Canal Boat — February 2018

canalboat.co.uk Canal Boat February 2018 25

O

ut in the real world,

away from the

canals, there’s a war

developing between

different age groups. I don’t

know where you stand, but I’m

not unsympathetic to those

young people who blame their

parents’ generation (ie my

generation) for saddling them

with education costs they never

had to pay, and then blagging

all the best jobs, the fat

pensions and the big houses,

leaving them to live in

overpriced flat shares working

zero-hour contracts.

There’s something unfair

about this distribution of

wealth, and all around the

country we’ve seen the effects

it’s had on our little neck of the

woods as thousands of young

people – families, couples,

singletons – have given up the

idea of ever owning a home of

their own of bricks and mortar,

and taken to boats instead,

creating a whole host of

problems in their wake.

I blame Pru and Tim. Well,

actually, no I don’t. Theirs was

just one of many TV

programmes that offered

people what seemed an

effortless and inexpensive route

to a dream. More to blame was

the old British Waterways

Board (BWB) who were the last

people to see this rapid

expansion of liveaboards

coming, or the Canal & River

Trust who should have planned

for it better once it became

apparent it was. I blame people

like myself too, who’ve written

books extolling the canals; and

yes, magazines like this one,

which have contributed to the

idea that living on the

waterways is feasible for as

many people as want to just

come and get it.

Mainly though I blame

successive governments for a

housing policy that has made

living on the water not AN

option for the young, but often

the ONLY option open to them.

And meanwhile as the

waterways in London and other

major cities move gently but

steadily towards gridlock – just

one fire or an exploding gas

bottle away from tragedy –

newcomers continue to arrive

by the week, some of them in

boats that should have been

condemned years ago, and

some in sparkling newly-built

craft constructed, not for

cruising, but as floating homes,

totally unsuited to the limited

moorings which are anyhow

increasingly unavailable to

them.

Where will it all end, I ask

myself as we move into 2018?

Sometimes I feel inspired by

this influx of new blood

refreshing the DNA of a canal

community which has become

too smug and self satisfied over

the decades I’ve been boating.

Other times I feel despondent

about the canals, as if I’ve seen

their best days and that it’s

downhill from here. I am old

enough to remember motoring

in the 1950s when you could

travel at will along empty roads

free from yellow lines, parking

restrictions and cameras. Look

at roads now. Could anyone

then have imagined today’s

congestion?

I’ve spent my whole life on

the cut railing against

regulation and pettifogging

rules. It seemed to me that the

waterways of England were the

last place for a free spirit to

roam. If only for a week or two a

year, you could escape the

constraints of ordinary life and

imagine yourself in a better

world where people weren’t

always breathing down your

neck. Now though I wonder

whether this centuries-old

system can survive the rigours

of the modern world, starved as

it is of adequate funding. I

wonder if it can go on the way it

is unless we pay substantially

more to use it, and unless it is

regulated more, with boat

numbers limited, and increasing

rules to control mooring. I

wonder if its current popularity

is destroying its solitude, which

is its greatest appeal.

I opposed the transformation

of BWB into a charity because I

believed then, as I believe now,

that the waterways are a

national resource that should

be state-funded, not required to

finance itself to its own

detriment. My fear, which I

voiced at the time, was that

without government cash it

wouldn’t be possible to generate

the revenue necessary to

maintain the system without

completely changing the culture

of the cut. However, I lost the

argument; and though the

worst of what I imagined

becomes ever more the case, it

matters not one jot because

today C&RT is the only game in

town. With the NHS gagging for

cash, our schools in disarray

and social housing all but

non-existent, no government

will pay to subsidise the

housing of the young any more

than they will subsidise the

hobbies of the old.

So we somehow have to make

C&RT work. I don’t know if it’ll

have a Happy New Year. It’ll

certainly have a difficult one.

Follow me on Twitter

@Cutdreamer

Can our centuries-old system survive the modern world?

STEVE HAYWOOD

Award-winning current affairs TV producer, journalist and author who has been a boat owner for nearly 40 years

‘I blame Pru and Tim. Well, actually, no

I don’t. Theirs was just one of many

TV programmes that offered people

what seemed an effortless and

inexpensive route to a dream’

London’s canals: moving “gently but steadily towards gridlock”

CB