OTHER ISSUE 4 ARTICLES:

BOBBIES CORNER

THE UNREPORTED MURDERS

THE GREED VS THE PEOPLE

AND THE GRAVY TRAIN KEEPS RUNNING

LOCAL ROUND UP

GLOBAL ROUND UP

THE CRIMINALS THAT WON'T GET CAUGHT ON CCTV

The Mersey basin, from Ellesmere Port and Runcorn, stretching out to Widnes and Warrington is one of the most highly concentrated sites of chemical production in Western Europe. Chemical spills and leaks of toxic substances are a regular occurrence in the area. This is a place where corporate illegalities are committed with alarming regularity and with largely unknown, but potentially deadly effects. The Environment Agency's list of the worst environmental offenders was topped by ICI Runcorn in 1999. ICI were convicted 12 times in 1997 and 1998 for offences at the Runcorn plant. The Shell plant at Stanlow was fourth on this list.
Those illegal activities in the chemical sites of the Mersey Basin are made all the worse by legitimate omissions - the pollution that they are licensed to produce. Associated Octel in Ellesmere Port are permitted by the government to pollute the area with 5,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals every year. ICI in Runcorn spew out 2,000 tonnes. They are the largest cancer causing plants in the country. On Merseyside, these corporations are licensed to kill. Estimates by the Department of Health reckon that the total number of premature deaths in the UK attributable to industrial and transport pollution is likely to be anything exceeding 10,000.
The geographical location of the Mersey basin industrial complex means that the death toll in Merseyside is a disproportionately high one. A Friends of the Earth report this month reported that the total cancer chemical count for the Mersey basin was 8,000 tonnes every year compared with 20 tonnes in London. It doesn't come as a surprise then, to see a series of local press reports that link the Mersey basin chemical sites with the abnormally high levels of lung cancer in the area. Liverpool has the second highest cancer rate of any local authority area in the country.
These facts reinforce existing evidence that working class communities in the UK are forced to live in areas with deadly levels of pollution. A Friends of the Earth report in 1999 found that 662 of the UK's largest factories are in areas where average household income is less than £15,000. Only 5 are in areas where average income is £30,000 or more. This echoes evidence uncovered by researcher Robert Bullard that shows how racist housing policy in US cities has seen working class black people concentrated in areas where air pollution can be up to 5 times that of suburban areas.
Those major threats to the safety and health of the community are (despite the fact that many of them are the result of corporate crime) completely absent from current crime prevention partnership priorities, and continue unchecked by the gaze of the elaborate and grossly expensive CCTV camera system that is currently being erected in working class areas on Merseyside.