Water charges: North has lessons for campaigners

It was the scale of revolt that put paid to plans for water charges. Some whose experience of left-wing politics had comprised weary Saturday afternoons imploring heedless shoppers to buy a copy of a paper with “socialist” in its title found themselves struggling to keep order as citizens scrabbled outside shopping centres for pens to sign up for non-payment.

In Derry alone, by the time the plan was abandoned, there were 30 separate groups compiling lists of local refusniks. Protestant pensioners seemed particularly militant.

Seven years on, the campaign is shrouded in wilful amnesia.

Members of four of the five parties now represented in the Stormont executive maintain that the withdrawal of the plan should be put down to their party’s principled refusal to allow such an outrage.

At the DUP annual conference last month, First Minister Peter Robinson was careful to include the issue in a spirited rodomontade against the Alliance Party’s Naomi Long who had taken his East Belfast Westminster seat in the 2010 general election.

“There may be other unionists in the field, but they will serve only to divide the pro-union opposition to the flag-lowering, parade stopping, gay marriage supporting, pro-water charging holier-than-thou Alliance Party.”

In the event, reports of the leader’s speech were drowned out by the brouhaha over Gregory Campbell drawing uproarious applause by repeating his curry-my-yoghurt jibe against Irish.

Opposition to charges

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin spokesmen insist it’s they who deserve the lion’s share of credit. Indeed, SF was more vigorous than the DUP in expressing opposition to charges – if more vigorous still in denouncing non-payment on the grounds that non-payers would likely be left in the lurch in the way rent and rates strikers against internment had been abandoned a generation earlier.

Ulster Unionists and members of the SDLP chip in that their contribution, too, must be included in this roll of radical honour. The charges plan had been set out in the Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, introduced by secretary of state Peter Hain.

This involved shifting control of water from the Department of Regional Development into a newly created government-owned company (GoCo) NI Water, required to do business as a “statutory trading body owned by central government but operating under company legislation,” to be financed by a revenue stream from household charges. (non-domestic users already paid charges.)

NI Water came into existence on April 1st, 2007 – three days before the iconic picture was published of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sharing a guffaw at Stormont as the DUP-Sinn Féin coalition was formally inaugurated.

The parties had emerged as majority representatives of their respective communities in the Assembly election of March 7th.

The question was immediately raised whether, given the pledges of all the main parties, the GoCo could be maintained and charges implemented. GoCo chief executive Katharine Bryan remained adamant, telling senior staff “not to be confused by press reports . . . Planned changes in how we are regulated both economically and environmentally will continue.”

That line was to last only a few months. Charges were dropped without ceremony. Ms Bryan resigned the following year. senior Department for Regional Development officials conceded that non-payment had been the department’s key concern, not merely on account of the scale of the revolt but of the daunting prospect of hauling perhaps a hundred thousand citizens through the courts one by one – the only procedure possible under existing law.

The fact that the campaign had pressurised the main parties into the opposition camp was also, of course, a huge factor.

It came as a surprise, then, when it emerged last month that 35,000 water meters had been installed in newly built houses across the North since 2007.

What was the point if charges were still ruled out? NI Water issued a statement on November 28th: “NI Water would like to categorically state once more that it is not installing meters to facilitate charging . . . Only the NI Executive has the power to introduce water charges.”

Bring charges in

The company, it added, was required by the 2006 order to put the meters in place. And, just as it was the sole prerogative of the Executive to bring charges in, only new Stormont legislation could relieve the company of a duty to install meters.

The Department for Regional Development ministers during the years of meter installation have been Conor Murphy of Sinn Féin (2007 to 2011) and the Ulster Unionists’ Danny Kennedy (2011-2014.)

There is no evidence available that either man was aware of, or approved the installation of meters.

It would be remarkable if such a major, expensive (£13 million and counting of department money), ongoing project had escaped the ministers’ notice.

But then, remarkable things happen in Northern politics every day.

How the intermeshed issues involved in the saga will be disentangled remains unclear.

It’s already evident though, that there are lessons here for anti-water charges campaigners in the Republic.