Tuesday, 11 July 2023
The 'Green' Killing Fields
The continuing carnage affecting workers in the
agricultural sector was brought to life at the 2023 Workers’ Memorial Day event
in Chorley, Lancashire. Organised annually since 2005 by Unite activist Steve
Turner of Chorley Trades Council, it was attended by 35 people and all of
whom were pleased to take away a copy of Landworker.
Landworker contributor Mark Metcalf told the audience that whilst construction
topped the workplace deaths chart in 2019/20 at 37 workers, agriculture, with
around a tenth of the numbers employed in construction, remained the most
dangerous sector to work in with 13 deaths, mostly as a result of moving
vehicles.
Deaths from moving vehicles
doubled last year to 25 people killed. These included 3 members of the public, a
child aged nine and ten labourers. The figures are likely to be higher as fatal
tractor accidents on public roads involving the police will not be reported to
the HSE.
To highlight why the
green killing fields continue to exist, Mark highlighted the article An
Endless Uphill Struggle in the Spring 2023 Landworker edition in
which retired farmworker Matthew Belsey appealed for safety on farms to be
taken seriously by the next generation.
Belsey highlighted the
unwillingness of the authorities to take robust action with the HSE having very
few resources to enable them to do so and whereas there used to be full health
and safety meetings annually organised for safety reps by the HSE these have
dwindled substantially. Little changes as a result.
HSE inspections have
fallen dramatically and, in addition, the inspectors rarely have a safety
background.
In the 90s the HSE
worked with Unite to develop a safety rep scheme that visited southern farms in
a pilot in 2002. It was jointly funded by HSE, NFU and UNITE’s predecessor
union. Around 75% of employers
afterwards said they’d changed their safety practices as a result of the pilot.
Lack of funding ended the scheme.
There has also been
the ending of the AWB in England with its sharp reduction in dedicated
agricultural courses such that if an agricultural worker went on specific
courses on hedge cutting or any number of occasional courses then they got an
increase in their pay.
According to Unite
activist Charlie Clutterbuck, Unite’s predecessor union, the TGWU, was also
instrumental in creating vocational qualifications for agricultural health and
safety levels.
“As the union rep on
the HSE executive I pushed for and they responded together with the NFU and 3
awarding bodies such as the Skills Councils to create sets of vocational qualifications
on health and safety for agricultural workers.
“Out then national
officer Chris Kaufmann he got them into the AWB agreements so for a few years
if you did one of these qualifications then you got a rise in pay. There was
thus a real incentive to go on and get properly trained and work more safely.”
Mark reported how
Landworker had backed Littleborough shepherd Brenda Sutcliffe, who died in
2016, and her husband Harold, a Unite member, who became the unofficial
spokeswoman for thousands of farmers and agricultural labourers who were
poisoned, often with fatal consequences, by organophosphate (OP) sheep dip.
Brenda calculated
that between 1995 and 2005 more than 1,000 shepherds ended their own lives
because of OP sheep dip. Brenda fought tirelessly for families to be
compensated.
Brenda's booklet 'Cause
and effect — the search for truth' was first published in 2005. It became
widely read right across the globe.
Brenda and other
campaigners forced the HSE to issue health warnings and instructions on the use
of OPs and bring to an end the compulsory order on sheep dipping. But the
products — used to tackle sheep scab — remain on the market with the added
requirement that anyone purchasing the dip must attend a course — costing in
total £150 — to achieve the necessary 'Safe Use of Sheep Dip' licence.
Brenda was rightly
proud of her considerable efforts and achievements but Mark told the audience
that when she last spoke to him before her death she was, as always, forthright
in expressing her views and had said "Justice has been denied to the likes
of myself whose health was badly affected by OPs.
“We, with the help
of people like Landworker, showed these were dangerous, deadly products and we never hesitated to criticise
the chemical companies who manufactured them.
“We damaged their
sales but they have never sued us because our research backed up what we said
publicly.
"The
government, whether Labour or Tory, public health bodies and solicitors who
were supposed to help us ran away from the battle. People still need
prosecuting for their roles. We have won a number of battles but OPs are still
deadly, too widely used and many products containing them need banning.”
OPs are
present in many products and have created multiple health problems for soldiers
who served in the Second Gulf War and commercial airline pilots, many of whom
are with UNITE’s assistance taking legal action against their employers.
The talk proved
popular and Mark, who appealed to the audience to encourage any farm workers
they know to join Unite, has now agreed to speak to a local union branch about
the issues he raised. Similar invitations from across Yorkshire and Lancashire
would be welcome.
Amongst the
other speakers were Janet Newsham of Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK),
who said that “to be bereaved by work is to be a victim of crime. But to be
made to feel like a lesser class of victim. One where you’re not placed at the
heart of the justice process, but left to feel you exist somewhere on the
periphery” and are constantly let down by the authorities.
“We FACKers
pledge to you that we will continue to live the International Workers’ Memorial
Day mantra each and every day, as we forever remember our dead, and do our damnedest
to fight like hell for the living.”
Monday, 26 June 2023
Pay Up to Save The NHS - The Junior Doctors Strike
Junior Doctors are taking further strike action in June and July and this 7 minute documentary explains why. Without a victory in their pay battle the NHS faces even more problems in the future in recruiting staff.
Halifax Chartist Hero Remembered: Benjamin Rushton
Halifax Chartist Hero
Remembered: Benjamin Rushton
On Friday 23rd June, 50 people attended a Calderdale Trades Council Benjamin Rushton commemorative event in Lister Lane Cemetery, Halifax.
Fourteen minutes of highlights of the event can be viewed at:-
Friday, 16 June 2023
'THIS MAN WAS A HERO' THE TUC PRESIDENT OF 2013 praises Benjamin Rushton
Halifax Chartist died on 17 June 1853. Today, on 16th June 2023, Calderdale Trades Union Council are marking his life by laying a wreath at his grave in the Lister Lane Cemetery. Mohammad Taj, a bus driver for 43 years was the elected TUC President for 2013-14. Unable to attend the event today he has sent the following solidarity message.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I feel very privileged to have been asked to speak on this special
occasion to honour a great man who throughout his entire existence battled
ceaselessly to improve the lives and political rights of his class, the working
class and which constitute the overwhelming mass of the world’s population and
of which I am proud to be a member of as bus worker for 43 years, born overseas
from Pakistani side of Kashmir.
Sadly, I cannot though attend as I am otherwise engaged at
an Employment Tribunal in Sheffield and unable to be able to travel back
for the time of this event, and so I would be grateful if this short note could
be read out on my behalf.
Before I move on to speak about Benjamin Rushton and Chartism in
general, I would just like to praise and
thank Calderdale Trades Council for seeking to keep alive the history of
Chartism and the role it played in establishing some of the important political
rights we still enjoy today, not forgetting, of course, that the generations
that followed the Chartists have always needed to be aware they can easily be
lost if we don’t seek to assert these rights.
I have been fortunate enough to have read the coverage in the People’s
Press newspaper of Rushton’s funeral 170 years ago this month. If you haven’t
read this and want to read then please ask the trades council to send it to
you. What it reveals is the deep respect that so many people who were at the
sharp end of capitalist exploitation at the time had for a man who had stood up
for them, who had bravely gone first into battle against murderous, which was
shown in August 1842 during the great strike, brutal opponents, and some of
whom are still honored today in Halifax with statues to them.
With around a quarter of a million people taking the time to remember
Rushton on the day he was laid to rest then that is, quite simply, a remarkable
number. 15,000 packed out this cemetery to see him buried here with his
headstone paid for by donations. His cortege from Ovenden passed amidst mass
crowds who remained silent in tribute.
This man is a hero.
His wife Mary had, and at this point I am grateful to Catherine Howe’s
Halifax 1842 classic book, died ten years earlier of advanced dropsy, which can
result from pregnancy and from malnutrition. Her body would be swollen and
painful. In other words, she died because she was poor. Today, hundreds of
millions of people are still unable to get enough food to eat on a daily basis.
How wrong is this?
Benjamin, a weaver, knew that was the case and that is why he was a
chartist and a workers’ advocate, seeking better pay & improved political
rights which he knew meant greater working class representation in the
corridors of power.
In 1848, Rushton and Christopher Shackleton, whose own grave is in this
cemetery, maintained that the British people should follow the European
revolutions including that of France. Rushton was arrested after the 1842
popular Uprising in which Halifax played a major role and at least five people
were butchered by the military.
Rushton, at the time, was letting other people across West Yorkshire
know what had happened.
It only leaves me to wish everyone well and for those who enjoy a pint -
to ask them - to raise a glass - afterwards
of the special 1842 brew - to honour Rushton.
Mohammad Taj, TUC President 2013 to 14
Tuesday, 13 June 2023
POLICE LAW, POLICE FORCE, POLICE STATE - The MINERS' STRIKE 1984
POLICE LAW, POLICE FORCE, POLICE STATE - The MINERS' STRIKE 1984
 |
| Orgreave - May 1984 Photograph is copyright Martin Jenkinson |
On Monday 14 May 1984 over 30,000 men, women and children rallied in Mansfield at the end of which Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn MP were amongst the main speakers. Scargill told Mrs. Thatcher: “You were successful in the Falklands, but you won’t win this battle.”
However, Eric Hammond, the Electricians’ Union leader said
that his power station members would continue to cross picket lines and
delegates at the annual conference of the CPSA, the biggest Civil Service
union, defeated a motion calling for an all-out strike in support of the
miners.
The situation was even worse for the miners in Britain’s
fourth biggest union, the 750,000 strong National and Local Government
Officers’ Association (NALGO), where the decision of the union’s National
Executive Committee to donate £10,000 was opposed by a Conservative trade union
group within the membership. It later led to a special conference in which the
decision was taken not to give any more financial support from national funds.
Many NALGO branches continued to donate money but the conference decision was a
serious setback.
Returning to their buses after the rally in Mansfield miners
were charged by police, some on horseback, and in the ensuing pitched battle
many on both sides were injured and 87 arrests were made. Jim Edwards from
Lancashire was stretchered away badly hurt. The following day, Nottinghamshire
Chief Constable Charles McLachlan said that 50 of those arrested would be
charged under the rarely used Riot Act, which carried unlimited imprisonment and
fines. In the event the riot charges were later unceremoniously dropped.
Two days after the Mansfield rally, Co-op administrative
worker Anne Scargill, the wife of Arthur Scargill, joined the list of those
arrested during the strike when she and three other women were taken into
custody after picketing, with twenty other women, at Silverhill Colliery.
Placed in a dog compound she was later asked to undress
before being put into a filthy cell and questioned about newspapers she read
and her politics. Bound over until October she was not allowed to picket again
in Nottinghamshire until then. When the case came to court all four of the
arrested women were pronounced not guilty when the magistrate stopped the case.
One week later police deployed riot gear for the first time
during the strike when at least 5,000 miners gathered outside the Orgreave
coking plant near Rotherham. Those who had assembled were
met by police from ten counties, who had been charged with
ensuring coke could be transported by road to the nearby Scunthorpe Steel
Works, where an agreement with the NUM to use supplies only to keep the ovens
warm had been broken in order to produce steel.
Rail workers’ solidarity
Coal to Orgreave had, in fact been stopped after ASLEF and
NUR train crew members refused to take a train in or out of the site after the
miners mounted a picket over the road bridge at Treeton.
This sympathetic action meant the NCB had to bring the coal
by road to Orgreave. However, whereas in 1972 lorry drivers – who were members
of the TGWU – had refused to cross picket lines the same level of solidarity
was missing in 1984. Many drivers were no longer in any union. They were happy
to benefit from the rail workers’ solidarity by earning in some cases over
£1,000 a week by driving often dangerously unroadworthy vehicles. There were
also reported cases of unqualified drivers being allowed to get behind the
wheel.
On May 29 1984 what was the largest picket of the dispute so
far surged forward when the first convoy arrived. In the fierce clashes that
followed 81 people were arrested. Arthur Scargill, who was present throughout
the day, said afterwards: “We’ve had riot shields and riot gear, we’ve had
police on horseback charging into our people, we’ve had people hit with
truncheons and people kicked to the ground.”
Orgreave May 29, 1984 Photograph by Martin Jenkinson
On the following day – 30 May 1984 – Scargill was arrested
as he led around 80-100 pickets to the plant. It was a move clearly designed to
remove the miners’ leader from the scene at any cost. He was found guilty in
December 1984 of two charges of obstruction and fined £250 with £750 costs.
Magistrates told him his “actions demonstrated a very poor example for those he
sought to lead.”
The NUM leader retorted that he “anticipated the same kind
of anti-working class judgement that has been the order of the day throughout
this mining industrial dispute.”
Thatcher told the House of Commons: “What we have got is an
attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must not
succeed. (cheering) It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence
and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it … The rule
of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.”
On 18 June 1984, around 8,000 miners assembled at Orgreave
for a mass picket. They were opposed by 4,500 police officers from different
forces nationwide.
To the surprise of many pickets the police were friendly and
even helpful in directing people towards picket lines. Speaking many years
later to the Guardian newspaper, Bob Bird, a West Midlands officer who
was a member of the short shield police support unit at the plant, said: “It
would have been easy to turn people away, but the decision was taken to let
them in. If you were to choose an area to defend, you would choose that site,
and the police were decided: if there was to be a confrontation, we were not
going to lose.” It was a trap and the police aimed to inflict a major defeat on
the miners.
Headlines left those with no direct contact with the strike
the impression that miners were a foolish mob that were being manipulated by
Arthur Scargill. None reported this was a strike to save a way of life that
would allow miners to keep their self-respect by maintaining a decent living
standard. It was a strike to ensure that communities stayed alive and there
would be jobs (not great ones but jobs none-the-less) for the next generation
of young men looking to earn a decent living. Because, while no miner ever
wanted his son to go down the pit, they were realistic and somebody had to do
it, and they knew that the pits were essential to the very fabric of their
communities.
Printworkers reacted angrily on occasions throughout 1984-85
at the blatant bias they were being asked to run. On 15 May the Sun newspaper
production chapels refused to handle an Arthur Scargill picture and story
likening the NUM leader to Adolf Hitler. The paper was printed without either.
A month later on June 27th printworkers in Fleet Street also
stopped the publication of the Sun, Daily Mirror, Financial Times and Sporting
Life because their editors refused to print a statement from the print
unions supporting the miners.
Some stories were total fabrications, including the Daily
Mirror headline of 10 September that said: ‘‘Scargill to ballot members on
final offer’’.
The bias extended into TV coverage of the strike. In
November 1984 ITV pulled their commissioned South Bank programme Which Side
Are You On? after it was considered that the programme was too one-sided in
that it allowed the miners and their families to complain about police
brutality and media bias. It was later shown on Channel 4 but only after the
Independent Broadcasting Authority insisted on a ‘balancing’ programme that
criticised Arthur Scargill.
The media also played a major role during the NCB’s ‘back to
work’ campaign in the second half of 1984 by issuing a daily list of the
numbers of miners who it was reported had returned to work. Such a daily drip
was intended to persuade strikers that they could not win and should therefore
cross a picket line and return to work. Much later the press gave heroic status
to the breakaway strikebreaking group which subsequently became the Union of
Democratic Mineworkers (UDM).
Ninety-five people were arrested at Orgreave on June 18 and
they were charged with riot and unlawful assembly. Lengthy prison sentences
seemed almost certain but when the first 15 appeared at Sheffield Crown Court
in 1985 their trial collapsed after 16 weeks when it became clear the police’s
oral and written evidence was unreliable. Each prosecution had been supported
by two police officers making near-identical statements. The signature of one
officer was analysed and found not to be his. Another admitted having had his
statement dictated to him.
All charges against pickets were subsequently dropped and
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) later paid out £425,000 compensation to 39 pickets
in out of court settlements. Nevertheless, no police officers were disciplined
for misconduct in what Michael Mansfield QC, who represented three of those
charged, said was “the biggest frame-up ever”. SYP later went on to doctor the
statements of police officers present at Hillsborough in April 1989, when 96
Liverpool fans lost their lives due to the force losing control of operations
on the day.
It took a 23-year campaign by Liverpool fans to finally get
the state to admit what really happened at Sheffield Wednesday’s football
ground. The Hillsborough Independent Panel report released in September 2012
showed SYP had attempted to divert blame for their own failings by crafting a
false case against supporters alleging ticketless drunken supporters had caused
the disaster.
Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, then 18, died at
Hillsborough said: “The police were liars.”
In the report’s aftermath, SYP referred its officers’
conduct to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), who are
currently conducting the biggest ever review of the police.
For many years the Guardian journalist David Conn had
highlighted that Hillsborough and Orgreave had both been policed by the same
force. Then on 22 October 2012 a BBC 1 Inside Out documentary featured a
retired police inspector who was on duty at the coking plant on June 18 1984.
Norman Taylor recalled he and other officers had parts of their statements
dictated to them: “A policeman in plain clothes mentioned that he had a good
idea of what had happened. And that there was a preamble to set the scene. He
was reading from some paper, a paragraph or so. And he asked the people who
were there to use that as their starting paragraph. It was basically the time
and date, the name of the place.”
Barrister Mark George QC, who specialises in criminal trials,
had analysed 40 police officers’ Orgreave statements and found that 34,
supposedly compiled separately, used the identical phrase: “Periodically there
was missile throwing from the back of the pickets.” A paragraph of four
sentences was identical word for word in 22 separate officers’ statements.
Chris Kitchen, the current NUM general secretary, called on
the IPCC to extend the Hillsborough inquiry to include events at Orgreave:
“Many miners were subjected to malpractice during the strike by South Yorkshire
Police… police operations at Orgreave and elsewhere during the strike need to
be investigated now the details of what SYP did at Hillsborough have been
revealed.”
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign was established in
November 2012 to seek ‘‘truth and justice for all miners victimised by the
police at the Orgreave Coking Plant, South Yorkshire, on June 18th 1984 … We
call for a full public inquiry, to take place as soon as possible.’’ The
campaign organiser is Barbara Jackson, who was employed as an administrative
worker at the NCB offices in Sheffield in March 1984. She was just one of nine
members of COSA – the white collar section of the NUM – at the offices who
embarrassed the other 1,000 workers there by striking and organising a daily
picket line throughout the strike.
The mounting pressure saw SYP refer itself to the IPCC, who
confirmed they would be conducting a scoping exercise (used to identify the key
issues at an early stage in any investigation) to examine allegations of
assault, perjury, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public
office and then judge whether they should launch a full investigation into
policing at Orgreave on 18 June 1984.
It has since been revealed that a team of nine detectives
had been secretly established to build cases against miners, who had, in fact,
been beaten back by police officers using sophisticated riot-control equipment,
including short shields and batons, and unsophisticated brutality. ‘Snatch
squads’ were also used to rush in, after officers on horseback had charged the
crowd, to arrest any pickets who had been beaten and/or had failed to escape.
Perhaps the worst violence on June 18 came in the afternoon
after the majority of pickets had left the field in search of food and drink. As
pickets who remained in the field relaxed in the sun the police, now
outnumbering the remaining miners, decided to ‘have it out’ with them once and
for all.
The subsequent charge by the cavalry and the snatch squads
did not have as its aim the protecting of scab lorries – as there were none and
the plant had been closed – or dispersing an unruly crowd. It was an unprovoked
attack designed solely to inflict physical damage on men fighting for their
jobs.
The miners fled across the field with many seeking shelter
in the village. The cavalry charges followed escaping pickets into residential
and industrial sites hundreds of yards away from the coking plant. Mounted and
foot police wielded their truncheons indiscriminately and with the aim of
dealing some fearful blows that threatened life and limb. Some miners were
felled deliberately from behind and one was severely savaged by a police dog.
Those who went to the aid of their fallen comrades were similarly beaten.
Amidst the scores of serious injuries there were thousands with lesser injuries
including split heads and faces and bruises to backs and limbs.
Police behind riot shields at Orgreave. Sophisticated riot
control equipment was combined with unsophisticated brutality. (18 Jun 1984)
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign is at
www.otjc.org.uk. Phone 0114 2509510 for a speaker at your campaign meeting. A quarter
of the author’s fees from the sale of this book will be equally split between
the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and the Justice for Mineworkers
Campaign, 103 Cliff Road, Hornsea HU18 1JB.
Lesley Boulton, a member of Sheffield WAPC, was caught on
camera being attacked by a baton swinging mounted police officer as she went to
help an injured picket. Under the headline ‘‘She was only trying to help…’’ the
picture was published on the front page of Labour Weekly, dated 22 June
1984 and later became widely used in the Left press in Britain and abroad.
With the exception of the Observer – who published a
small version on 24 June – the mainstream media ignored the photograph until
Labour MP Jo Richardson produced the picture during a debate on policing at the
Labour Party conference on October 3. Even then some questioned its
authenticity. Boulton subsequently received hate mail and was intimidated when
she went to her local police station to make a statement, causing her to drop
legal proceedings.
Chris Kitchen has also said that he feels it is important to
examine cases beyond Orgreave as: “Cases from other picket lines were very
similar: lads getting lifted, dragged into court on trumped up charges and then
offered a deal to plead guilty.” The NUM has estimated that at least 60% of the
11,000 miners arrested during the strike were apprehended on bogus charges.
Whilst Orgreave and other picket-line battles attracted TV
and press attention the reality was that only a relatively small number of
strikers and their families went near a picket line during the strike. When
they did – especially in the initial stages when many collieries had no miners
going to work – it was usually fairly boring and even when the police were
present the atmosphere was relaxed and often friendly. Before the strike,
relationships between the police and mining communities was good, but now often
remains poor, even to this day.
Thursday, 18 May 2023
DERAILED -Government inertia blocks levelling up hopes for former North East coastal town of Horden Colliery Unpublished article
DERAILED -Government
inertia blocks levelling up hopes for former North East coastal town of Horden
Colliery
Unpublished
article
A much-needed
boost to the local economy from re-opening Horden Colliery railway station on
the North East coast is floundering due to government inertia. Now residents of
the former mining village have been overlooked by Michael Gove for levelling up
funds. All of which has angered local MP
Grahame Morris, who chairs the Unite parliamentary group.
Adding to
local people’s problems is recent news that a £24m submission to the levelling
up fund from Easington-Horden has been rejected by Michael Gove in favour of
more prosperous Tory constituencies such as the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s.
All five bids from County Durham, much of which is rural, were rejected.
Horden
Colliery was opened in 1900. At its peak in 1935 it employed 4,342
people. During the 1984/5 miners’ strike only a handful of colliers crossed the
picket line.
Despite its large reserves the colliery was closed by the
Thatcher government in 1987. Following which the village went into permanent
decline with only 8,000 residents today and far too many of which are
unemployed and living in poor housing. Horden has gradually lost most of its
services including the police and fire Stations, secondary school, many local
shops and cinemas. Anti-social behaviour is a problem.
The U2 song Red Hill Mining Town is based on a book about
Horden.
Horden station closed under the Beeching cuts in 1964. Durham
County Council and various MPs, all Labour as Horden is part of the Easington
Constituency that has voted in large numbers since 1922 for the Party, campaigned
for many years for its re-opening.
This was finally achieved in June 2020 when the Transport
Secretary and Northern Powerhouse Minister Grant Shapps said: “Our ambitious
plans to restore and revitalise the North East railways sits at the heart of
our commitment to level up infrastructure across the country, build a railway
that works for everyone, and kickstart our economy.” The new facilities cost
£10.5 million and enable up to 70,000 people living nearby in places such as
Peterlee, (the only place in the UK named after a trade unionist – Peter Lee) a
chance to travel by train.
Only months before the opening the government had been
forced to take over control of the troubled railway company Northern Rail with
Snapp’s stating passengers had "lost trust in the north's rail
network".
That trust, has according to Grahame Morris MP, not been
regained in the last three years. Morris who chairs the Unite group in
Parliament, is extremely proud of following in the footsteps of previous
Easington MPs such as Manny Shimwell, who as an Atlee government minister nationalised
the mines and electricity industry in 1947.
“Re-opening the station widens employment opportunities. People can live here in relatively
low-cost housing and travel to employment on Teesside, Wearside or
Tyneside. It should help encourage
investment in new businesses and better housing, which is vital as many former
social housing properties have been bought up by absentee landlords and left to
rot.
“But an
hourly service consisting of just two carriages, which can get so full at peak
times that some passengers cannot get on them does not encourage commuter
confidence especially when trains get cancelled at short notice. We get contacted regularly by disappointed
constituents. The operator has to improve the frequency and the reliability of
the service.”
Morris sits
on the Transport Select Committee that last year examined bus services outside
of London. “Durham, much of which is rural, has been hammered. If you compare
the buses and tube services and overground trains that serve the capital with
what we have here in the North East we really are the poor relations and Third World
in many respects.”
Morris believes bus companies are playing the public by
threatening service reductions to secure more local government funding and he
accuses the government of failing their own levelling up commitment by ignoring
the threat to regional and rural bus services from companies driven by
shareholder profit rather than an affordable, frequent and reliable bus service
run in the public interest.
“Trains and
buses are both in private operators hands whose principal responsibility is to
the shareholders. We’d have a far better bus and train service if a future
Labour government was running the service,” said Morris.
Adding to
local people’s problems came the news in January that a £24m submission to the
levelling up fund from Easington-Horden had been rejected by Michael Gove in
favour of more prosperous Tory constituencies such as the Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak’s. All five County Durham bids were rejected.
New social
housing, training opportunities for young people, a pilot project on community
energy using surplus heat from abandoned mine workings, enhanced community
assets including a nature reserve and woodland plantation plus funds to improve
business units were all part of the bid. Further south in Sedgefield-Newton
Aycliffe the plan was to use new funds to construct new cultural attractions
whilst at Willington, Crook and Tow Law it was planned to improve the
infrastructure of industrial estates.
The
levelling up fund makes equally deserving parts of the country battle for
limited funding against each other. Many of these projects would previously have
been properly funded by local authorities. Under Tory – aided by the Liberals between
2010 and 2015 – rule since 2010 these authorities have become a shadow of their
former selves. Really deserving places such as Horden have lost out to more
prosperous places such as Sunak’s North Yorkshire Richmond constituency.
“People are
furious because government rhetoric about one nation and levelling up meant
expectations had been raised that resources would be spent here. People can see
they have been directed towards more affluent places.
“It has
wasted many council officers time. There should be an easily quantifiable
needs-based assessment looking at levels of deprivation. ill health,
employment, skills or lack of them. Then resources should be directed
accordingly. In that scenario Horden would be top,” said a clearly angry
Morris, who hopes a future Labour government would prioritise the regenerating
of once proud mining communities such as Horden.
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