The 14 Day Rule

Boaters may have received two

letters from CRT recently, posted
direct to their boats. One, dated 8
August 2014, states "The canals and
rivers in London have seen a 36%
rise in boat numbers over the last
five years to 2,964 boats in March
2014. In the past year alone, overall
numbers have increased by 14%,
while numbers of continuous
cruisers in East London has [sic]
increased by 85%."
It goes on to say "To make
sure everyone has a fair chance of
mooring it's important that boaters
respect the mooring requirements.
This month we're starting an
initiative of text messaging boaters
in London when they've reached
the maximum stay time on a 14-day
towpath mooring as a gentle
reminder to move on."
CRT then explain they have
"recently
recruited
a
new
enforcement supervisor and an
additional enforcement officer, and
are in the process of looking for
another enforcement officer."
The second letter, dated
simply August 2014, explains

changes in mooring times at

Victoria Park, Broadway Market and
Little Venice, to be implemented
from 1 September 2014.
At Victoria Park, the stay
time on the "eastern half" will be
reduced from 14 to 7 days; at
Broadway Market there will
apparently be "a new 7-day visitor
mooring located at the western end
of Andrew's Road"; and at Little
Venice the "eastern half" will be
reduced from 14 to 7 days.
These changes to mooring
times ignore continuous cruisers'
legal right to a fortnight a right
spelt out in the 8 August 2014
letter. CRT make no mention of
plans to install mooring rings or new
grass verges along the long
stretches of canal that could easily
accommodate boats but currently
sit unoccupied.
The reduction in mooring
times and the fact they are being
introduced at the end of the
summer and in time for the winter
seems to be designed to make liveaboard boaters' lives in London
harder.

The 2014 General Meeting

of the National Bargee
Travellers
Association
(NBTA) will take place on
Saturday 22nd November
2014 at 1pm to 5pm at the
Quaker Meeting House,
150 Church Rd, Watford
WD17 4QB (near Watford
Junction
Station).
All
members are welcome.
If you would like to come
to the General Meeting,
please book a place as
soon as possible by
emailing secretariat@bargeetraveller.org.uk or phoning
0118 321 4128. We need to
keep the venue informed
of the numbers so please
let us know in advance if
you wish to attend. Further
travel directions etc will be
sent out on booking.

Privatisation with a Needy Smile: a CaRT History

The Canal and River Trust have
recently made a further move
towards enclosure of the London
waterways, by attempting to
define place with the use of
boundaries and labels on maps.
Intended only as guidance for
continuous cruisers who may be
unsure of how far they need to
move every 14 days in order to
be using their boats bona fide for
navigation. Many new boaters
may agree that this is a useful
tool to help them stay on the
right side of CaRT, but the more
seasoned continuous cruiser may
argue the necessity. Within a
short while of living on the cut
and moving around in our
floating coffins, one gets a clear
sense of locality. An ethereal
definition of place emerges
naturally as the sum of our
individual experiences.
The definition of place
is highly controversial, and there
is a great deal of history around
this issue, particularly with
regard to the British Waterways
Act of 1995.

Back In The Day

In the early 1990s British
Waterways, the Canal and River
Trusts predecessor before the
Coalitions bonfire of the
quangos, proposed a private bill
to parliament. The bill was
brought about mainly to tackle
safety issues on the water by
using a legislative framework to
ensure higher standards. The bill
in its original form was poorly
put together and attracted much
outrage from various stakeholders, none of which were
consulted. Consequently there
were many petitions to members

of parliament over various

controversial clauses. It took 4
years for the bill to be debated
into an acceptable form, as
Labour MP Clare Short describes
in a parliamentary debate on
May 17th 1993:
It is a great pity that the
Bill was introduced in such
an unacceptable form. All
sorts
of
fears
and
reasonable alarms were
created. The Bill has been
massively modified. British
Waterways would have
been better advised to
consult
more
broadly
before it introduced the
Bill.

Not Quite So Back In

The Day
Some of us may remember
British Waterways 2011 attempt
to tackle congestion in London,
where the proposals were so
extreme (requiring movement of
vast distances every week) that
even if boaters could follow the
unlawful rules, British Waterways would fail spectacularly (as
they continue to do now) to
enforce them. Ms Shorts lament
is one boaters are familiar with.
Many MPs believed that
this ill-considered bill was a
thinly veiled ruse for the
privatisation of the waterways.
Heres Ms Short again, from the
same debate:
Many people are concerned about the danger that
the Government may privatise British Waterways. I

listened carefully to what

the Minister said. He said
that the Government have
no plans so to do. Before
the election, the Government told us that they had
no plans to increase value
added tax, but we know
what has happened in
relation to domestic fuel.
We
know
that
the
Government are planning
to privatise the forests and
railways in Britain, so I am
sorry to say that I am a
little suspicious about what
the Minister said. Will he
give us an absolute commitment that in the lifetime
of this Government there
will be no move whatever
to privatise any part of
British Waterways?
There was a lengthy response by
a Mr Baldry to reassure the
Honourable Lady. Ms Short was
not alone in her fears though, as
David Hinchliffe Labour Member
of Parliament for Wakefield also
had words to say on the matter.
From the same debate on May
17th, 1993:
I believe that privatisation will be the next step
and that the Bill is a thinly
disguised paving measure. I
hope that I am wrong, but
given the Government's
record, and the direction of
almost every measure that
they have introduced, I see
no reason to believe that
privatisation will not be the
end result. I suspect that I
shall be proved right. It is
clearly the Government's
intention to commercialise

the BWB (British Waterways Board) even further,

to enable it to pull out even
more from state funding of
the inland waterways
system. That saddens me,
but it comes as no surprise.
Even more worrying is the
fact that the Government
have no coherent political
strategy for the use of our
inland waterways, and the
immense potential offered
by our rivers and canals.
Most of these fears concerned
barely imagined tolls to access
the towpath, which seem awfully
cute when compared to the
transformation
of
British
Waterways into to the Canal and
River Trust, i.e. privatisation with
a needy smile.

Concern For Boaters

There was also much concern
about how the bill would
negatively affect boaters in
regard to moorings. In the early
draft of the bill, British
Waterways wanted all craft to
have a mooring. Mr Andrew
Bennett, Labour MP for Denton
and Reddish sheds light on why
this stipulation was not included
in the final draft. From the
second reading of the bill on
January 19th, 1994:
My second point concerns
people with houseboats on
the canals and the
problems
that
exist,
particularly for people on
low incomes. [] They
enjoy owning boats and
travelling
around
the
canals more slowly than
people having a fortnight's
holiday and wanting to

travel a substantial distance.

Those people like to travel
for a few months around
the canal network and then
stop and find employment
for a few months. [] I
hope that when the
Committee considers the
issue we will be assured
that people on low incomes
will not be penalised if they
do not have permanent
moorings, and that if they
progress around the canal
system and do not need a
permanent mooring they
will not be in difficulty.
That particular concern Mr
Bennett aired is what should
concern us boaters in the
present day. The vagueness of
the
legislation
that
was
eventually agreed upon for the
British Waterways Act of 1995,
was designed so with intention.
It was left loose as a
concession to those who feared
the worst for boaters who may
not have the means to comply,
for whatever reasons they might
have.

And Today, What About

That?
If we take a look at the critical
piece of legislation from the bill
that is still active today, one can
see how vague the requirements
are. From Section 17 of the
British Waterways Act:
the vessel to which the
application relates will be
used bona fide for
navigation throughout the
period for which the
consent is valid without

remaining continuously in
any one place for more
than 14 days or such
longer period as is
reasonable
in
the
circumstances.
Those who use these maps that
the Canal and River Trust have
created should do so with
extreme caution and in the
above context. Any materials of
guidance the Canal and River
Trust publish are exactly that,
guidance, and do not have any
basis in law. Boaters would do
well to remember that every
word, comma and full stop of
Section 17, that is so pertinent to
the continuous cruiser, has been
gone over with a fine tooth comb
and then some.
It is no accident that we
have the law on our side.
Links to the debates:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.
com/commons/1993/may/17/bri
tish-waterways-bill-lords-byorder
http://hansard.millbanksystems.
com/commons/1994/jan/19/brit
ish-waterways-bill-lords
More information on the maps:
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.
org.uk/crt-places-maps-wereleaked/
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.
org.uk/crt-publish-map-ofplaces/
The Floater would like to thank Mr
Marmaduke Dando for his research, his
writing, and for the excellent title of this
article. He would like to apologise for the
crap subheadings, which have been his own
addition. Ive been in a bit of a hurry of late,
you see
the Editor
ps. I am aware its supposed to be NBTA, but
its too late to make that particular edit
now.

WHATS THAT BAD SMELL COMING FROM ISLINGTON?

It has been argued by the Air
Quality Officer at Islington
Council that the trial period for
Angel visitor moorings should be
'extended to all parts of the canal
in Islington'.

has produced a 'Best Practice

Guide for Boaters' It states that
people living on the water 'can
bring with it problems of
overcrowding, anti-social behaviour and nuisance'.

I think we should take any

support we are given but at the
end the day we can't leave it to
politicians to defend us. We must
organise ourselves to defend our
interests.

With the support of Islington

Council, the Canal and River Trust
(CRT) have already made changes
to Islington visitor moorings such
as the following:

So where does this anti-boater

attitude come from?

And let this be a lesson to us, if

we let the force against us take a
bit they will try and take the lot.

A limit of 7 days mooring.

No Return rule
A ban on all fuel other than
smokeless coal.
Mooring to be kept to a single
line of boats in winter, with a
maximum of two abreast in the
summer.
A caretaker boater.
A quiet zone which includes no
'loud' music including limits on
engine and generator noise.

The above were agreed to by

boaters with the understanding
that there was an unique situation at Noel Road because the
Council and CRT said that the
'smoke and noise is funnelled
down the canal'.
However, the Council have said
there is 'evidence of dispersal to
the Muriel Street / York Way area
which is now our priority'. Since
you can't disperse the funnelling
shape of the canal what they
mean is the dispersal of boat
dwellers.
In a bizarre turn, Islington Council

The problem is the people

complaining about boaters are on
a mission of cleansing the area of
the poor with the help of the
Council. Council housing has
been sold off, rents have been
pushed up, squatters and other
homeless people cracked down
on. And who else is there left to
attack? That's right, the boaters.
And there have been attacks. The
Labour councillor for St. Peter's
ward- Martin Klute, states there
has been an increase of boaters
and claims this has meant there
have been many residents who
are so fed up of them that they're
thinking of moving. The Labour
councillors for Caledonian Ward
then made a statement that they
want stretches of the canal kept
clear of moorings.
So why are a Labour Council and
their councillors attacking us?
The Green Party has the only
non-Labour councillor in the
council, and has taken up camp
defending the boaters. On
Islington Green Party website
they defend boaters, as we use
local businesses such as shops,
launderettes' and 'demonstrate
that the canal is a valuable, living
feature of Islington'.
So what if we didnt, would they
still support us?

By Marcus.
An Advertisement Follows
It is with no humility whatsoever that the
Floater would like to advertise the following,
because he can, and because youll be seeing
a whole lot more of this kind of thing, what
with Christmas coming and all, and yknow,
youre kind of the audience for all this crazy
Jazz that the good people at Marshgate have
agreed to inflict upon the world in general
and you, my little floaters, in particular.
Brace yourselves, it may get a little choppy.
the Editor.