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Clean Water Protesters to March on Parliament Launch as They Urge Labour to Review ‘Failing, Greedy’ System

A clean water coalition is calling for the new Government to enforce existing laws and comprehensively review the UK’s entire water infrastructure and will march on parliament on 3 November

Campaigners from Surfers Against Sewage hold a Paddle Out protest in Brighton over the pollution of Britain's seas in May 2024. Photo: See Li/Picture Capital / Alamy
Campaigners from Surfers Against Sewage hold a Paddle Out protest in Brighton over the pollution of Britain’s seas in May 2024. Photo: See Li/Picture Capital / Alamy

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England remains the only country in the world with an entirely privatised water system, so organisers of an upcoming ‘March For Clean Water’ point out Brits should be entitled to “expect investment, integrity and world-leading advancement” under this unique approach.

But, no. Providers consistently break the law, illegally dumping sewage into our waters over 1,000 times a day last year.

These same firms have cost the British taxpayer £78 billion if looked at through the lens of shareholder dividends paid out since privatisation. Meanwhile, prosecutions for breaking the law clawed back barely £150 million in fines over the last decade.

A bill for a similar amount was generated on Tuesday. Water companies were ordered to return £158 million to customers via lower bills next year for missing pollution and leaks targets.

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Our seas and rivers are no longer safe for swimming with the Government’s health security agency warning that ever-increasing levels of E-coli can cause kidney and liver damage to humans.

At one swim-site in Devon, E-coli levels this summer were found to be twenty times higher than safe levels. In this escalating ecological emergency, animals are impacted most severely first: fish deaths have increased by 176% in the last year, from 26,690 in 2020-2021 to 116,135 in 2023-2024.


A ‘Human River’ Will Flood the Streets

Water is our lifeblood. That’s why tens of thousands of people are expected to march on parliament on November 3. All wearing blue, a human river – this one not polluted – will flood the streets of central London.

A coalition including River Action, Greenpeace and Surfers Against Sewage is calling for the new Government to enforce existing laws and comprehensively review our entire water infrastructure, a failing greedy system that continues to allow pollution for profit.

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It’s a reasonable and modest ask of any Government but water was privatised 35 years ago and Keir Starmer is the tenth Prime Minister to enter office across that time-frame.

Deceptively positive-sounding new legislation was introduced to parliament last month that would theoretically give regulators powers to ban bonuses for water company CEOs who fail to meet standards. However, no new environmental standards have yet been decided by the regulator, Ofwat.

Last year, Liv Garfield of Severn Trent took a £584,000 bonus despite her company having been fined £2 million for dumping sewage. The firm scored highly on the Environment Agency’s environment rankings despite taking this human waste spillage into account.


Extreme Negligence Not ‘Extremist’ Behaviour

Those marching on parliament are taking nothing for granted, determined to apply pressure until true accountability is achieved.

Earlier this month the Labour leader dismissed some environmental activists as “finger wagging extremists” threatening the economy. But the London march will be a peaceful protest, and there is nothing extremist about holding corporate water companies to account when they are physically depositing raw excrement into our waters at taxpayers’ and customers’ expense, all while wringing dry our most precious natural resource.

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March organisers insist their demonstration will be legal and have liaised with police and local authorities. However, some have said they are prepared to risk prison in their wider campaign.

There does remain a level of legal ambiguity over marches in central London, due to the new government opting to appeal the High Court’s decision to throw out the former government‘s recent legislation redefining disruptive protest.


Solving Inaction Through a Citizens Assembly

Extinction Rebellion was name-checked in Starmer’s “extremism” smear. The direct action group will be represented on the march but far from wagging any preaching fingers, their call is for a citizens’ assembly to plot a path forwards on clean water. 

A citizens’ assembly model entails a group of people representing the wider population being selected by lottery to consider and recommend solutions.

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It represents an alternative and more far reaching democratic model than the limited parliamentary system, compromised as it is by corporate and donor influence and short-termism.

It’s a system that has failed to protect and preserve clean water in recent decades and much like our waterways, is seemingly getting murkier all the time.

Citizens’ assemblies have been shown to secure breakthroughs on intractable issues in the past, perhaps most notably, reproductive rights to Ireland five years ago.

But assemblies have been harnessed in the UK also. The social care funding stalemate (remember the interminably drawn-out Dementia Tax debate?) was finally resolved through the adoption of recommendations traced back to a citizens’ assembly comprised of just 47 randomly selected members of the public.

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A citizens’ assembly promises a necessary new and complete approach for identifying and establishing means to keep our rivers and seas clean after 35 years of failure from successive governments and regulators.

Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, was the first British prime minister to smear this generation’s environmentalists as “ideological extremists” but the election of a new leader has seen no break with the recent past.

The irony is that other members of the new Government such as Ed Miliband were vocal at conference in equating environmental justice with social justice and economic justice. The newly appointed climate envoy Rachel Kyte, meanwhile, attracted some early headlines in September after republished historic images that showed her wearing an Extinction Rebellion badge.

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The recent pattern of prime ministers divisively smearing environmentalists must stop while Lord Walney, the controversial ‘anti-extremism adviser’ to both this government and the Conservatives, should be given no further stay of execution.

There are many more of us concerned about the environment than those that are not, despite our political leaders seeking to suggest otherwise. A direct decision making role for the public through a citizens’ assembly would serve to clean more than the water.


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