How floods divided Britain
Very thought provoking article about how the balance of power plays out when things go wrong in rural places…..
I thought of Thorney, Somerset and Thorney, Westminster as twin towns of a kind, for one was subject to decisions made in the other – though by the time the winter was over, the inhabitants of the village and its neighbours would reverse the pattern, by forcing those at the centre to accept their perception of the causes of the flood.
There were other resentments directed at the other Thorney: people were tired of being told by Londoners that they shouldn’t live on flood plains, since London is on a flood plain as well. Yet even the Thames Barrier – which is deployed with increasing regularity to protect central London – cannot stop the Thames bursting its banks upstream, and the residents of places like Thorney were angry that nothing much was done until Berkshire and Surrey had flooded.
Most people recognised that living beside water carries risks – some did not regret their choice even after they had been flooded. Yet many saw floods as a man-made disaster, rather than a natural one, caused by the neglect or mismanagement of the office-bound bureaucrats who rarely visit the places they oversee.