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Editor's
Note: Frank McConnell lives in southern England and,
as Eaudenil, writes an online column for Talk
Ireland.
Hartlepool.
You don’t know it? Not too surprising. It’s on
the northeast English coast where the U.S. Maritime
Administration, MARAD, is sending part of the Ghost
Fleet holed up in the
James River.
News
reports regarding a U.S. contract with a U.K. firm
to dismantle the aging and decrepit vessels first
surfaced here in the United Kingdom in
September. Activists like Greenpeace had been aware
of the ships and their environmental risks but the
rest of us, reliant on bland, national media,
remained blissfully ignorant.
Left
to decay at anchor in the James River, some
70 vessels dating back to WWII pose
an increasing environmental liability. (See
"Scuttling
the Ghost Fleet," May 6, 2003.) Michael
Town in your own Richmond Times-Dispatch writes
that the first 13 departures contain nearly 700 tons
of long banned PCBs, 1,200 tons of asbestos and over
300 tons of old, old diesel oil.
He quotes a U.S. government survey:
"[Some ships have] deteriorated to a point
where a hammer can penetrate their hulls."
MARAD's
risk management strategy involves transferring the
danger of toxic spills from the comparative
shelter of the James River to the waves of the
Northern Atlantic and exporting worker exposure to
asbestos from the U.S., where torts are more toxic
than chemicals, to an economy where, it is
hoped, people desperate for employment will look
the other way.
The
website of U.S.
Senator George Allen claims that the senator
"has made the creation of quality, good paying
jobs in the Commonwealth his focus".
Apparently he is "widely credited"
with bringing billions of dollars of private sector
investment to Virginia.
As an Englishman, I have to presume that you
Yanks have the expertise to take these ships apart. Your
port of Hampton Roads is a major center of the
shipbuilding and ship repair business, is it not? Senator
Allen could get work for his electorate and enhance
economic development by scrapping the vessels closer
to home. So
why is he losing this opportunity?
U.S.
and U.K.
environmentalists are not happy, but what else would
you expect of "extremists"?
The Irish, Scottish and Icelandic Governments
have all been drawn into the controversy, as the
Ghost Fleet sails close to these countries.
These are not ‘extremists’.
Captain Nigel Mills, director of Orkney
Harbours and surely a traditionalist, is worried
that the ships may anchor in the historic waters of
Scapa Flow should there be adverse weather. The
Scottish Sunday Mail on the web quotes Mills:
"Any contamination by these vessels in these
waters could be disastrous".
Local
reaction in the U.K. is provincially myopic.
Search engine "Toxic Lemon"(!) led me to The
Hartlepool Mail. The lead story concerned the
vandalism of prize-winning flowerbeds.
An article
displayed less prominently noted a legal
challenge to the fleet.
In other developments, a Labour Party Councillor in
Hartlepool has resigned over the controversy. But
right now, two of the ships are in mid-Atlantic soon
to complete their three-week journey.
Two more are on their way.
The environmental groups will ensure that
Hartlepool is about to headline all over Europe -
and not for flower beds.
(Between
first draft and final publication, on Oct. 31, the
U.K. government’s environment agency blocked the
entry of the fleet into Hartlepool and withdrew
approval for Able UK to take the ships apart. The
government asserted that “planning and
environmental requirements for dry dock dismantling
have not been met.”
With Able UK claiming that all the necessary
paperwork will be in place when the first ships
arrive in mid-November, it's going down to the wire.
Mesdames et Messieurs, faites vos jeux).
I
am curious. Why
is this fleet coming here and not staying with you?
Able
UK,
the Hartlepool
dismantlers, confidently claim that it is the best
outfit in the world for this work.
Peter Mandelson, M.P. and particular ally of
Prime Minister Blair, has been elevated to, dumped
from and recycled into power more times than
anything Able UK has handled.
He represents Hartlepool.
Blair, a particular ally of George W. Bush,
has made no public move against these contracts.
He represents Sedgefield, about 12 miles from
Hartlepool. How
many votes do you get if you bring 200 jobs to the
high unemployment area of Hartlepool?
My
unease is based in the fact that I am an
Americophile. The
adolescent me was excited by American culture.
I learned my guitar chords from Elvis and
I’m still playing! Yes,
I can tell you exactly where I was on the day the
music died, the day that JFK was murdered, and how I
watched, live on TV, the horrific moments of 9/11.
It
saddened me when I read through 46 "Ghost Fleet"
search results from NE England news outlets and gave up trying to find anything complimentary.
If emotive expressions in rational argument
cause you to blink, then shut your eyes for a while.
Writers blasted out "threat" "fears",
"secret plan" and "the U.S.
should do their own dirty work…" I find no mention of the fleet on
Mandelson’s web site.
Many
Americans, I’m told, feel unsupported by their
European "allies".
But the USA is the gold-bearing lode and
world teacher for PR.
How or why could the USA lose such a PR
battle? Do
contracts like Blair’s Reward serve you, or the
environment, well?
--
November 3, 2003
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