At the end of last month, the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race took place on the River Thames. It’s a familiar part of the calendar of British life, one of those events that holds a mirror up to this society, with all its strange traditions and odd new habits.
This year, it was more revealing than usual, when the losing Oxford crew complained that several of its members had come down with stomach bugs, thought to be related to the high levels of E coli in the river as a result of sewage dumping.
The more it rains in England, the more the water companies pour sewage into the rivers. This year, it has rained almost incessantly. February and March were among the wettest months on record. Which means rivers are more polluted than ever.
Of course, water companies aren’t supposed to pour sewage into rivers. They do it because if they get caught, it’s cheaper to pay the fines than to invest in the infrastructure required to avoid polluting rivers.
As a consequence of water and sewerage privatisation in 1989, towards the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, England (not Scotland or Wales) is one of the few countries in the world in which those industries are controlled by foreign capital. It is estimated that 72% of the industry is owned and controlled by foreign companies and shareholders.
All of which means that we now have the dirtiest and most dangerous rivers in Europe, and our beaches are often in a polluted state, too.
When it eventually stops raining and the temperature heats up, there will be signs right across the country advising swimmers not to enter the water.
Thames Water, a company that has changed hands between various foreign investors, has run up billions of pounds in debt while paying out billions in dividends to private shareholders.
And now it has announced that it will not invest money, required under regulation, unless it’s allowed to ramp up charges for customers who are already utterly fed up.
The company is threatening to risk bankruptcy unless it is backed by the government. But supporting this polluting water industry is like pouring money down the drain. Literally.
We may complain about the weather in Britain – indeed, it’s a national pastime – but we are fortunate in that we have a vast resource of water, or at least should have.
There should be many more reservoirs, flood protections and some kind of national water grid. Instead, we have grown accustomed to annual floods in many regions, followed by summer water shortages and hosepipe bans.
Six years ago, I walked along some of the amazing chalk streams of southern England with Feargal Sharkey, the former singer of the Undertones. He has become an outspoken water activist, bringing attention to the environmental disaster that has befallen England’s rivers. He told me that only 14% then reached good ecological standards. The situation has since deteriorated.
In many respects, the state of England’s rivers is a perfect metaphor for the dangers of unfettered capitalism. The privatisation dream was that the market would take care of everything, delivering a cheaper, better product for all concerned.
But markets require competition to work, and you can’t have competition with water and sewerage. Water isn’t a commercial product. It’s a vital resource for everyone.
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is 190 years old but the line has increasing relevance in 21st-century England. For the privatised water industry, to borrow another phrase from Coleridge, has become an albatross around the nation’s neck.
