Almost the last thing I did in the Air Ministry of any importance was to hi-jack for Civil Aviation land on which London Airport stands under the noses of resistant Ministerial colleagues. If hi-jack is too strong a word I plead guilty to the lesser crime of deceiving a cabinet Committee
Harold Balfour, Parlimentary Under Secretary of State for Air between 1938 and 1944 in his autobiography, on some of the multiple deceits under which the land for Heathrow airport (with its first runways) was appropriated.
