The Whitstabubble is the jewel in the crown of the Kent coast. The lure of the legendary oyster beds has turned a working port into a leisure destination and a bimbler's paradise A new art gallery, vinyl record shops, a historic cinema and theatre; bustling charity shops replete with local dames preparing for panto season. Welcoming pubs, resplendent and restored to former glory with Shepherd Neame beers and craft ale to the fore. The pubs used to be rough and ready a couple of decades ago and a pub crawl was full of life with a bohemian edge. I remember singing an Elvis classic 'In the Ghetto' and ending the night on the sea-front in the timeless 'Neptune' pub. A brisk walk to Seasalter for lunch in 'The Sportsman' blew off the cobwebs where they had just started doing strange things with samphire and sourdough.
I had heard a lot about the transformation and it was heartening to see a town in such good fettle. It retained a community feel defying the second home boom. What comes from Whitstable often stays in Whitstable. With such great connections to London and the continent you can enjoy the village, walk along the beach and be in smoke city by lunchtime. The ozone is addictive and once off the thoroughfare you feel ensconced in the the hugger mugger of the tightly packed terraced streets. The town embraces you and then pops you out on the shingle shore in a pub garden looking toward the Isle of Thanet. Oyster shells dot the beach and the port has been sympathetically gentrified to suit fishermen and visitors alike.
Whitstable oysters is a protected food name, a bit like Stilton and Cheddar cheese and were first harvested by the Romans. We now take lead from French attempts to protect and celebrate indigenous foodie traditions with provenance. To qualify a Pacific Oyster has to be 2 to 3 years old and plucked from Whitstable Bay, collected in nets and purified in seawater on the dockside. I checked out the abundance of appetising restaurants with their fishy names; Crab and Winkle, Samphire, Wee Willie Winkle's. Oyster Bar or Lobster Shack? I was getting seafood overload and settled for a dockside squeeze of lemon and heaven at the Oyster Shed. I once taught twins who went on to work at the fabled fish stall in Birmingham market and this is my first stop every time I go into town. As children we took a rowing boat out to the Oyster beds in the Fal Estuary and almost filled the boat by dipping our hands into the shallows and retrieving bivalves. Although parents appeared horrified at the haul I cannot remember too many being sent back. My other mollusc adventure was of the green lipped variety in Marlborough Sound. Kiwi monster mussels filled the kayak on that occasion as big as your hand.
All was not well in the town and I soon found that Whitstable was revolting ! My trip coincided with the end of half term when the weather was turning and the swimmers gave up on the warm Autumnal waters. Only had local groups like the eponymously named 'bluetits' would venture out as Winter took hold. Or so the water company thought. After the first over-night storm South West Water opened the sluice gates and poured raw sewage into rivers and the sea at over 60 locations simultaneously. You could smell trouble brewing in the air and local opinion was inflamed. The privatised water company also had a monopoly on this service so switching provider was not an easy option for a quick dirty protest. This practice had been going on for years and only recently had the water company received a damming rebuke and a £90 million fine. The immediacy of the issue brought home how poor regulation and political ideology could impact a community. These coastal hot spots in the South West were traditional tory voting areas so this was a hot potato. As Billy Bragg said recently, ' we are all libertarians until the street fills up with brown water.' Citizen journalists and environmental campaigners aligned to inform local people of the effects of company policy to prioritise profits before investment in infrastructure. Horrific videos of outflow into beusty spots like Langstone Harbour went viral overnight. After thirty years of vulture capitalism the effects were clear. A company tasked with cleaning up and treating waste water was depositing it straight into the water cycle. It was a hard task to clean up the story and whatever viewpoint you looked at it from, it stank.
The problem for Whitstable was that the water quality in the bays that supplied their prized catch, good for you, good for the environment,' was suspect and had led to bans. E Coli had forced the closure of the Oyster harvest festival in the summer. Oysters had to be shipped in from Jersey. There was grit in the fabled Whitstable oyster and the pearlescent lustre had gone grey. Local people blamed the mass dumping but felt powerless and angry.
The main reason for visiting Whitstable had become its biggest story and the fact that people were now calling them Shitstable oysters was a disaster. I had walked past Swalecliffe earlier, where the water company had regularly dumped sewage into Herne, Tankerton and Whitstable bays for decades. The previous night's mass dump was the catalyst for a Twitter storm which became front page news over the next few days. Citizen journalists had used the power of internet to circumvent main stream media. Several days later to the concern of local MP's this story had not abated but gathered viral speed.
The whole thing blew up in parliament as a minor bill was defeated by a Tory majority and passed back to the House of Lords. This would have put the onus on the water companies to clean up their act and take steps to prevent raw sewage entering rivers and the sea. Toxic waste was only meant to be dumped in extremis but it had become clear that water companies had been regularly discharging waste as a cheaper option to treatment or upgrading infrastructure. Privatisation meant that while profits rolled in over thirty years and were divvied up to shareholders and a myriad of offshore tax havens and sovereign wealth funds, the required upgrades to an antiquated system had not kept pace. As a monopoly customers could not opt out from their local provider which undermined the ideology of privatising to increase competition.
Ministers and politicians, some with clear vested interests, claimed that Victorian sewers were to blame but the public asked why investment had not kept pace when hundreds of millions had been been made in profits. The ironic position that weak regulation has led to is that water companies would rather take a considerable fine and public approbation than invest and protect the environment they are entrusted with.
For a short period this scandal gained traction in the media and MP's got the jitters as the twitter sphere cranked into motion. This issue was directly affecting Conservative voting areas and shitting on their own doorsteps was not a vote winner. Brexit concerns had already weakened support in Tory heartlands as reality set in but this issue was right under the noses of the faithful. Welsh water and Scottish water are owned by not for profit statutory companies but when the owners are a myriad basket case of shadowy derivatives it is hard to say who actually is responsible. Weak regulation also makes it unclear whether this issue will ever be cleared up and the eventual bill was worded enigmatically to leave a get out clause in place.
This shitstorm has abated and we wait to see if we will carry on as before. Campaigners like Surfers against Sewage and environmentalists continue to highlight the state of seas and rivers in documentaries like 'Rivercide'. However, until anyone gives a shit places like Whitstable will clean up the mess or wade in the fall out. The solution is regulation or nationalisation key industries like rail, power and water which are struggling to prove that privatisation is a sound economic model.
Abandoning this ideology seems anathema to the ruling party despite the logic that some key industries are too important to leave to the vagaries of a global market. Local protests were evident along the coast particularly amongst swimming groups and the sense of frustration was palpable. For the historic oyster beds of Whitstable the damage is done.
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