6. At Liverpool Docks
Prior to the Quebec controversy, Canada was already in our bad books as the largest exporter of toxic waste to Wales and I wasn’t the only one keeping a close watch on Canadian affairs. Pontypool political activist David Miller had been alerting British Dockers to the Canadian shipments, an avenue of enlightenment that was to prove crucial. Then, the crescendo of interest that followed the disclosure of Canada’s broken promise provided the platform for a breakthrough. In my long “Letter to the People of Canada”, which I delivered on my long walk around London I wanted to show that the issue wasn’t just about waste but about people, too, and that ordinary people on the other side of the Atlantic could help to change the course of events in Britain. Fortunately, I was able to give the issue so much attention from the end of July in 1989 because several years earlier I had left my job industry to take up teaching and I could take advantage of the summertime school holidays. From the start, those holidays were hectic. I settled into a routine of rising at 4.30 each morning to organise campaign correspondence and deal with any domestic matters before the telephone began ringing and visitors started arriving.Luckily for me the burden was soon being shared with the freshly-formed group of mothers and children from New Inn. My own campaigning group, STEAM, established in 1984, was a loosely-knit collection of people, each pursuing the issue from an individual angle and becoming collectively active only when the situation demanded. We had no formal organisation and couldn’t pretend to be democratically representative, but we had amassed a strong following through our pulses of activity and our tactics would have unsettled Rechem and the regulators.
The informality of our organisation was partly due to understanding the legal risks of collective responsibility in the climate that existed at the time.It turned out to be good judgement since our amorphous identity did mean that the immanent action by Rechem, against me, couldn’t be followed through to others in STEAM.In addition to the legal advantage, another attraction of working as disparate individuals was that we attracted information from people who wouldn’t have wanted to be mentioned at formal meetings where minutes were taken and records kept. With official channels of information being so dry, such leaks were invaluable and I learned to appreciate the value of spying. Often, the information obtained from informers was of no use directly, since I couldn’t risk drawing attention to its source, but it allowed me to prise out into the open the things I already knew secretly. From time to time I had the strange feeling of being alone in knowing what was going to be next week’s news.
As well as raising awareness nationally, the publicity surrounding STEAM’s activities had been the main method of informing the New Inn community of developments in the ReChem issue, but in the summer of 1989 I felt a little out of place when the torrent of journalists began arriving at my home several miles from the incinerator.Not living in New Inn I had no official links with the local authority that had been saddled with the legacy of a 1972 planning decision to site the incinerator. STEAM constantly risked treading on toes in local politics and could easily be accused of being elitist and unrepresentative. There remained the original anti-ReChem protest group, the Panteg Environmental Protection Association (PEPA) but it seemed that they had fired their best shots in earlier years. With Canada’s waste was getting closer to Pontypool by the hour, there really needed to be a louder voice from the local community. A small number of neighbours living on the main road near the incinerator had recently formed the Newport Road Action Group (NAG) and had made an impact in their own way, but a larger, cohesive community identity was badly needed to oppose the Canadian imports.With perfect timing, into the breach stepped the band of local mothers and their children. First named Mothers and Children Against ReChem, but soon broadened to Mothers and Children Against Toxic Waste (MACATw), the group immediately earned respect and attracted support. They filled the gap in campaigning credibility and cultivated a productive rapport with both regulatory officials and their political representatives. Their home-grown, family image produced a new identity for the campaign and one that was to prove invaluable in the international arena in the coming years.
The group owed its origin to a chance encounter in New Inn, where young parents Debbie and Robert Rees were out walking little Ashley in his push-chair, when they bumped into Anne and Ivor Probert. Ivor had been one of my earliest links in New Inn and I kept close to him. When the ReChem controversy motivated him to become a local Councillor we both enjoyed the fruits of our covert exchanges of information.As it often was in social encounters at the time, the Canadian waste was a catalyst for conversation amongst the two pairs of walkers on that early August evening in Woodfield Road. The chance encounter led to the formation of the mothers group, with Debbie herself, Krystyne Turner, Jane Kopec, Liz Gray, Carol Fisher, Jane Mellor, Wendy Mahoney and Margaret Twinam among the first members. They organised meetings, mounted a new series of demonstrations and together we planned the momentous trip to Liverpool docks.The image of young mothers and children protesting against toxic waste imports was a powerful one it soon leapt from New Inn to Canada. Quebec’s Agent Generale in London, Reed Scowen, tried to pacify Pontypool protestors but a communiqué from him on August 11th, which relied on the UK government’s stance, only fanned the flames. It stated: “. . . those who made these commitments to us only a few days ago now act as if they do not exist, we feel in other words as if you should keep your word.”There were two glaringly provocative points in that statement. One was the audacity of the official asking us to stick to a promise we had never made and after his country had just broken its own word. The other, and equally insulting, was Scowen’s acceptance of the British Government’s assurance that the waste was acceptable to the people of South Wales. In overlooking the fact that Westminster was not in Wales he angered the local community and he was very fortunate to be many miles away from a bursting, boisterous meeting at the Panteg Village Hall, when his remarks were torn to shreds. I remember Ivor Probert leading the charge, with a fine demonstration of constructive contempt. After that meeting, local opposition to the waste increasingly pervaded the streets, audibly and visually, with the impact of the mother’s group noticeable everywhere.
The mothers motivated me to mass-produce slogans and images characterising different aspects of the campaign. Windows of homes then displayed the skull and crossbones inside the Canadian flag’s maple leaf, and a simple illustration of a Soviet waste ship decorated lamp-posts along main roads.However, my own attempts at imagery were overshadowed by the emblem of the moment, which was provided by two children. I made a postcard from their work and had it printed in the thousands. The image was an illustration by little Kayte Fisher, showing ReChem’s stack enveloped in scribble of smoke. Elizabeth Mellor provided the stirring message. Her handwriting, across the drawing on the card said “I like people from all over the world but I don’t like their waste. Elizabeth age 6”.This message that was initially aimed at Canada was to go much further around the world in time to come.
Our decision to go to Liverpool was spontaneous, but deciding when to go wasn’t. It was easy to discover when the first vessel in the series was originally scheduled to arrive, but because it appeared to be trying to avoid the spotlight, nothing about its intended journey could now be taken for granted. As I kept track of the Nadezhda Obukhova, I knew that to get our Liverpool protest to coincide with the boat’s arrival I needed to keep abreast of its position at sea. That proved more than difficult, as our own plans appeared to influence the vessel’s route. I established that this first Russian vessel left Montreal on 2nd August. Behind it was the Khudozhnik Pakhomov, having departed on the 8th and then due to leave on the 15th was the Khudozhnik Repin.The first vessel appeared to be buffeted by the media storm as well as by a docks strike that had occurred in Liverpool. The earlier, unconnected, Khudozhnik Sarayan had itself been diverted to Tilbury because of striking Liverpool dockers. It became impossible to predict the Nadezhda Obukhova’s course, as updates from different sources grew ever more contradictory.I heard that it was going to Rotterdam, then that it had docked in Bremerhaven. There was no guarantee that it would arrive in Liverpool on any particular day, or even if it would arrive in Liverpool at all. One report said that Balt Lines’ Leningrad management were getting nervous and that the vessel’s Rotterdam agent had already indicated that the waste would be returned to Canada, whilst the International Maritime Bureau claimed that Britain was obligated to unload the cargo in Britain. There was even a news report that our trip to Liverpool had been called off, which was disinformation we could have done without. There was also an equally unbelievable snippet of news saying that Mersey Docks management weren’t going to let the waste be offloaded in Liverpool. That seemed disingenuous since I knew that 1000 tonnes of PCBs had been offloaded there during the past year and I didn’t let the story distract me.Hourly radio news broadcasts and phone calls from sources including Greenpeace meant that I had to judge between honest inaccuracies, deliberate disinformation, pure speculation and reality. Fortunately I placed most reliance on the Greenpeace reports, then partly by assessing the balance of probabilities and partly through intuition I worked out that Wednesday 16th August gave us the greatest chance of giving the Nadezhda Obukhova a reception at the dockside in Liverpool.
A pavement sign outside Linda Phillip’s wool shop, on the main road through New Inn, helped people to book places on the trip, which P.E.P.A. sponsored out of money from the group’s fund-raising activities. After a photo-call outside the public hall. Two full coaches with four generations of people on board left South Wales early on that Wednesday in mid-August. My wife Denise and our two children came on the trip too, after helping me make many new campaigning posters and placards. The windows of the bus displayed Pontypool Poison Protest as well as the adulterated Canadian flag accompanied by messages in the Welsh language. The displays attracted audible support from others on the roads and there were times when we felt part of a motorway convoy. At a service station en route, we were joined on board by a BBC Wales TV crew containing presenter Tim Rogers. Tim was the first broadcaster to get close to the action that day and he would have been the envy of the media entourage awaiting us in Liverpool. His insight impressed me. He saw what I saw: not just a band of protestors but a united community on the move against toxic waste. Yet, with a huge diversity of personal characteristics and an age span of about eighty years, our campaigning contingent looked more like a church outing to the seaside than a “small army of protestors”, which was a description of some campaigners given by the London Evening Standard a week earlier.
Our first port of call in Liverpool was the trade union headquarters, Transport House, where I’d arranged to meet the Liverpool dockers’ leaders. I knew Jimmy Symes was on our side and by now, Liverpool MEP Ken Stewart was amongst those also calling for the dockers to boycott the Canadian waste. After our coaches pulled up we were given a warm welcome and we were all invited inside the building. We then spoke formally, with messages of mutual support, before mingling and enjoying the timely refreshments. In the previous weeks there had been strong signs that the dockers would respond to our call but I knew that they were under strong management pressure not to intervene. It was only upon meeting them in the flesh that day, when that my anxieties disappeared and I knew that our trip would not be in vain. There were numerous other parties who we were asking to influence the fate of the waste but when I left Transport House I was confident that, today, no other help would be needed.
The sight at the Royal Seaforth Container terminal was staggering. There was no sign of the Soviet ship but there was a sea of broadcasters, many of them foreign, with cameras and microphones at the ready. Already at home in my mother’s birthplace of Liverpool, and in the shadow of dockyard cranes like those of my childhood in Newport, I felt even more comfortable when I spotted two of my Aunts in the local reception party. They were my mothers’ sisters Ann and Nell, with Ann’s husband Bill. There was also support from activists connected with the evolving UK-wide organisation called Communities Against Toxics, with my campaigning colleagues Ralph Ryder and Liz Jeffries among them. Stepping down from the coach, I was beset by the media and I soon saw the need to be selective. Underneath it all, our protest wasn’t just about Canada. We wanted it to highlight all toxic waste exports and in doing that we needed to reach out to overseas governments more than to our own.Therefore I put foreign media people first, with one exception. The exception in my selection of media priorities was Sky TV and that was for a good reason.It wasn’t just that the Sky presenter pleaded with me to be at her mobile transmitting station in ten minutes, where I could see the huge crane and dish at the dockside. Her guarantee was that the broadcast would be live, as the first item on the three o’clock news. Being live was the key.
It was now a week on from the Tilbury action and my interview on the World Tonight.I was still unaware of the legal letter on my doormat at home although I was acutely aware of the increasingly hostile legal climate. Perhaps my ignorance of what awaited my return was a blessing, because I had something in my mind for Sky TV that may not have surfaced otherwise.I’d been trusted by the media because they knew that I understood how far I could go in my criticisms. But I bought that trust with a price. The price was that I couldn’t tell the whole truth. The opportunity presented by Sky in Liverpool was different. In previous encounters with Sky I’d been impressed by the refreshing attitude. I didn’t find the presenters entirety fearless but neither did I find them scared stiff of Rechem. True to form, the presenter this time didn’t go over the top with warnings so I was inclined to spell-out some of the scientific truth that was otherwise impossible to get aired and which I had kept in store for such a moment. By being live it would be hard for anyone to interfere with. As three o’clock drew near I hurried along the dockside in the direction of the big dish on the towering mobile crane, to confront an unexpected practical challenge. After the practicalities had been explained to me I climbed a ladder high onto the roof of a telecommunications lorry and leant into the strong wind. I was already conscious of the need to keep my balance amongst the paraphernalia on top of the vehicle before I heard calls of “Be careful” from below. Behind me was the whole of the dock but no Russian vessel.
For a number of reasons, the interview for the three o’clock news was a test of concentration. A clutter of cables at my feet made it difficult for me to stabilise myself in the wind and I was worried that the up-coming news could be about a protestor falling off a lorry. As I kept reminding myself of where my feet were in relation to the cables I looked into the lens of a camera and I was given an earpiece linked to the presenter who sat in a nearby vehicle on the road below. Pointing at me, the camera then looked over the road running into the container terminal and out into the dock itself. Over the water, on the far side of the dock, lay the opening for vessels entering the port from the River Mersey.
I was told that music would introduce the news, but lorries were flying out of the terminal with such a din that I couldn’t even tell if the earpiece was working. With only seconds to go there was some scurrying around by a technician at my feet, following which I managed to catch a few notes of music before I detected the faint, intermittent voice of the presenter in my ear. I concentrated on keeping my footing on the roof of the lorry whilst fixing my eyes on the camera and straining at the small sounds from the earpiece, all the time remembering what I wanted to say. Then my fellow protestors started chanting below. Consequently I heard very little of the presenter’s questions but just enough of her words to trigger my prepared responses.Amongst those responses was my point that I wanted people overseas to understand that sending their waste to us wasn’t the solution they’d been tricked into believing it was. Then I said something I had never said before on air. I said that toxic waste importation wasn’t a solution because some of the poisons from the waste would find their way into our homes, our gardens, our bodies and our children. Although scientifically true, that comment would have been ruled out by most of the media. The BBC would have been apoplectic at the thought of it.For their courage in allowing me the freedom, the Sky team were rewarded with a visual feast. As I was speaking I couldn’t turn around, but from the excitement below I could tell something was happening in the distance behind me. When the interview finished I turned to discover what the fuss was all about. I saw that the camera facing me was now picking-up the words BALT-ORIENT LINES and the name Nadezhda Obukhova in Cyrillic script, as the 15,000 ton container vessel sailed slowly through the opening into the harbour, as if on cue. The ships namesake was a famous mezzo-soprano who performed in the Soviet Union’s first radio concert in 1922 and now her name was re-appearing on an even bigger stage.
We dealt with more media, did more demonstrating, handed port officials a letter for the boat’s captain and then went off to tea in a Bootle church hall at the invitation of parish priest, Father Michael de-Felice. The generosity and support we found in Liverpool, from beginning to end, was moving. At the end of a long day we boarded our buses well refreshed and lavished with good wishes. The signs were that the outcome would be more successful than we could have imagined and we had great faith in the Liverpool Dockers’ assurance that they wouldn’t offload the waste despite an impending backlash. The government had beaten both the miners and the printers and when Dockers became the next target they were destined to pay a heavy price for their own resistance. Unfortunately their sacrifice for us was far greater than the support we could reciprocate in the troubled weeks that lay ahead for them.
With the Dockers keeping their word, at the request of the Quebec government, the Nadezhda Obukhova soon returned its PCB cargo to Canada. However, with the second ship in the series nearing Britain, and with many more lined up, there was a possibility that the Liverpool dockers would be forced to give way, or that another British port would be found, or that the continent could be used as a staging post. There were encouraging signs for us when the shipping company began to appreciate the mess it was getting into.Our Euro MP, Llew Smith, had lobbied the Soviet embassy from the outset and the possibility of a new wandering waste scandal appeared to be registering.Therefore, we were left wondering about the future of the whole 1500 tonnes of PCB waste for only a day and we were soon able to praised Quebec for evaluating the position so quickly.The government of the province announced that all the planned shipments would be abandoned and that there would be no future shipments of PCBs to the UK, or to any other country.
Our protest meant that, now, Quebec’s PCB waste exportation policy was even better than that stated in January’s letter to me. Fast forwarding several years shows that it didn’t quite work out like that though. In Canada, with Alberta’s incinerator apparently still out of bounds, there was great opposition to burning the returned waste. In a debate that lasted years, the public resisted the Quebec government’s idea for its own incinerator. In 1996 a mobile incinerator was employed, but it appears that as time passed at least some of the St. Basile waste sailed back across the Atlantic, when the temptation of the Tredi incinerator in France overcame the Canadian conscience. Even more transient than the second Canadian slip-up over its assurances was the embargo at Liverpool Docks. After the Dockers’ boycott of the Canadian waste it wasn’t long before PCB’s started flowing through the port again, from other countries. Despite those reversals we remained content that the world was now aware that the Welsh did not have a welcome for toxic waste and that we campaigners had gone a long way to eradicate the idea that Pontypool had a perfect solution to a global problem. Previously, international attention had focussed on toxic waste traders taking advantage of less developed countries, but now it could be seen that a region of Britain was a victim of its own country's internal policies, too. For the New Inn community, the long-running Canadian saga was over but the legal letter I found at home on my return from Liverpool ensured that my own affair with Canada would continue for some time yet.