"ENGLAND HAS THE DIRTIEST RIVERS IN EUROPE", Angling Times

All out for the "Flood the Streets" march in London on Sunday, 3 November.

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The cover photo shows water campaigner Ashley Smith filming a pipe that is pumping raw sewage into the River Colne in Herefordshire. These pipes are meant only to carry rainwater.

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Since THE LEFT LANE was launched in January 2024 ---- that is, 47 issues ago --- we have had very few pieces that focused on the environment and its many pressing issues. This has been a mistake. It is no excuse, but the left generally underplays such matters. Today we begin to change course with a piece on the shameful state on our polluted rivers and our privatised water industry.  

By Will McMahon (Guest Post) 

On October 17, the BBC reported on United Utilities repeatedly dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage illegally into Lake Windermere between 2021 and 2023 and failing to report most of it. 

It now seems a week never goes by without some part of the media reporting another calamity involving water privatisation. Undoubtedly, some of this frequency is due to the efforts of environmental campaigners doing the digging to make the public aware of the disaster that has befallen our rivers, lake and seas in the 21st century.

As a result, on Sunday 3 November there will be a March for Clean Water held in central London promoted by a huge range of environmental organisations representing millions of people. The headline speaker will be Feargal Sharkey, retired vocalist for a punk band and a life-long fly fisherman. He writes on the March for Clean Water’s website:

“We call on the government to end the environmental devastation being inflicted upon our rivers lakes and seas. It stops here, it stops today, it stops now. It is now time to hold to account those industries that for too long now have been allowed to knowingly and wantonly pollute our waters driven by nothing more than profit and greed. We call on everyone in the country who is concerned or angry at the state of our waters to join us and March.”

Feargal Sharkey

This is a call to arms against privatization; just watch the brief video here. But bizarrely, on the almost never-ending list of supporting organisations on the website ticker of March for Clean Water, you cannot find Left, trade unions or socialist organisations in any shape or form, with perhaps the honourable exception of WeOwnIt. This has to change!

Public concern about the state of the water has been bubbling under for some time. There have been growing complaints from swimmers, surfers, sailors and anglers about pollution due to sewage.

“It would be a lot nicer if there wasn't as much poo in the water.”

In late March this year, these groups were joined by the crews of the 2024 Oxbridge Boat Race. While conceding defeat to Cambridge in a stiff upper lip fashion, Oxford rower Leonard Jenkins, pointed out that a few of the crew had gone down with E-coli and were struggling with illness.

Thames Water had given the crews notice a few days prior, warning them not to get into the Thames and to cover blisters when getting in and out of the boat. Despite the warning, a lot of vomiting ensued.

At the end of the race Jenkins reported, “This morning I was throwing up and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make the race …It would be a lot nicer if there wasn’t as much poo in the water.”  The traditional winners’ celebration in the water was abandoned and replaced by a visit to the specially constructed cleansing station where the participants washed off the shit.  

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NEWS FLASH OVERNIGHT

In a news story published a few hours before today’s THE LEFT LANE was released at 6:00 a.m. we learned that water companies are expected to be allowed to raise their prices even higher than expected over the next five years. The wacky logic of monopoly capitalism triumphs again … and we suffer.

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Human sewage spills into the waterways and the impact on human health is only one aspect of the calamitous state of the water supply 35 years after privatisation. In his recent book Rengensis, George Monbiot explains how, since the turn of the century and with vanishingly small amounts of regulation, chicken capitalists (‘farmers’ is too misleading a description) have built sites holding up to 20 million chickens next to the river Wye. The outflow of excrement from hundreds of millions of chickens has, over time, washed into the Wye and is seriously damaging the ecology of the river for a distance of more than 70 miles.

Medics are also concerned. John Middleton and Patrick Saunders, writing in the British Medical Journal in May 2024 pointed out the numbers with a serious enough illness to be admitted to hospital from waterborne infections had increased from 2,085, in 2010-11 to 3,286 in 2022-23 asking “where is the outrage … where is the professional concern about this disaster?”

So how did we get here and what can be done about it?

How we got here: The 1989 Great Water Heist

Having defeated her internal party enemies and the trade union movement, Margaret Thatcher moved swiftly to privatise many state-owned assets in the mid- to late-1980s. While gas privatisation was presented as the emergence of popular share holder capitalism with the “Tell Sid” advertising campaign, the water sell-off was a much more discrete and exclusive affair between the big wigs of high finance and the Government. For good reason.

A 2024 T-shirt from the “We Own It” group

 All of the debts of the water companies were written off at a cost of £5 billion. It sounds laughable now, but the companies were also given a ‘green dowry’ of £1.6 billion. The ten regional companies were offered for sale at a discount of 80 per cent, the difference between the share value at launch and the share price after one week of trading.

As a result of the price gouging regime set up before the Water Services Regulation Authority (OFWAT) was established, the pre-tax profits of the companies rose by an average of around 150% in the first eight years of operation to1998. Finally, the companies were even given special exemption from paying taxes on profits. The numbers are striking, and show privatisation was carried out at a huge cost to the public purse and the individual consumer.

In essence, the finance snakes in suits ensured the private investors got the whole industry for free, with a combination of good flow of profits and dividends. Moreover, the absence of guarantees of investment slowly reduced the industry to the parlous state it is in now. The sale of the water industry was less like a commercial operation and more like a bank heist carried out in broad daylight.

Blair’s campaign for deregulation

By the time Blair came to power in 1997, water privatisation should have been an obvious target for a public inquiry into the terms of the deal and the huge loss to the public purse. This was the last direction that Blair was going to travel in. He was more concerned, like Keir Starmer, with freeing up business from red tape, rather than ensuring the public were protected from malpractice.

In 1997 the Conservative’s flagship Deregulation Unit was renamed the Better Regulation Unit and a Better Regulation Task Force established in the Cabinet Office. Bringing deregulation in to the heart of Government led to the birth of the Hampton Review. Hampton called for the reduction of inspections by up to a third and recommended that regulators make more use of ‘advice’ to business - rather than taking coercive steps.

The Hampton Review had a huge impact across the whole of society. Professor Steve Tombs in “Better Regulation: Better for whom?”  cogently argues the changes produced by the Hampton Review ‘mark the beginning of the end of the state’s commitment to, and ability to deliver, social protection’. State regulators were reduced to a shadow of their former selves as ‘light touch’ regulation was the order of the day. The type of ‘light touch’ regulation that delivered the Grenfell disaster and the ensuing cladding scandal, also set the scene for the water companies being able to focus on profiteering rather than public safety.

OFWAT was explicitly set up to ensure that the water market was regulated to ensure a flow of profits to the companies. A revolving door of appointments between OFWAT and the water companies, alongside the ‘light touch’ regime encouraged by Blair, allowed the companies to make hay in a convivial regulatory environment. The result: 100 per cent of Britain’s waters are polluted while the profits made now total £78 billion.

What is to be done about the water disaster?

First things first, socialists need to be there on Sunday 3 November. All the details can be found on the March for Clean Water website.  

The starting point is Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7HF; Vauxhall is the nearest tube station. Muster is at 11:00 a.m.; the march is set to begin at 11:45 a.m. The FAQs for the event can be found here.

There are millions of people who have their ears open to ideas about how to stop the pollution of the rivers, the poisoning of the lakes and the despoliation of the coasts as well as how to end the rampant price gouging and profiteering of the water companies.

Socialists need to engage in this debate.  Polls show that consistently large majorities believe that essential service and utilities should be operated in the interests of the public and not big business. In June 2023, YouGov asked “Do you think water companies should be nationalised and run in the public sector, or privatised and run by private companies?” Eight per cent said it should remain in private hands, with 69 per cent favouring public control. There are majorities across all parties who want water to be brought back into public control.

The lesson from history, though, is that old-style nationalisation will not deliver workers and public control. Instead, it just delivers Parliamentary control. So socialists need to place themselves inside the March for Clean Water coalition and help radicalise the coalition by calling for the democratic public ownership of the water industry under the control of the workers who deliver water and the consumers who use it - not Parliament.

We should not expect the March for Clean Water organisers, no matter how angry they are about the water disaster, to build a coalition that brings together environmentalists, workers and customers. It will be up to socialists to deliver a campaign focused on reaching the workers in the industry who will benefit from an end to private ownership, as well as people in low income areas who will feel the coming inevitable rises the most. But this won’t happen if we don’t take ecosocialist action.

See you on the March for Clean Water on November 3rd!

If you are interested in taking socialist action on environmental issues, then come to the 2024 Eco-socialism Conference 2024: see here or https://www.ecosocialism-conference.org/ on December 7 on London or online. You can register here: https://www.ecosocialism-conference.org/ and/or make a donation to support the event : https://app.collectionpot.com/pot/ecosocialism-conference-2024

Will McMahon is a long-time activist in the socialist left —— he was a leading member of Socialist Alliance and Respect — and has a particular interest in ecology and socialism. https://talkingaboutsocialism.org/

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Meanwhile across the pond there will be an election two weeks from today.

On Tuesday, 5 November, voters in the United States of America go to the polls to choose their next president, Harris or Trump. But finding progressive, let alone radical commentary and analysis on this election in the mainstream media in the UK is next to impossible.

So today we are passing on a substack written a few days ago by the excellent US journalist Chris Hedges.  His piece is called:  

“The Choice this Election is between Corporate and Oligarchic Power

There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose.”

Read it here or: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-choice-this-election-is-between

And do have a watch of the very funny --- and frightening --- video of Harris (see “nonsensical ramblings”) that Chris links to near the end of his piece.   

I am a paid subscriber to Chris’ substack. Why not consider becoming one yourself?

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Edited by Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber:  http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe

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