CaRT's harassment of boaters

I'M WRITING this article to offer moral support to Tony Ball and Tony Dunkley. As widely reported in narrowboatworld,  I too was singled out for harassment by CaRT, writes Ralph Freeman.

However, the tactics then were different. For several months in the Autumn of 2012, wherever I moored, even out in the sticks, my boat would be photographed by someone on the towpath, often on a daily basis. When I queried this with the likes of Darren Green, Manager of Central Shires (I was cruising on his 'patch') and John Dodwell (Trustee), it was suggested they were just 'boat spotters'. That was of course, rubbish.

Gave the game away

Strange isn't it, that in the ten previous years I'd been boating, I had never seen anything approaching that level of enthusiasm for 'boat spotting'. Unfortunately the 'boat spotters' rather gave the game away by only photographing my (nondescript) boat when moored in a row of boats containing some rather good ones with paintwork done in traditional style with roses, castles etc! Since matters came to a head in late 2012 / early 2013 I've not seen a single boat spotter! They appear to have fled as quickly as they came. Funny that?

Not all CaRT personnel are anti-boater, and I was informed that the 'boat spotters' could well be personnel employed by outside agencies (Sherpas?) working for CaRT and it was all very hush hush. Only the likes of Sally Ash and Simon Salem were likely to know the truth. Unfortunately the only way to prove this would have been to go through the invoices in CaRT's accounts to prove the link. Those records were of course not included in the Subject Access Request I made to check what CaRT was up to with regard to my boat at the time. I had to restrict my requests to sightings, movements and emails.

Hit list

I never received an apology for the threatening and possibly libellous letter sent to Aston Marina; it's 'pseudo legal' contents clearly designed to intimidate me. When questioned at a subsequent meeting CaRT's Paul Griffin stated: "You shouldn't have been on that list anyway", to which I replied, "What list is that Paul?" No answer was forthcoming. Could it be that Tony Ball and Tony Dunkley have had the misfortune to be placed on that same (hit) list ?

It is obvious that the tactics have now changed but the reason I was on that list is, I suspect, the same. I cruised the system extensively and only used my home mooring in very bad weather. No one from CaRT has ever shown me any clause in the various Waterways Acts that I had supposedly contravened. In my opinion the harassment of certain boaters is part of an effort to establish a set of ad hoc 'CaRT's laws' with regard to cruising the waterways, without amending the present Acts.

Compassion?

After all, doing the same thing properly, through an act of Parliament, is probably too much like hard work and may not get through anyway if enough boaters protested to their MPs? Instead CaRT is using their financial muscle to single out 'test cases' by spending mega bucks on legal teams in the sound knowledge that boaters do not have the same resources to defend their case. With incredible hypocrisy, CaRT then talks about compassion!

So good luck to Tony Dunkley in his very one-sided David & Goliath like contest with CaRT. We can only hope for a similar result?

If CaRT does establish the right to interpret i.e fabricate, laws pertaining to boating then the 'right to roam' will be soon be dead and buried. That's what this is REALLY about isn't it?