Grantham Canal: are volunteers wanted by trade union picket line outside. What were they protesting about? Jobs on the line and poorer working conditions thanks to Government cuts? No, they were unimpressed by BW’s ‘third sector’ plans for the future. As one of them told me, they’d read that BW’s proposals involved more use of vounteers on the waterways and (in his exact words) “We don’t want volunteers taking our jobs”. That really took me back. I remember the 1980s when volunteer restoration work on BW canals came to a virtual standstill because of opposition from trade unions fearful of us nicking their jobs. Or quite possibly, because the BW management of the time wanted a quiet life without any of these awkward volunteer groups reopening its canals, and telling them “the unions will never stand for it” was an easy way out. Either way, it was bollocks. We had no intention trying to take over any of the canal maintenance tasks that the union members were doing. We were interested in doing work which otherwise wasn’t going to be done by anyone - restoring derelict canals. If anything, we would actually be helping to create more full-time maintenance jobs in the future, when the canals were open. And over the intervening couple of decades both the unions and the management seem to have taken this on board. So when I spoke to the guys on the picket line I thought “Oh good grief, here we go again” and prepared to rehearse the same old arguments. Nine months later I’m not so sure. Up on the Leeds & Liverpool, BW’s just brought in a whole load of overnight lock closures to
save water as the reservoirs are starting to run a little low. But instead of shutting them at 6 or 7pm to begin with, they’ve gone straight for 4.30pm - because to save money, they want to avoid having to pay overtime for somebody to stay late and put the padlocks on. Meanwhile on the BCN I read that a ‘job creation’ type scheme is taking unpaid volunteers off the dole queue and giving them work experience maintaining canals. Just in case the link isn’t obvious, at Plank Lane liftbridge, also on the L&L, BW’s cut the opening hours right down, to save having to pay evening overtime to the bridgekeeper - but says the hours might BW? be extended again if volunteers can be found to fill the gap. Sure, BW wants to work with volunteers - but not our kind of volunteers. A couple of issues back, Mike Palmer’s Chairmans’ Comment made the point that if BW wants its move to the third sector to be the success that it might be, then it needs to actually want to do it for the good of the canals, the waterways heritage, local communities and so on - rather than just to save some money. Well, at the moment I’m not entirely convinced that this is the case. Yes, I know money’s tight. Government department Defra is about to cut BW’s grant yet again, there’s almost certainly more belttightening to follow, and the Treasury still has its greedy eyes on the BW property portolio. We can’t expect free hand-outs from BW left right and centre to help us restore canals. But unless there are a few less BW balls-ups like the ones I mentioned at the start, I have to say that my genuine enthusiasm for BW’s future as a ‘National Trust for the waterways’ will start to wane. So come on BW, pull your finger out. Otherwise if all this guff about volunteer involvement simply means taking unpaid labour off the dole queues so you can sack lock-keepers, while folks with decades of experience as canal restorers get buggered about, then don’t be too surprised if some of us in the volunteer restoration movement start telling you that you can take your third sector plans and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine (*). Because we’d rather stick with the devil we know. Martin Ludgate
(*) that doesn’t mean ‘Droitwich’, by the way
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