Water provision in the UK: a historical parallel

 

The Goyt Valley Reservoir, Derbyshire (Photo: MU)

The provision of public water in the UK is, today, an acknowledged scandal. Some years ago (actually 1989, under a Conservative government) the UK water industry was privatized. The provision of a monopoly, the water supply, passed debt-free to private equity, which saddled the water companies with debt and failed to improve the water supply, in fact worsened it. 

All this is widely known and has been known for some years. The centre-right Financial Times has called it a scandal, that is not in the public interest (see, for example, “Privatising Water was never going to work”, FT August 19 2022). There is an increased public awareness of the situation, with questions asked by MPs, but no call, as yet, as far as I know, to renationalise the water industry. 

All this bears an uncanny relationship to the situation in the 19th century, as revealed by an interesting book, Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, by Tristram Hunt (2004).  Hunt relates how Joseph Chamberlain, newly elected Mayor of Birmingham, carried out “gas and water socialism”: he took the gas and water utilities into municipal ownership, and used the profits to fund civic improvements. The idea was stunningly successful. Success was  measured by improved health – the Birmingham death rate dropped by 20%. Hunt stresses how this was not socialism so much as social capitalism: running the utilities to be profitable but with profits used for the public interest. 

Admittedly, Chamberlain increased the council’s debt, but the revenue from gas and water was sufficient to repay the debt in the long term, and allow for other improvements as well. The Birmingham gas supply passed to municipal control in 1875, and the water supply in 1876. 

This stunning example suggests, as so often with history, how generations seem to manage to forget the progress made by our ancestors. How did the UK ever move backwards from a utility supply in the interests of the populace  to control for the benefit of a few investors? And why is there no commitment by any of the major UK political parties today (2023) to take water and gas back into public ownership? It suggests to me the theme of reading about how the municipal vision faded during the 20th century. Margaret Thatcher was undoubtedly on influential agent, but no doubt there were others before and after her. The existence of historical parallels such as that of Chamberlain and Birmingham makes the current situation all the more galling.