inflammatory delivery of revolutionary sentiments. "Uttlesford can set an example! It is action that is needed, not muddled, er, rhetoric," murmured one councillor.
The loudest noise by far was the applause from the audience at the end of every speech, rising to a standing ovation after the unanimous vote of the council to reject the application. Some people cheered without even being shushed by embarrassed neighbours.
Perhaps they had been roused by the councillor who said: "We must make a stand to stop the rampant rape of our planet. I am sure we at the beginning of a massive cultural and scientific shift. We in Uttlesford must send a clear message to our government, and to every other government."
Tremble, Putin! Listen up, Bush! Uttlesford speaks.
