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In-Depth Information
collisions. Things became further complicated on
the roads because both emergency services and
the Automobile Association found it extremely
difficult to locate drivers who had been involved
in accidents, or just broken down, in the fog.
The fog also had a detrimental affect on social
life in the metropolis. Scotland Yard reported
that crime rates within the city rose sharply during
the fog, with higher than normal numbers of
burglaries and assaults. The most serious social
consequence of the fog disaster was on public
health. During the fog, King Edward's Hospital
Fund for London claimed that cases of respiratory
illness increased fourfold, while reported cases of
heart problems were three times higher than the
seasonal average (Whitehead, 2009: 144). Early
analyses claimed that 4000 deaths could be directly
attributed to the fog disaster (see Thorsheim,
2006: 162), but this figure has recently been revised
to nearer 12,000 (Whitehead, 2009).
important to note at this point that it is often in
the face of extreme environmental problems that
governments are forced to assess and reform their
capacities for dealing with such problems.
In response to both the London fog disaster,
and the shortcomings in atmospheric government
it exposed, the British state established an expert
Committee on Air Pollution in 1953 (Thorsheim,
2006). Given the serious nature of the London fog
disaster, and the fact that it had affected all social
classes in the city, the British state was able to gain
support for drastic action on air pollution. The
various recommendations of the Committee on
Air Pollution led to the now famous 1956 Clean
Air Act. Many claim that the 1956 Clean Air Act
represents the first legislation in the world to focus
explicitly on environmental pollution. What is
most interesting about this piece of environmental
legislation - at least in the context of the discussion
presented in this chapter - is what it tells us about
the role of the state within environmental gover-
nance. The 1956 Act banned the emission of dark
smoke from industrial and domestic chimneys. It
also created smokeless zones and smoke control
areas in many cities. Finally, it established long-
term provisions for the relocation of power stations
away from urban centres. These actions reveal the
ability of states, when freed from the influence of
narrow class interest, to take fairly authoritarian
action on environmental issues that can be applied
in a uniform way right across a national territory.
But the 1956 Clean Air Act also tells us something
about the conditions that enable authoritative
environmental actions by governments. By the
1950s, technologies already existed for the replace-
ment of smoke-producing coal with cleaner gas
and electricity. To these ends the 1956 Act was
primarily about encouraging a form of large-scale
technological substitution. The comprehensive
nature of the 1956 Clean Air Act meant that it had
a fairly immediate impact, and resulted in a 90 per
cent decrease in sulphur emissions in London
alone (O'Neill, 2000: 66).
Despite the success of the 1956 Act in
addressing dark smoke pollution, it is important
7.4.2 The governmental response to
the fog disaster
In many ways the fog disaster saw the breakdown
of social and economic life in London. It was in the
context of this socio-economic chaos that the
British government realized that it had to take
more definitive action on the air pollution
problems that had plagued British cities since the
industrial revolution. It did not take long for the
fog disaster to be a topic of conversation within
Parliament. These discussions quickly exposed
some of the weaknesses in the existing systems of
British atmospheric government. First, it became
clear that despite the demand for reliable mortality
estimates, the Department of Health was not able
to produce such statistics. Furthermore, it became
apparent that the government's Atmospheric
Pollution Research Committee was not fit for
purpose. The Committee had only met on two
occasions during the whole of 1952, and did not
have the capacity or expertise to provide an
effective analysis of the causes and consequences
of the fog disaster (Whitehead, 2009: 145). It is
