Британские каналы: история борьбы за сохранение

Charity campaigning to preserve British canals

The Inland Waterways Association (IWA) is a registered charity in the United Kingdom which was formed in 1946 to campaign for the conservation, use, maintenance, restoration and sensitive development of British canals and river navigations. Notable founding members included L. T. C. Rolt and Robert Aickman.

In 1944, Tom Rolt published his book Narrow Boat, which reflected on his journey around the canals in 1939 in his boat Cressy. The book was popular and Rolt received a number of letters following its publication. One letter came from Robert Aickman, a literary agent and aspiring author, who made the suggestion that a society to campaign for the regeneration of canals should be formed. Tom Rolt supported this idea and on Saturday 11 August 1945, he, Robert and their wives, Angela and Ray, met for the first time aboard Cressy at Tardebigge on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The couples developed a good working relationship, and the inaugural meeting of The Inland Waterways Association took place on 15 February 1946 at Aickman's flat in Gower Street, London. Robert Aickman was appointed chairman, Charles Hadfield, vice chairman, Tom Rolt honorary secretary and Frank Eyre treasurer. By then, IWA had attracted a range of talent, including as president the writer and parliamentarian Sir A. P. Herbert, and as vice president the naturalist Peter Scott. Scott's wife Elizabeth Jane Howard was part time secretary, working in the Aickmans' flat in Gower Street. The council included Lord Bingham. In 1948, most canals in Great Britain were nationalised under the British Transport Commission. In August of that year a more extensive campaign took place: the Ailsa Craig was hired for a six week cruise of the northern canals, which included probably the last crossing of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal before its restoration in 2001. The first boat rally and festival was organized at Market Harborough in August 1950, a meeting place open to boats wide and narrow from south and north of England and off the busier commercial routes. 120 boats and 50,000 visitors attended and this laid the foundation for the IWA National Festival, held almost ever year from 1953 to 2013. The 1948 rally was overshadowed by a row among the organizers. Tom Rolt had resigned as secretary some months before because of the pressure of his other work as a writer, though remaining an active member. His next book, The Inland Waterways of England was also due to be published in August, though Rolt said that was a coincidence as he did not tell the publisher of the rally that had been organized. Aickman, through Eyre, attempted to prevent Rolt from attending the rally and promoting his book but this only led to the publisher Philip Unwin also attending. There had been personality conflicts with Aickman which had led Charles Hadfield to resign his position as vice chairman as early as 1946, and disagreements over policy. Aickman wanted to campaign to keep all of the waterways open, whereas Rolt had more sympathies with the traditional canal workers and realised that it was necessary to prioritize which canals could reasonably be kept open. Aickman engineered a change to the rules to require all members to conform to agreed IWA principles and in early 1951, Rolt, Hadfield and others were excluded from membership.

During most of the 1950s, IWA was campaigning in an era when the British Transport Commission (BTC) had the commercial use of the canal system as its main goal. The country did not have enough money to spend on canal maintenance let alone restoration. The canals, particularly the narrow system, had become inadequate for modern commerce and slowly fell into disuse. Early attempts at involvement in saving a canal, when the Basingstoke Canal came up for sale in 1949, were frustrated when a committee set up to save it saw their contributions used to support a private bid from their nominated bidder. A more hopeful start was made on the lower reaches of the Warwickshire Avon, a river where commercial navigation had long since ceased because of perennial flooding problems, thus it was not part of BTC's remit. Learning from the experience of the Basingstoke Canal, IWA advised the formation of a charitable trust and Douglas Barwell – who had joined the Midlands branch with this in mind – took charge of the restoration project. Local campaigns emerged to counter the threats to various canals, including the Oxford and Kennet and Avon. An all party parliamentary committee was set up with 30 sympathetic MPs becoming honorary members of IWA. A fight to save the Stroudwater Navigation was lost in Parliament, although 112 MPs voted against it. In March 1955, a Board of Survey reported and recommended the downgrading and possible disposal of 771 miles of waterways, including some, such as the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, that had already been abandoned and closed to traffic. In response, IWA advocated a National Waterway Conservancy to look after all the waterways and pointed out that it is cheaper to restore and use waterways than to eliminate them. A non party parliamentary petition was also organized. Slowly, opinions were changed, so that by the autumn, when the annual BTC bill was placed before parliament, the announced measure was not included and the chair of BTC told MPs that he regretted that the board had not had a more independent basis. The campaign to save the Kennet and Avon Canal intensified. A group supporting its restoration had set up independently after the argument within the association but were now brought back within IWA. A 22,000 signature petition to the Queen was brought from Bristol by water, though stretches of the canal had to be traversed by canoe to get it through. In March 1956, a clause in the BTC bill to close the K&A was defeated. A new committee of enquiry was set up and the IWA was invited, amongst others, to give detailed plans for the viability of various waterways, which put considerable strain on an organisation which did not at the time have a permanent staff and whose financial affairs were in some disarray. Christopher Clifford, a JP, made the presentation. Another dispute arose within the organisation when Aickman pushed to seek incorporation as a company limited by guarantee. At the time there was no chairman of the council, as Aickman had been persuaded to keep only the position of founder and vice president after the last crisis, and he was ordered to rest by his doctor at this time. Although the motion was eventually passed, and the IWA was incorporated in 1958, several branches broke away from the organisation.

In Warwickshire, work on the Lower Avon was nearing completion after a decade of hard work and it was confirmed that nobody owned the rights to the upper reaches which led to Stratford upon Avon. The prospect of a connection from the Severn through to the Midlands was in sight but was in jeopardy when the Stratford upon Avon Canal was threatened with abandonment. In 1958, John Smith, a banker and company director who was an IWA member and had an honorary post in the National Trust, suggested that organisation might take over the canal. Another enthusiastic member, David Hutchings, took up the task of restoration after the National Trust agreed a five year lease on the canal a year later, pointing out that the cost of filling it in would be £120,000 whereas the cost of restoration would be £40,000. Restoration was completed on schedule despite the extremely cold winter of 1962–3. The reopening coincided with the 400th anniversary celebration of Shakespeare's birth at Stratford upon Avon, and the Aickmans accompanied the Queen Mother in a much publicized narrow boat trip to reopen the canal and its connection with the river, as part of a large festival that saw 200 boats on the river outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The experience of restoration led to the creation of the Waterway Recovery Group, led by Graham Palmer, at the 1970 Guildford IWA Rally. At first independent, this organisation acts as a co ordinating force, providing equipment, expertise, publicity and labour to help local restoration schemes. They organise weekend and longer work camps where volunteers can take part in practical restoration work and have been involved in many projects – including saving the Peak Forest and Ashton canals from closure, work on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and the barge lock on the Droitwich Canal – as well as making flying visits to restoration sites. Since around 2002, the group has been a division of the IWA.

The government set up an Inland Waterways Redevelopment Advisory Committee in 1961 to consider the future of canals that were not considered viable. Two IWA stalwarts, John Smith and Lionel Munk, were included on this, together with Tom Rolt. This went against Aickman's slogan of "fighting for every mile", although shortly afterward he admitted privately to Lionel Munk that he was now a "90% man". Canal restorations and growth in the leisure boat industry were offset by numerous setbacks including closures of canals, tunnel failures and the breakdown of the Anderton lift. However, the attitude of BWB gradually changed from scepticism to a more friendly attitude to the organisation. The completion of the restored Kennet and Avon Canal in 1990 and the availability of National Lottery funding from 1994 opened up new possibilities. The membership, which had steadily expanded during the previous decades, settled at around 20,000 and the annual rallies and festivals kept their popularity.

IWA is organised into regions, each of which consist of several branches. The regions are: East Midlands, Eastern, London, North East & Yorkshire, North West & North Wales, South East, South West & South Wales, and West Midlands. The association is governed by a board of trustees. There are a number of national committees, each reporting to the board of trustees. For each committee there is an agreed role and operating arrangements, with areas of delegated responsibility. The current national committees are Finance Committee, Navigation Committee, Waterway Recovery Group, Marketing Committee, Remuneration Committee, Awards Panel. IWA's Restoration Hub supports, enables and champions waterway restoration. Following the resignation of Les Etheridge at the AGM in September 2023, the posts of chair and deputy chairs are vacant pending the conclusion of an ongoing structural review.

IWA is a volunteer led membership charity that campaigns for the waterways. Members can get involved with local and national committees to debate and influence policies and campaigns. The charity formulates policies and undertakes local and national campaigns to work on specific issues that have, or may in the future, have a real impact on the UK's inland waterways. IWA works closely with navigation authorities such as Canal & River Trust, the Environment Agency, and other smaller navigation authorities. The association seeks to maintain good relationships with navigation authorities in order to influence policy and decision making, acting in the best interests of IWA members and the waterways. IWA also works with other waterway bodies, a wide range of national and local authorities, voluntary, private and public sector organisations.

The Campaign Festival has been an integral part of IWA activities since its inception. Bringing a large number of boats to a particular waterway highlights the difficulties of navigation and has kept a number of waterways open that would otherwise have closed. In the past, the annual festival often had campaigning as one of its functions, but the number of boats attending makes many desirable venues impracticable. So, together with campaign rallies held by particular regions, a national campaign rally was established in 2006 to highlight the continued need for this activity.

An anual event since 1983, organised by IWA at Little Venice, London over the early May Bank Holiday weekend, combining a boat rally with a trade show, activities and entertainments.

Two plaques commemorating the 1945 meeting which led to founding of the IWA stand at Tardebigge Top Lock on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. In 2015, the Inland Waterways Association unveiled a plaque commemorating the life and work of its co founder and first chairman, Robert Aickman, at his home and workplace at 11 Gower Street, London.