Demonstrators stopped traffic as representatives from seven councils that form the North London Waste Authority met in Camden to vote through the expansion of the existing Edmonton Incinerator

• IN June 2019, in the wake of the inspiring strikes and protests by students around the world for serious action against climate change and for a more sustainable way of meeting humanity’s needs, Islington Council declared a climate emergency.

Teachers, school support staff, students, and parents applauded.

Unfortunately last Thursday, when Islington Council met to discuss whether or not their two councillors on the North London Waste Authority should vote this week for the expansion of the Edmonton incinerator to go ahead, their declaration turned out to be what Greta Thunberg called “so much Blah! Blah! Blah!”.

Instead of ramping up the reduction of waste and the expansion of recycling, the council voted to pay a multinational Spanish company – with a record of abusing the human rights of indigenous people in Mexico – hundreds of millions of pounds to build an incinerator which is not needed and which will pump out a million tons of greenhouse gases and millions of particulate pollutants of the kind which killed nine-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah in south London in 2013.

The location of the incinerator in Edmonton, an economically and socially deprived area with a majority black, Asian, and minority ethnic population, is nothing less than environmental discrimination.

They should urgently rethink.

It might also turn out that their decision is unlawful because it took the form of deleting most of a motion from Green councillor Caroline Russell to pause and review the decision and instead substitute an intention to go ahead with the incinerator expansion, when council meeting standing orders state that any amendment to a motion must not “negate” it; which Cllr Rowena Champion’s amendment clearly did.

Whether or not this means the council will be obliged to rehold the debate – and whatever impact a failure to do this might have on the legality of any decision taken on December 16 by the NWLA – the campaign against this health-threatening, climate-damaging, incinerator will continue.

KEN MULLER
Islington National
Education Union