by Annie Murray
The night before we leave, while Ian and I are packing, I go to the cupboard under the stairs and drag out the box of Paul’s things. Taking out from it one precious object, I carry it upstairs, this token of our boy, holding it behind my back.
Ian is bent over a new rucksack, stuffing clothes into it. He looks up, hearing me come to the door.
‘Look who’s coming with us.’ I bring Paul’s favourite-ever toy out from behind my back: Rex, the cowardly dinosaur. ‘Ta-dah!’
Ian stares at the green plastic Tyrannosaurus rex with its daft expression. Toy Story. Our eyes meet and his face breaks into a sad, complicated smile.
The night before we are due to leave, I slip out to the nearest letterbox to post a card. Standing by the box, I read through it again.
Dear Ange,
Ian and I are off on some travels for a little while. We’re in need of some healing. But I miss you. When we get back, let’s get together, eh, chicky?
Love,
Jo xx
WRITING MOTHER AND CHILD
The Boy
I was not at the dentist’s when I saw that picture of the boy. I have a book of pictures by a professional photographer, Alex Masi, who spent time in Bhopal photographing families affected by the toxic legacy left to their city, in particular by the contaminated water. The book is called Bhopal: the Second Disaster and the boy, whose sad face sparked the writing of this story, appears on the cover. You can see the photograph on my website: www.anniemurray.co.uk.
Incidents and Accidents
A number of times over the years while I have been writing about Birmingham’s history, I have come across a story that goes something like this: ‘My father worked at so-and-so. He was a—[insert skilled or semi-skilled manufacturing job]. But then something happened.’ An accident causing burns from molten ferrous or non-ferrous metals, an item of clothing or hair being caught in machinery, a fall from a great height while maintaining equipment . . . If things were really bad, the man’s working life was over. ‘He lived with constant pain. He was no longer the man he’d been before. He could no longer work to feed his family.’
Sometimes this became so unbearable, or the damage was so great, that the father of the family had seen no other way out than to end it all.
Not to mention the countless stories of working with substances either in factories or in the house, having taken ‘outwork’ to do at home, that affected eyes, made you cough or perhaps had longer-term effects not obvious at the time.
I based the story of Tom Stefani on a reported incident that took place almost thirty years later than it happens to Tom in the story. In 1988, a man called Tara Singh was tending to a machine in a metal-rolling mill in the Black Country when a red-hot steel billet broke loose. Tara Singh died there and then in the factory. This ‘accident’ was written up in a report published in 1994 by the West Midlands Health and Safety Advice Centre. The report is titled The Perfect Crime? How companies get away with manslaughter in the workplace.
Though the last major Health and Safety at Work Act was passed in 1974, this by no means changed everything overnight. Of course, there had been a number of Factory Acts before that as trades unions drove the campaign to safeguard industrial and other workers. And over time, since the 1974 Act, there has been an estimated 85 per cent reduction in workplace deaths (though that figure does not include public services such as the police). Those figures speak for themselves.
But industry is, and has always been, a dangerous business, as Tara Singh’s story shows. In that particular case, there had been clear, previous near misses and apparently unheeded warnings that something was wrong in that factory. There was also, by 1988, an expectation enshrined in the law of 1974, that employers must ensure, so far as possible, the safety of everyone in their employ.
There are human errors, unseen flaws, mistakes. And then there is just plain negligence.
What does it mean for something to be an ‘accident’? I looked up some definitions.
Accident: An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.
Oxford Living Dictionary
An accident waiting to happen: A very dangerous situation in which an accident is very likely.
Cambridge Dictionary
Negligence: Failure to give enough care or attention to something or someone that you are responsible for.
Cambridge Dictionary
Manslaughter (UK), Culpable homicide (US): The crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or in circumstances not amounting to murder.
Oxford Living Dictionary
In Britain, in 2007, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act was passed – a landmark Act. For the first time, companies and organizations can now be found guilty of corporate manslaughter as a result of management failures resulting in a gross breach of a duty of care.
So where does Bhopal fit into all this?
It is not too hard to find a definition from this list. What is so difficult to understand about Bhopal is not that ‘accidents happen’. They do at times, even with the best of safeguards. What is harder to get your head around is the lack of safeguards right from the beginning and especially in the time immediately preceding the leak of gas, when the skilled engineers who had once taken more pride in the plant had all left and only a reduced and less skilled workforce remained.
This appears to us like complete contempt for other human beings when the only bottom line is shareholder profit and, as a consequence of this, like the behaviour of a company that would apparently do anything at all to protect itself, with dire consequences for some of the poorest on the planet.
I’m sure there are definitions for this as well.
Mother and Child
In writing this story I wanted above all to portray the empathy between women and children everywhere, even if we do not share the same land or language. For all the elements of the story, there seemed no better title to choose than the simple one, Mother and Child.
It was only later that I found out about the Mother and Child statue, which stands at the gates of the old Union Carbide factory. In 1986, a Dutch sculptor called Ruth Waterman-Kupferschmidt created a statue of a woman with her children trying to escape the gas, as a memorial to the night of 2–3 December 1984 in Bhopal.
Ruth Waterman clearly identified with the women and children of Bhopal who had suffered this horrific experience. Ruth’s own parents were gassed at Auschwitz, a system of murder that had nothing accidental about it whatsoever, but which gave her a strong feeling of connection to what happened in Bhopal.
You can see a picture of the statue on my website: www.anniemurray.co.uk.
Visiting Bhopal
In early 2018, I went to Bhopal with my husband, Martin, in order to get a real feel for a place I have been reading about for many years. Some of what we experienced appears in the story. We met some unforgettable people, including Rashida Bi and Champa Devi Shukla, who won the International Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004 and devoted all the prize money to setting up Chingari, the clinic for women and children. A few of their stories and more photographs can be found on my website.
35 YEARS OF BHOPAL
The leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal happened on the night of 2–3 December 1984. This factory, the consequence of an expanding market during India’s ‘Green Revolution’, was built to produce a pesticide called Sevin, to tackle pests and thereby try to increase harvests.
What happened ‘that night’ in 1984 caused the deaths of thousands of people and the ongoing suffering of thousands more. For survivors affected in Bhopal, ‘that night’ has never ended. In addition, the poisoning of the local water supply has continued for more than thirty-five years, adding to the sickness, the suffering and the sense of injustice.
So, as this shameful thirty-fifth anniversary comes round, here are thirty-five steps through the history of this disaster.
We deci
ded to remove this section before publication. Even now, matters involving Bhopal are unfortunately live and unresolved. The matter is still so sensitive that we came to the conclusion that the contents – however thoroughly fact-checked – might lay us open to the possibility of legal proceedings, something that would not serve any useful purpose either to us or the people of Bhopal.
Never before except in Hitler’s gas chambers have so many people died at one time by exposure to industrial chemicals.
‘Never before’, wrote the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, in 1990, ‘have so many victimized people struggled for so many years for justice, accountability and the right to a dignified, disease-free life.’
That was written twenty-nine years ago. They are still waiting.
FLAMES NOT FLOWERS
‘We are not expendable. We are not flowers offered at the altar of profit and power. We are dancing flames committed to conquering darkness and to challenging those who threaten the planet and the magic and mystery of life.’
Rashida Bi, gas survivor, on receiving
the prestigious 2004 International Goldman Environmental Prize, the money from
which was used to set up the Chingari Clinic,
for gas- and water-affected children.
When I visited Bhopal, I was privileged to meet Rashida Bi and Champa Devi Shukla. Both lost a number of members of their families on the night of the gas leak. Rashida is from a humble background, but has become an inspiration to many women – including me. She is a few years older than I am and does not speak English, so we spoke, briefly, through the interpreter.
‘So – you walked all that way, to Delhi?’ I asked her. She had taken the lead in all this. And after all, it’s 500 miles to Delhi from Bhopal.
Rashida’s kindly face turned to me with a wry expression.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I was thirty years younger then.’
The following is an account of their journey, as published in an article in the Bhopal Marathon, a publication of the Bhopal Medical Appeal. The stories were related to Colin Toogood and Syed Tabish Ali.
THE WOMEN WHO WALKED: 1989
‘We’ll go to see the PM.’
It was Rashida’s idea, this much everyone agrees. When she said this, all of us were happy. Yes, of course. The Prime Minister. He’ll listen to us. It was our only way to be heard.
‘Where’s the Prime Minister?’
‘He has a so-big house in Delhi.’
‘Where is Delhi?’
Nobody knew for sure, but a couple of people reckoned it was quite a way off.
‘How will we get there?’
Rashida and Champa Devi said, ‘We have no transport, so we will have to walk. It will show we’re serious. We’ll all go together.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘Tomorrow then.’
We agreed to meet early next morning and set out. We’d bring a bit of food and, if anyone had any, a little money might come in handy.
After the angels
When the angel of death opened its wings over our city, bodies were piled in heaps in the streets and our old lives were gone.
Most of us worked hard at heavy manual jobs. Now we weren’t able to do that work any longer. We were ill, breathless, coughing all the time. Our children were ill. We had no money for medicines or food.
What do you do when there’s no food? You bind a cloth tightly round your middle to fool your stomach. If your children cry with hunger you fill their tummies with water. But how long can you live like that?
A promise of work
Then the state government got a large amount of money from Delhi to create jobs for gas-affected people.
It decided to train some women to work in one of its printing presses. About 100 of us took up the offer. We trained for four months on a stipend of Rs 150 a month (about £2), not enough to make ends meet. The bosses told us that when qualified we’d earn a proper salary, but after the training they said there were no jobs. There had never been any. We might as well have trained to be astronauts.
That was when Rashida and Champa Devi spoke up. What was the point of training us, they asked, if there was no work. The bosses said we should be grateful to be trained at all. If we wanted to work we should set up our own printing press.
So we made a petition and took it round to the Chief Minister’s office. After some time came a reply that we would be employed in the State Industrial Corporation. We should just show up, work would be given.
We were thrilled. On the appointed day, we went to the gates of the factory and waited. Come back tomorrow, they said. Next day it was the same story. After a month we had had two days’ work and earned each Rs 6–12 (8p–12p).
Did no one explain to you, they said, that you are piece workers, here on sufferance? You have no right to demand anything.
We get angry and wise . . .
Well, we’d had enough of excuses and of being pushed around and lied to. We warned the civil servants and bosses, look, day after day we waited outside your gates, you people shut your eyes and ears. You have hearts of stone. So be it. We’ll take direct action and don’t say we didn’t warn you.
The officials relented and began giving us work. For the next two and a half years we earned Rs 10–12 a day – about 12p.
. . . and angrier and wiser
Around this time, someone found out about a thing called the Factories Act and Minimum Wages Act.
It turned out that we had not been paid a proper rate, plus during that period we were underpaid, the press made a profit of 400,000 rupees.
We went to the bosses and asked for our rights: minimum wages and regular employment. We asked to be treated according to the law.
The bosses were shocked, they said, disturbed by our ingratitude, but they would be generous, would try to find us a bit more work and offer a small increase in wages.
So we told them what they could do with such generosity.
We learn politics
We did not know how to protest, but we had heard of sit-ins, so we went to the state assembly and sat and slept there for several days.
This had no effect.
People gave us new ideas and we tried rallies, roadblocks and even a procession at night with burning torches, which the children enjoyed very much. But none of this worked.
Then we got wind that the Chief Minister was canvassing for election in a particular region. We issued a statement saying that half of us would go there and canvass against the Chief Minister, while the rest protested at his office.
This had a magical effect.
The Chief Minister immediately instructed that our needs be met – salary, everything. Wages rising to Rs 535 a month.
We are ungrateful
In our ignorance, call it innocence if you prefer, we held out for what the law prescribed, a salary of Rs 2700 a month for a skilled worker, and a proper employment contract.
A lot of the officials were horrified. Again, we had shown ingratitude. It began to dawn on us that they, coming from more affluent backgrounds than us, did not think of us as deserving of the same rights they enjoyed. Maybe that – or they didn’t like being pushed around by a lot of women like us.
So, we gathered one sunrise in the summer of 1989 for the grand send-off from our families, who thought us mad but garlanded us with marigolds and roses.
We did not know how far Delhi was, nor the way there, nor how long it would take. We didn’t know what we’d eat or where we’d sleep. We did not know how tough it would be. Many of us had our kids with us. There were a few men too. Each of us carried a small bag with a few necessaries: a blanket, bedspread, spare clothes.
Soon, the children and many of us women had blisters on our feet. We’d treat them with herbs found along the way. At night, exhausted, we forced ourselves to cook and eat.
No one said, ‘Let’s go back.’
At first, we walked 8–10 kilometres per day. As time passe
d the pace picked up and we could walk 35–40 km per day, kids and all.
We got up early, about 3 a.m., to escape the cruel sun. When our sandals wore out we tied leaves to the soles of our feet. Often people would walk with us from one village to the next as a way of showing support.
The road passed through some wild places. Far from anywhere, we’d sleep in the grass, a wide bedroom under the starry sky, three or four of us keeping watch over the rest.
In the dawn we were shocked to see dead scorpions and snakes killed on the road during the night. Many more must have passed among us as we slept and we never knew . . .
No food or money
Most of us had brought only a small amount of money. When it was spent, the women sold ornaments to get cash for medicines and food for the children.
We had to beg for food from villages where we stopped for the night. Country folk are extraordinarily kind. Some days they would cook for us or give us food to cook ourselves.
Telling our story
Occasionally when we begged we would be scolded, ‘You seem healthy and capable, can’t you work for food like everyone else?’
Or, more cynically, ‘You must have received good compensation from the government after the gas disaster. Why are you still making more demands?’
Then we would try and explain what had really happened in Bhopal. How people were ill and the compensation was a joke. We told of having to pay officials. People were angry then and they helped us.
Sometimes the local police would arrange food for us and put us up in government houses with guards for our protection.
We are all one
We walked in small groups – the quicker ones would leave pounded rice on the road to mark the way.