HUMOUR

PRESERVING OUR WATERWAYS HERITAGE

by "Reg at Rickmansworth"

For many of us in the Waterways movement, one of the great attractions of Britain's canals is the way in which so much has survived from the last two hundred years or more. The waterways are 'living history'. They are a 'National Heritage'. They are 'working museum pieces'. (Insert your own favourite cliché here).

But this 'living history' needs keeping alive. Every aspect of the waterways heritage - be it the traditional working craft, the navigations structures, the canalside buildings or the bloody-minded navigation authorities - is under threat: from intensive modern pleasure-boat traffic that far exceeds anything the canals suffered in the old days, from European regulations and from standardisation by navigation authorities who know so little about waterways heritage that they would happily replace a left-handed brass Warwick and Napton single top-gate jack-spodgett pintle- pin with a right-handed bronze one... I ask you, what hope is there for our heritage in their hands?

Well, actually there is some hope. As the various Heritage organisations scour the country looking for something to keep them in employment, invariably their gaze comes to rest on the waterways. And this is good for the waterways, as it can provide the protection and funding to prevent further loss of heritage.

Elsewhere in this magazine you will read of attempts to get UNESCO to list the canal system as a World Heritage Site; the Heritage Lottery Fund has given grants to canal restoration; thanks to English Heritage when one describes a canal structure as 'Listed' it no longer means it's falling over.

However, all of these bodies are becoming increasingly keen to ensure the maximum amount of 'heritage' interest is preserved, and no aspect of waterways history is safe from their scrutiny. Gone are the days when you could touch them for a few million quid dredging money if they happened to have some cash left over at financial year-end. These days if you get any money for dredging at all, you'll be lucky if they even let you use a steam-dredger, rather than insisting on manual operation...

But while the insistence of the Heritage bodies on use of original materials such as red bricks and lime mortar is well-known, my spies tell me that much more is on the way.

Firstly, all restoration projects will in future be done using only original methods. No excavators. No bulldozers. No dumper- trucks. In fact, the only 'truck' allowed on site will be the traditional 'truck tokens' or 'tommy notes' that the workers will be paid in, as were the original canal navvies. These truck tokens will take the place of money, and only be exchangeable at the over-priced canal company shop. (As a slight concession to the 20th century, a plastic 'truck-card' will be introduced, which can be inserted into 'truckpoint' machines at the bank and used for 'truck-back' at the company 'truckermarket'; it is anticipated that many of these 'truckermarkets' will operate a 'loyalty' scheme to stop their navvies from moving to another canal, by awarding bonus points that can be saved-up and exchanged for 'packetboat-miles'.) WRG's catering department will also have to change their ideas - no more curry, no more chilli and no more Spaghetti Bolognaise. (except when working on the Venice canals) The traditional daily navvies' diet of two pounds of meat (with vegetarian alternative), two pounds of bread and five quarts of ale (or five quarts of non- alcoholic lager for the duty driver) will be reinstated.

WRG are concerned at the cost of upgrading their volunteers' sleeping accommodation to the standard of the traditional Navvies' hovel. An IWA appeal is planned to replace the new WRG van fleet with horses and carts. And after years of insisting that volunteers wear their hard-hats on site, 'Navvies' magazine will soon be advertising the new 'hard-cap' - an authentic 18th century flat-cap hardened and Kevlar-coated to BS5240.

But it's not just the people restoring the waterways that will be affected by the new rules. The boaters who use them are part of the historic waterways scene too, and will have to behave accordingly.

A new Boaters' Code of Practice will replace the existing one, to bring the modern-day boater's behaviour more in line with tradition. The new rules will include:

All the recently-built canalside supermarkets will be closed down; instead the boaters will acquire their provisions from traditional sources. An EU agricultural subsidy will pay the canalside farmers for the loss of their vegetables, while the curriculum of courses in traditional canal skills at the Stoke Bruerne canal museum will be expanded to include poaching.

You will probably have heard the phrase to 'swear like a bargee', and efforts will be made to bring the language of the average boater down to its traditional level. Stoke Bruerne will be using its new Language Lab for courses (or curses?) in 'Shropshire Union Swearing', 'Advanced BCN Blaspheming' and 'Practical Profaning on the Peak Forest'. Yes, it's a little-known fact that every canal had its own distinctive local swearing style, and this will be faithfully reproduced everywhere from Old Sod House lock in the north to Balls Bridge in the south.

Obviously the boats themselves will have to be modified to make them more historically accurate. While wholesale replacement of all steel boats by wooden ones is impractical, some alterations will be needed to at least make them a little more like their timber- built predecessors - such as drilling a few strategically-placed holes for the rain to leak in just above the bed, and the establishment of resident colonies of bed-bugs.

Since many traditional appliances will not meet the latest EU emissions regulations, some hybrid products have been designed with this in mind: new from Sweden is the ElectroBolinder environmentally friendly power unit, while the Back Cabin Company have introduced the MicroClassic traditional 240Volt combination microwave back-cabin stove.

Other changes relate to the way the waterways are organised, and hopefully the Government's privatisation / franchising plans will be a positive step towards reinstating the old inefficiencies and inter-company rivalries that characterised the waterways of old. Back will come the stop-locks; the Worcester Bar will be reinstated; squabbles with the drinking-water companies about water supplies will replicate the traditional scraps between canal company and mill-owner; canals will be taken over and run-down by railway companies; already inter-canal-company strife has had a shot in the arm from the IWAAC prioritisation exercise; Royal Commissions will sit to consider the future of the waterways, and do too little too late. In fact the current government's "shilly-shally and do nothing while the canals deteriorate" approach shows just how much they appreciate one of the great traditions of the waterways.

Naturally the new canal companies will be encouraged to be as close as possible to the original ones, and their bye-laws will reflect this. You may or may not realise that in many cases the original rules did not permit pleasure boats, or forbade the use of locks by such craft. Obviously this will be something of an inconvenience to boaters, but there is an easy solution - simply re-classify them as cargo-carrying boats carrying human cargo. They will then have to be weighed and gauged, and a suitably arcane system of tolls will be implemented on each waterway, based on the weight of passengers multiplied by the number of miles they travel.

Of course, this process will have to be repeated each time a boat moves from one canal to another, but with the re-adoption of traditional incompatible maximum craft dimensions there will be less of this interavailability of boats anyway. (BW's recent adoption of narrower-than-7ft gauges on the Llangollen and Chesterfield shows their commitment to this ideal, and the EA are playing their part too, with their impressively short 40ft new lock on the Little Ouse) So the human cargo will have to use the traditional method - transhipment from one boat to another wherever the gauge changes.

Still, at least one problem facing current boaters will disappear: with the reinstatement of the traditional levels of water pollution, the waterways will no longer be home to rare and diverse flora and fauna - or any flora and fauna for that matter, apart from the occasional traditional dead dog. So all the SSSIs and nature- imposed restrictions on boat movements will be lifted and English Nature will have to look elsewhere for opportunities for stopping people enjoying themselves.

Finally, you will have noticed that despite all this commitment to preserving the traditions and heritage of the cut, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of money coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund any more, and you may be wondering why. Well, it's simple: having studied the history of the waterways, they have realised that the entire system has been chronically short of money for almost its entire existence, and they are doing their best to ensure that that tradition continues.

Oh yes, and the cost of boating will increase so that boaters will have to give up their houses and live on their boats full-time. Just like the traditional working narrow boat families of old.