The screws have been tightened on our community. Canal River and Trust (CRT) is trying to bring in more reduced mooring times on the Grand Union; implement banning boats from 295 ‘no mooring’ spaces in ‘safety’ zones; more mooring restrictions; and 1.1km of new chargeable moorings in Central London. The government with the Clean Air Act has made it harder for many of us to heat our homes and open us up to more harassment by land based NIMBYs, by putting boats under the same clean air zones’ restrictions as houses.

We must stand together to defend our nomadic way of life. In fact our way of life has been on firing line for sometime. Some older parts of the community will still remember, when British Waterways (BW) put forward their Bill to government in 1989, BW tried to make it a criminal offence to have a boat without a home mooring on most of the UK waterways.

Due to action some great individuals, that particular attack was defeated and the Bill was made into the British Waterways Act 1995, which enshrined the right for us to have a boat without a home mooring, as long as we use them for navigation and not stay longer than 14 days continuously in one place, unless reasonable.

We are in a different time from then and we need more than great individuals, we need collective action. The resistance to ‘safety’ zones on the River Lea is a great example of how we can defend our way life.

Let’s come together to march on CRT Little Venice office on Saturday 26th March and using the press, let’s make it heard that ‘Boats are Homes’!

Meet at 1pm Park Square in Regents Park NW1 4LH, nearby tube stations are Great Portland Street and Regent’s Park.

Please put the protest poster in your window.

nbtal-protest-march-1Download

Facebook event here: https://bit.ly/boatshomes26