A barrage of poisonous water — inter-war research on the river Tees

Abstract

Not only were the watercourses of the industrial parts of Britain among the first in the world to experience large-scale pollution, but there was recognition of the pressing need to find more sustainable ways of incorporating them within the economic and social life of local communities. Historians have closely studied the ways in which the challenge was met in the 19th century. Comparatively, little attention has been paid to the inter-war years. The present paper provides a case study of the threat of industrial pollution to the fishing interests of the river Tees in North-East England during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. It traces how local precedents came to be set by the Tees Fishery Board and an ad hoc Joint Committee of industrial and fisheries interests in securing the intervention of first the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and then the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, in identifying the nature, extent and cause of such pollution. Insight is provided into the institutional relationships that prevailed between the State, business and other user-interests, as they affected industrial competitiveness and the quality of the river environment.