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Statements by Our Candidates in the 2005 Elections

Colm Bryce

Water charges non-payment campaign growing in Derry

Monday 2nd May 2005

SEA candidate for Northland, Colm Bryce, has backed the 'non-payment pledge' on water charges launched in the city at the weekend by former MP Bernadette McAliskey. Speaking at a meeting of election workers in Rosemount on Sunday night, Mr. Bryce said "There is growing agreement across the most disadvantaged communities of Northern Ireland that the best way to stop water charges, and the privatisation that goes with them, is a mass campaign of non-payment.

"People's reasoning is simple", says Mr. Bryce. "Minister Spellar makes it clear that the main reason for water charges is to produce a 'revenue stream' to make our water service attractive to private water corporations. 

According to the SEA candidate,"the privatisation of water in England and Wales in 1989 is held up as a model for the privatisation of water supply systems across the world.  But anti-poverty groups say that the profits are huge.  Oxfam figures show that the privatised water companies Severn Trent, United Utilities and Yorkshire Water made £12 billion in pre-tax profits in their first ten years and paid out £8 billion in dividends.

"Across the world, governments and private water corporations fear more than anything a mass non-payment campaign where people refuse to provide a 'secure and sustainable revenue stream'. In countries from Bolivia to the Irish Republic, Peru to South Africa, privatization has failed for one reason only: non-payment campaigns", claims Mr. Bryce.

"As well as uniting us with campaigners against water privatisation across the globe, the non-payment campaign will help us unite with each other, Protestant and Catholic, across the North of Ireland. There can be little doubt but that building a serious non-payment campaign would do more to break down sectarian divisions than any other single idea or development on the horizon, " says Mr. Bryce.

"The election will not be the end of our campaigning against water charges. Far from it, we will be going around the doors of every area of the city, explaining the non-payment pledge and getting people to sign up to it. The government are planning to push the legislation through early in the new parliament. We need to be organising now to stop water charges."





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