Boycotts and Renationalisation – the Future of Water Companies?
FELICITY LAURENCE
With national news focussing on the recent revelations about Thames Water’s likely collapse – and the huge profits they have been raking in for so long – people across the country are speaking and acting out against privatised water. Campaign group Led by Donkeys’ projection onto Thames Water headquarters (“It’s a Con”) sums up the entire house of cards that the privatisation of water has turned out to be.
Meanwhile, back in Sussex, HIP has been relentlessly documenting Southern Water’s ongoing torrent of sewage into our local waterways and the sea. The company’s continued reluctance to inform service users about any action they may be taking to rectify countless problems with their service, topped by their recently leaked plans to raise our bills by 73%, only confirm the damning account of its failures, blisteringly exemplified in Lucy Brown’s piece Has Southern Water Dumped Its Last Load? (HIP 228).
We Won’t Pay a Criminal Organisation
In mounting rage about the same behaviour from Southern Water and their contemptuous disregard for the collective health of us all, a number of our fellow Hastonians decided that they can no longer pay for the wastewater section of their water bills.
In We Won’t Pay for Environmental Vandalism (HIP 225), they described Southern Water’s abysmal failure to invest in infrastructure, and its 2021 conviction for corporate crime following the Environment Agency’s criminal investigation. Colossal fines were incurred by the errant water company. But it was the anguish expressed in the eloquent declarations from the article’s contributors that convinced me – as someone who had long been considering this course of action – to finally join them.
The story was rapidly picked up by BBC South East, who interviewed those who had participated in the article. The ensuing report attracted BBC news coverage, and was followed by further interviews, including on ITV’s Meridian, and BBC Radio Sussex.
We have had escalating contact with boycotters around the country, especially in Kent, where Southern Water is particularly notorious (among other things) for its calamitous effects upon the oyster trade in Whitstable. Indeed, as I write, Good Law Project is in the High Court supporting the Marine Conservation Society, Richard Haward’s Oysters, and the surfer and activist Hugo Tagholm, in their challenge to government policy on sewage spills. Good Law will be invoking an ancient legal principle, the Public Trust Doctrine, which proclaims the state’s duty to protect our vital natural resources and to hold these in trust for our children and theirs.
Time to Take Action?
As public interest in the poor management of our water supply intensified, concerned citizens set up boycottwaterbills.com, which already records over 1200 unique visits. The website gives information and advice on boycotting, but also about actions short of a boycott, and – crucially – what to be aware of before embarking on any action.
The decision to boycott remains a very personal choice for the individual, after weighing up all the facts. As explained on the website, there are risks that many people are simply not in a position to take. The site also hosts a rich resources section that includes links to the fabulous online community newspaper Whitstable Views, and its stash of inspirational and informative articles.
A subsequent online meeting attended by local people from Hastings, and others from across the country, reviewed responses from water companies and other agencies to boycotters and their letters of complaint. From everywhere came the same stories of poisoned waterways and corporate indifference.
Recent episodes of BBC’s Question Time (QT) have added fuel to the fire. During the QT held in Bexhill on 11 May, the LBC broadcaster and panellist Nick Ferrari offered a solution to the whole debacle that would “solve [it] at a stroke”– namely, a law decreeing that any chief executive who continues dumping sewage in our waterways be jailed for five years! Amidst the applause there was of course the very serious recollection that the Government’s own Environment Agency has called for the same thing – although without the suggestion of a five year limit…
A gentleman of very respectable bearing then made the bombshell suggestion: “I say we should be legally allowed to withhold the money for the wastewater,” which was again greeted with tumultuous applause and Nick Ferrari’s exclamation – twice! – of “That’s a good idea!”
How can companies profit from a human right?
In recent days, with the sharpening spotlight deriving from the Thames Water debacle, the apparently taboo notion of renationalisation has leapt centre stage. Frankie Green pinpoints this in her brilliant article No Pride in Sewage Pollution (whitstableviews.com), noting, “Why water should be commodified as a business at all is the larger question being increasingly asked.”
QT gives a sense of where the public is at right now, given that the audience is always selected according to the wider national electoral patterns. On 29 June, in QT Exeter, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s passionate declaration that “my heart absolutely says that it’s time to re-nationalise the water companies” was met with visible agreement across the audience.
Decrying the “incredibly cynical business model”, Hugh also asserted that the privatised for-profit model is a “busted flush,” quoting legal precedent in stating that we do not need to compensate shareholders if water is renationalised.
This is just a snippet of what’s going on right now – the sense of a fightback finally taking hold, of a huge beast stirring itself to get up and go on the rampage to knock down the whole edifice of profit and privatisation of the very stuff of life itself. This cry from the heart is echoing across the country – as captured in Hastings boycotter Laura Coppin’s simple yet devastating one liner:
“The moment something that’s not only a basic human right but a right of all living things is put into a for-profit system, the whole thing is broken.”
It rained last night. And, like clockwork, sewage was discharged for over four hours into the sea at St Leonards. Southern Water’s Beachbuoy confirms that this was a ‘genuine’ release…
Boycotters Declare
The direction of travel can be gleaned in the declarations of people currently withholding payment. Here are some of them.
“We watch in horror the confluence of rising tides of filth in our seas and waves of the monumental greed of those responsible. As the crisis worsens civil disobedience, boycotts, lobbying and protests grow. These time-honoured and creative tactics are called for when mendacious corporations, governments and politicians cannot be trusted to protect the water on which all life depends […] I suggest that any reasonable person would understand the justification and need for citizens boycotting bills.”
Frankie Green,
writer
“Your lack of care and empathy for our countryside, the creatures that live within our rivers and seas and the health of your customers sickens me, and I will not put money into the pockets of greedy, uncaring, overseas shareholders until it stops! I, along with many others in the UK, am withholding all payments until you stop polluting our rivers and seas, killing our wildlife and poisoning people who use those waterways. People are waking up to you at last and we are fighting back.”
Matt Marlow,
Chair of the River Anglers Conservation Group
“Southern Water is a criminal company, cited by Ofwat as having employed a “shocking” level of deception with its own customers – so why should we trust its promises for reform? I refuse to reward criminal activity with payment and consider water privatisation to be a toxic failure.
“I want the government to take back state control in the same way it was forced to do with Network Rail when rail safety was compromised by privatisation. This is not only possible – it’s necessary. “
Julie Wassmer,
author
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