3. The Warning after “The World Tonight”
When Pontypool’s value to the toxic waste trade was escalating in the late 1980’s, the everyday presence of foreign waste consignments on local roads increasingly attracted my attention. Since most details of the waste shipments were kept as a commercial secret, inspecting the arrivals up-close was the best way for me to learn more about the material. By following vehicles with unusually marked containers or chemical tanks, I learned of lay-bys and side roads where they would sometimes park-up. Typically, at dusk, I’d stop my car out of sight and then tiptoe around a resting vehicle whilst rapidly noting down the haulier, the shipping company, any foreign markings I could find and the code for the type of substance. Occasionally I could quickly deduce the specific chemical and the source of the material but more often the jottings from my evening investigations were only pieces in a jigsaw. That’s when I began my fruitful association with the local authority. It was Torfaen Borough Council’s job to process the paperwork for incoming waste and to ensure the information was kept under wraps. One day I questioned an environmental health officer more than usual, about a particularly interesting looking consignment. He said: “I suppose if you ask me a direct question I’ll have to answer it” and I did so, using the information I’d already obtained to extract a series of yes/no answers. The breakthrough in methodology helped me discover the worldwide web of waste of which Pontypool was the hub.
As time went by I progressed from sneaking around lay-bys in dim light and surreptitiously soliciting information, to asking foreign governments’ point-blank questions about their long-term plans for toxic waste. By various means I discovered locations abroad where nasty chemicals and the public living near them were becoming jittery, as their politicians grew desperate for solutions. One notorious stockpile of PCB waste in Quebec was a potential Pontypool payload, though in January 1989 the Canadian government assured me that it would not be exported.Then in the summer of that that year I was shocked to learn that the Quebec waste was beginning to leave Montreal for Pontypool, and the ensuing controversy stemmed from the breaking of the Government’s promise to me. The interview for The World Tonight was recorded remotely in the local Cwmbran studio of BBC’s Radio Gwent on 9th August. In the afternoon of the day the Khudozhnik Saryan had been hassled by Greenpeace on its arrival at Tilbury docks, I sat wearing headphones in Cwmbran and speaking to Michael Woodhead in London. In the broadcast of the recording at 10 pm, anchor-man Alexander MacLeod introduced the interview and set the scene by stating that toxic waste imports to the UK had increased twenty-fold in the last eight years. Then Woodhead began the long interview by asking me about events at Tilbury, before he turned his attention to our local push to prevent the 1500 tonnes of dioxin contaminated Canadian PCB waste coming to Pontypool.
By then I’d become accustomed to anticipating media questions and planning answers which would convey the key campaigning points. Not only that, I was confident that I could do it with an accuracy that would make it difficult for Rechem’s legal hawks to get me, even if it drove hell into them. I also knew that my comments simply wouldn’t be broadcast if I said anything considered risky by the ultra-sensitive BBC, who had already given in to one ReChem writ. As always, my dilemma was that whilst it was easy to be legal, it wasn’t easy to tell the whole truth and still be legal, so I’d become accustomed to sailing close to the wind. For that crucial interview, which I knew would go world-wide, I needed to make a number of points that the BBC would see fit to broadcast but which would still have a strong impact on international opinions. With no room for error, I crafted every point I wanted to convey before I went into the studio and I kept the words in my head waiting for an appropriate trigger from the interviewer.Most importantly, whilst some theoretical aspects of the issue could have provided a safe platform to speak on endlessly, here I wanted to emphasise the reality of living with the incinerator, so as to kill Canadian presumptions that Pontypool provided a perfect solution to their problems. I also wanted the Canadian and British governments to know what they were up against if the movement of the waste continued.
ReChem had proved invincible in the legal arena but the company had steadily been losing the popularity contest. For five years, I’d helped educate the media about the chemistry, toxicology, technology, law and the politics of the toxic waste management. In the beginning it was hard work, cold-calling journalists and trying to interest them in this new subject until, by 1989, there was growing enlightenment in the media and the telephone traffic was now in my direction. The subject could be complex but the issues covered on The World Tonight were quite simple. Neither the BBC nor I wanted to talk about chemistry, toxicology, intricacies of incinerator design or the small print of international regulation. The spotlight was on our campaign, its motivations and our intentions in relation to incoming Canadian waste. My main aim was to counter the propaganda from industry and government which portrayed Britain as having the answer to the prayers of overseas politicians who were looking for a quick fix. After the interview I was happy that my comments were a fair reflection of the way we saw things, whilst local, litigious, incineration company took issue with both the BBC and me.
Personalised legal approaches from ReChem weren’t entirely new to me, as I’d first been threatened with court action soon after I started campaigning. ReChem was then part of the huge British Electric Traction group and the company clearly had top-drawer legal assistance. As early as November 1985, B.E.T.’s lawyers, Nabarro Nathanson, wanted me make an undertaking to “… forthwith cease attacks on our client or its subsidiaries” or else face legal proceedings. I didn’t make the undertaking, I didn’t cease attacks and though no further legal action followed at the time, I knew I was a marked man. A couple of mistaken enquiries from the police in connection with criminal activities suspected of being linked to the campaign also helped keep me on my toes. However, I always felt secure in the belief that my criticisms were justified and I also enjoyed the thought that, in not having as much as a speeding fine or a parking ticket against my name, I had far less to feel guilty about than the incinerator company had. Whilst I can’t pretend that the feeling of being under constant scrutiny was pleasant, the upside was that the attention served to sharpen my senses.
The image of ReChem’s incinerator burning waste from all over the world, in the hollow of a valley and surrounded by thousands of homes, had been widely publicised locally and nationally. Sometimes public concern over birth defects in the locality was reported. A first phase of Rechem’s litigation, that which occurred shortly after I became involved in the campaign, had already succeeded in making much of the media painfully timorous. With the coming of the Canadian waste in 1989 the legal action against me became only one of a new batch of writs.One prominent journalist said: “ReChem issues writs like Clint Eastwood bullets” and Bootle MP Alan Roberts, the only other non-corporate defendant against a ReChem writ, spoke disparagingly in Parliament of a total of 14 legal actions taken by ReChem. My own records showed that these included actions against The BBC, Thames Television, Channel Four, Express Newspapers, Scarlet TV, The Guardian, Farmers Weekly, The Western Mail, Red Dragon Radio, Gwent Broadcasting, Greenpeace and The Mirror Group. The action against the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ in 1985 lasted nearly two years before the BBC conceded and provided a famous apology for the company. It brought dismay to the local community, terrified public bodies and cramped any future media coverage of the controversy.
On the time-line of ups and downs in campaigning, the 1987 apology over Newsnight, and the BBC’s payment of £50,000 costs, was for me the lowest point but my feelings over the setback helped sustain me when my own turn to be sued came along. ReChem’s defeat of the BBC followed Newsnight’s suggestion, in 1985, that the incinerator fell short of its claims in the destruction of PCBs. After the retraction and apology, there was reluctance for anyone to depict even the theoretical possibility that even the smallest amount of toxic material could escape from the Pontypool plant. Thereafter, with any talk of environmental contamination by ReChem was off-limits, I still tried to keep that idea of alive, although I didn’t dare mention it on the radio when discussing the Canadian waste in 1989.
Before beginning the interview, I had received the customary caution about ReChem’s widespread use of litigation before, which I politely acknowledged. Whilst taking this in my stride, it was always sad for me to see such a powerful organisation showing more fear than I thought was necessary or healthy. In the long interview I then gave about the Canadian waste I said nothing unmeasured or unintended and, although I knew I was close to the edge, the interview was recorded and would have been vetted.There was no subsequent concern shown to me by the BBC over what I had said and the BBC didn’t inform me about the nature of ReChem’s complaint. I expected it to be about me rather than because of anything Michael Woodhead had said and details only came to me in a letter from solicitors Nabarro Nathanson, where three of my comments were quoted and complained of:
1. This material is extremely toxic, it is coming over thousands of miles of sea and land, being handled many times, and, worst of all, coming to an incinerator in Pontypool which smells and smokes – and has done for the last 15 years.
2.As far as we’re concerned it’s a second rate activity.
3. But if in any way those containers are offloaded and set on the road on their way to ReChem at Pontypool, we’re going to make sure that they don’t get through those gates without a good fight.
I was up against stern opposition in decrying the prevailing position and amongst those who thought differently from me was Sir Hugh Rossi, chairman of the all-party parliamentary Environment Committee. In February, the committee’s 3-volume report on waste incineration had been released and in a long interview at the time the Canadian shipments were hitting the headlines, on Radio’s Jimmy Young Show Sir Hugh spoke proudly of his committee’s nine-month study, saying there were: “. . . really no worries” and “ . . . no problems”. His view was of “. . . pressure groups behaving somewhat hysterically.”
I didn’t think my comments were hysterical. Once, when shrouded in a chemical stink as I stood alongside a BBC presenter at the gates of the Pontypool plant, I asked whether she would comment on the experience: “We’re not allowed to say it smells” she said. Though not wishing to get the BBC into trouble I was determined to mention “smell” in my piece on the radio and I admit that I did it with a sense of mischievous satisfaction. I also wanted it to be clear that the Pontypool process was one that Canadians would find unacceptable to themselves and which was being sustained by misunderstanding in Canada coupled with deficient regulation in Britain. I chose the term “second-rate” to counter our own Government’s portrayal of Rechem’s “high standard technology” in the Canadian media, as well as to pour scorn on waste management philosophy, since the British government’s view supported a Quebec Environment Minister’s statement that “Exportation of PCBs is the solution as of today”.I also wanted my criticisms to operate on two levels, with underlying implications about the science of incineration. My glib-sounding “second rate activity” contained coded communication about chemistry and about my confidence in comprehending the consequences of the Pontypool process.Although not included in the legal letter, in the broadcast I had extended the term “second rate activity”, into the broader “sitting in a second rate regulatory system”. I wanted to show that low regulatory standards were systemic in Britain and that the problems I perceived in the operation of the incinerator were a consequence of those poor standards. I even thought my derogatory description of regulation might be taken as a compliment by certain political factions who actually didn’t want regulation to be good at interfering with business.Of course, using the term “second-rate” in any sense was contentious, but I had bargained that the company might not want to put that to the test - because we both knew that the Pontypool incineration plant wasn’t performing to its promises and because Rechem’s management would have known that we shared some secrets about dioxins and PCBs.
The third comment of complaint simply told of our intended action. When including the word “fight”, I meant it to be in the dictionary sense of “striving vigorously and resolutely”, but I wouldn’t have been unhappy if it conveyed the image of passive human resistance. Perhaps ReChem had aligned my “fight” with more militant local voices, such as Brian Maurice, a Gwent County Councillor who called for the Council to provide bulldozers to block the Canadian waste. His colleague and Planning Committee Chairman John Pembridge wanted “a ring of machines and people” around the plant. All in all, I believed I had reflected public opinion only modestly when speaking of “smell”, “smoke”, “second rate” and “fight”.
Nabarro Nathanson’s letter demanded that I would never repeat the quoted comments and asked me to make a written apology for giving a false and misleading impression. It required me to undertake not to further interfere with the activities of ReChem and to provide proposals for damages as well as to pay legal costs within 14 days and confirm my acceptance of those demands by 17th August. It was on that date that the BBC’s apology was confirmed in ReChem’s press release headed: THE WORLD TONIGHT – BBC APOLOGISES TO RECHEM. In it the company reproduced the apology read out on the radio by Alexander MacLeod, and which ended:
. . . its activities are conducted under the most stringent safety regulations and that none of the independent reports on its operations have linked ReChem with any hazard whatsoever to the environment or to the health of people or animals. We acknowledge that there are no grounds for impugning the safety and efficiency of ReChem’s incineration process and we apologise for any alarm our programme may have caused.
I was devastated by the hasty, profuse apology from the BBC. I still wasn’t aware of complaints from ReChem about anything the presenters had said and so I had to assume that the BBC’s apology was for broadcasting the words I had spoken. I thought that, at least, the BBC could have informed me of their response and perhaps explained what aspects of the broadcast it related to.Why should the BBC need to mention the health of people or animals in the apology? I hadn’t done that and the programme’s presenters hadn’t. I took the apology as a proxy withdrawal of my comments by the BBC as well as another propaganda victory for Rechem.
I reflected on the interview and also on what I’d avoided saying. It was important that in my responses, I made sure that I didn’t go so far as to say ReChem were contravening the regulations. I would have been on dangerous ground with that because there weren’t many regulations to contravene. Neither did I mention that unspeakable idea of environmental contamination, nor did I make any allegations about health. At the time those were aspects of the issue that were appropriate only for lengthy discussion and not capable of being addressed in sound-bites without being bitten back. In stating that in my view it was a “second rate activity”, I wasn’t making a slack or cheap shot or lashing out from a feeling of frustration. It was simply to counteract our government’s portrayal of the whole business as a wholesome business. The comment would have been unnecessary if our officials had admitted themselves that the Pontypool process was technically deficient.It also reflected a strong local consensus that arose out of the public’s experience with the incinerator and which no amount of company propaganda or official approval could change. If our everyday assessment of the plant and its emissions was second rate, or worse, then why shouldn’t we say so?In addition to encompassing the regulatory dimension and the everyday distress caused by emissions, with that comment I wanted to dent the company’s claim that the plant was a “state of the art facility”, with “no smell, no smoke and fail-safe systems of operation”, though I was careful not to say “second rate company” since that might carry additional implications. I certainly believed that “second rate activity, sitting in a second rate regulatory system” was justifiable and that ReChem wouldn’t have been surprised by it coming from me. If only I’d been consulted by the BBC before their apology, I might have given the BBC’s legal experts some reasons for resistance. Now where did it leave me, when the broadcasting company most identified with Britishness, undermined our campaign against another country’s toxic waste by implying that I had been wrong in my criticisms? To lift myself above despair, I mused that if I was ultimately going to be sued then it would be far more satisfying for me to win whilst carrying the handicap of the BBC’s surrender.
In a letter to the Director General, Michael Checkland, I wrote my opinion of the BBC’s action, informing him that I would neither be bullied into submission, nor retract the truth. I explained the validity of my remarks and pleaded that I was reflecting the views of thousands of people in a community which experienced the everyday reality of the smelly, smoky incinerator. I asked for an explanation of the BBC’s position from the Director General. I didn’t get the explanation but I did receive a High Court writ from Rechem.