Thousands of families across the UK have had their homes and livelihoods ruined by devastating floods this winter. Such scenes are becoming almost an annually recurring nightmare in Britain. As a result, ordinary people’s anger has rightly fallen on the Tories, whose senseless austerity cuts have exacerbated this disaster.
Thousands of people across the UK have had their homes and livelihoods ruined by devastating floods this winter. A series of storms have battered areas across the north and west of the UK, resulting in the submersion of at least 16,000 homes, the destruction of multiple bridges and roads, and the deaths of four people. Tens of thousands were left without power over the Christmas period, and the cost of repairing the damage is estimated at over £1.5 billion.
Such scenes are becoming like that of a recurring nightmare, given the recent floods in Somerset in 2014, Lancashire and the South West in 2012, and Cumbria in 2009. Given these recent disasters, residents could rightly expect more to be done to protect against further flooding, thus avoiding a repeat of such scenes.
However in reality, the opposite has been the case, with flood defences suffering from massive cuts as a result of the crisis of capitalism and Tory austerity. Official data shows that spending on flood defences was cut sharply in the last parliament, from £360 (in 2010-11) to less than £270m (in 2012-13).
Capitalism’s impasse
Although the Tories have attempted to blame the floods on the severity of the weather, flood experts have challenged this view. A leaked report, written by the body representing all major flood defence organisations, detailed how many of Britain’s flood defences have been either abandoned or reduced to minimal levels due to cuts to local government budgets. The report estimated that almost twice as many households would be at “significant risk” of flooding within 20 years, as a result of government austerity.
What’s more, the long-term costs of flood defences are likely to have increased as a result of the cuts, since defences are deteriorating faster due to a lack of maintenance. This highlights the dead-end of capitalism, where in order to pass on the bill for the crisis of the bankers and capitalists, thousands of ordinary people are forced to pay with the devastation of their homes, and some even with their lives.
Rather than cutting flood defences, the government should be increasing spending in order to cope with increasingly wet and stormy weather. Storm Desmond, falling in early December, smashed rainfall records in Cumbria, with the most rain falling in 24 hours since records began. The heavy rains that fell over Christmas resulted in every river in Lancashire peaking at record levels.
Such extreme events are to be expected as an inevitable feature of climate change – another serious symptom of capitalism’s destructive nature. A team of top climate scientists across the world have stated that the likelihood of such record rains has increased by about 40% as a result of the warming climate.
Professor Ian Bateman, of the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences, stated that: “What has been really important in the last decade or so, and what is particularly scary for Britain, is that extreme events are no longer extreme. Events that were one in 100 years are now expected more like one in 10 years.”
Impotence of the ruling class
David Cameron himself stated in 2008 that: “most people accept that with climate change, [floods] are likely to be more frequent”. Yet two years later, once in office, he cut capital spending on flood defences by 27% year-on-year. This was despite numerous warnings that much more spending was needed.
Then in 2014, during the flooding of the Somerset Levels, Cameron promised a systematic review of flood defences in the UK, and to do “everything we can to protect more homes”. However, this hypocrisy was exposed by the National Audit Office, who reported that when excluding the one-off bailout following the 2014 floods, regular spending on flood protection has decreased by 10% in real terms since 2010.
Thus we can see that although the ruling class and their representatives can identify the problem, they are incapable of actually solving it, since the logic of their system requires massive cuts in public spending. As a result, the total bill for repairing damaged properties and flood defences is far greater than if preventative measures had been taken.
However, for the government, this is an unfortunate side detail: what matters to them most is that the bill is not on the government’s balance sheet, but on homeowners and their insurers. Here we have a clear reminder of the madness of the system, which is unable to guarantee a stable future for the overwhelming majority of the population.
Waters rising
The blatant lies, hypocrisy, and impotence of the ruling class does not go unnoticed. David Cameron himself was heckled on a trip to visit flood victims in York. Others are deeply sceptical about the government’s claims, including many in York, where firefighters who were part of a specialist flood rescue team were not called out to help evacuate submerged residents. Members of the Fire Brigades Union speculated that the city’s flood defences were deliberately being underused, in order that they can be lined up for future cuts.
Thus the floods are another symptom of the decay of capitalism, and are a factor in the increasing anger directed against the whole establishment. One of Cameron’s hecklers was reported as shouting “no more cuts to public services”. However, ever deeper cuts are firmly the order of the day, as a result of the desperate position of British capitalism, and the increasingly likely prospect of a new world slump.
Despite the forecasts of more and more extreme storms, we can surely predict that on a capitalist basis, little will be done to protect our towns and cities. Only by taking over the vast wealth of the capitalist class on a socialist basis could we begin to invest in the systems necessary to protect us from future deluges.
Postscript
George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, noted another interesting aspect to the recent floods. In Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, a town recently submerged during the Christmas flooding, local residents had been complaining for years to the local government about the burning and draining of a nearby grouse moor, following the purchase of the land by the retail tycoon Richard Bannister.
By draining the moors, the water carrying capacity of the land is greatly reduced, making floods downstream much more likely. However, it also leads to an increase in the grouse population, which in turn allows rich landowners such as Bannister to charge ever-greater amounts for members of his class to shoot the birds.
Under local pressure, Natural England, a government body, took the Bannister estate to court, over the illegal drainage works to the land. However, after spending over £1m on the case, it suddenly dropped the charges, and struck an agreement with the estate whereby the owner would be given £2.5m of public money to continue essentially as before.
As noted by Monbiot, the government minister responsible at the time was himself a grouse moor owner, and had been lobbied by the Moorland Association, which represents other grouse moor owners. It is therefore unsurprising that the interests of Bannister were placed above those of the thousands of residents who lived downstream. Although it is not certain that the management of the moor directly led to the flooding at Hebden Bridge, it is likely to have played an impact.
