Parched City (19 page)

Fluoridation in Andover officially commenced after the trials in 1956 but was arrested by summer 1958 due to public pressure and local councillors failing to be re-elected over this single issue.
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In Darlington, the Council’s decision to try out fluoridation was reversed before trials even began, inspiring other fluoridation opponents to keep campaigning, such as the British Housewives League.
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In 1959, the League published a pamphlet entitled
Fluoridation — Why and How to Stop It
. The focus of its opposition was now focused on enforcing fluoridation without individual consent: ‘The “doctoring” of the public water supply with a substance intended to affect the human body without consent and contrary to the wishes of many consumers, is a violation of such a [human] right.’
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Whilst the Housewives League pamphlet was circulating, unbeknownst to its authors, the MWB had commenced fluoridation tests.
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An internal report divulged that some trials had been made on live works but that the water had not been released into supply. These decisions were under the watch of a new Director of Water Examination, Edwin Windle Taylor. His perspective on fluoridation was less gung-ho than MacKenzie‘s, but it was evident that he was poised to flick the fluoridation switch if the other English trials were evaluated as successful.

Before those results came through, in 1960 H.F. Marfleet had resumed correspondence with the Board and was told that a decision about fluoridation had been suspended until the results of the trials were made public, due in 1961.
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Seemingly unsatisfied by this assurance, Marfleet changed tack. A further letter demanded that he be supplied with a list of the 88 names and addresses of each Board member. Anticipating the deluge, the Board’s Clerk primed members with a missive about the unfriendly post they might receive. If Mr Marfleet did indeed hammer 88 letters out on his typewriter, copies have not been preserved for posterity in the MWB’s archives. Also in 1960, the anti-fluoridation movement consolidated under the umbrella of
the National Pure Water Association and the battle marched, with more troops, into a new decade.
³⁹

In 1962, the long-awaited report on the United Kingdom’s fluoridation trials was delivered.
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The Director of Water Examination reported to his team that the results wholly endorsed American research and that, in the trial areas, five-year-olds’ instances of caries had halved since 1955–56.
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Windle Taylor also wrote that ‘no information was received from doctors practising in the areas indicating any harm arising out of fluoridation’.
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A decision was due on whether the Board would fluoridate London, or not. The legal-technical structural problem this presented mobilised the British Waterworks Association, the national umbrella body for the waterworks industry, of which the MWB was a member. In October 1962, it called for Parliament to act on the matter, on the grounds that fluoridation extended water providers’ remit beyond providing wholesome water.
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The Association argued that legislation was needed ’…before any water authority can accept responsibility for the addition of fluoride to the public water supply’.
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On 10
^th
December 1962 the Minister of Health, then Enoch Powell, announced to Parliament that, under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act, he was approving ‘proposals from the local health authorities to make arrangements with water undertakers for the addition of fluoride to water supplies which are deficient in it naturally’.
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In the House of Lords, Lord Douglas of Barloch was clearly outraged by the decision, when he spoke: ’…may I ask the noble Lord whether consideration has been given to the problem of whether it is legal to add medicines or drugs to public water supply? May I also ask why fluoride should be forced down the throats of everybody, whether they have teeth or not?’
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Within days the MWB received a letter from the Ministry of Health permitting it to commence fluoridation, reassuring the Board that local authorities and water undertakings would both
be indemnified against any Court proceedings post-fluoridation.
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However, that year a question mark hovered over the MWB’s future as legislation was being fine-tuned for a major restructuring of London’s governance.
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In 1963, the London County Council was abolished and replaced with the Greater London Council, which would function alongside 32 local borough councils.
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From 1965, London’s geography would be defined by 610 rather than 117 square miles. This political restructuring embedded health within the new borough councils, which would also function as local health authorities.
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These authorities would therefore decide whether to fluoridate, or not. Around this vast conurbation, the MWB would still serve up the vast majority of the population’s water (apart from some peripheral areas) irrespective of borough boundaries. Perhaps anticipating that fluoridation would prove to be an emotive topic in local politics, in May 1963 the Board clarified an important practical point about the prospect of London moving to fluoridation. Internally, the Water Examination Committee’s Clerk declared: ‘I am informed by the Chief Engineer that if the Board decide to adopt a policy of fluoridation, there is little or no possibility of keeping the supply to any particular area free from fluoride. In other words, none of the local health authorities could opt out of the scheme.’
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Just days later this private statement became public policy. The MWB would not be ‘required to make a decision on the compulsory administration of fluoride to 2,500,000 people’ without the unanimous approval of London’s health authorities.
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Doubts about transcending its duty as a supplier of pure water rationalised the decision, along with examples of international controversy. Of these, America’s legal battles were cited along with opposition from medical professionals in Australia. The latter was an important example of anti-fluoridation opinion within the peer-reviewed sphere of the scientific establishment,
rather that the spurious factual claims delivered by some lay opponents.

Despite London’s fluoridation stalemate, in June 1963 the Ministry for Health issued unequivocal approval for all local health authorities to start introducing the measure as soon as possible.
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Authorities were to instruct their water undertakers and simply inform the Ministry when, rather than if, fluoridation would be commencing. The Ministry of Health also issued a publication, simply entitled
Fluoridation
. The booklet confronted the core criticisms of ‘a small but vocal minority’ and its tone was urgent.
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For instance to the question ‘Is fluoride a poison?’, the anonymous author retorted: ‘It would be necessary to drink at one time two and a half bathfuls of water containing fluoride at a concentration of 1p.p.m. before any harmful effects due to fluoride would be experienced.’
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Scornful, if slightly comical, statements such as this seemed out of place in an official state publication, perhaps only hinting at what views might have been less-delicately expressed behind the Ministry’s closed doors.
Fluoridation
also contested the interpretation of an adjective favoured by the anti-fluoridation lobby: ‘pure’.
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Readers were reminded that raw water contained traces of many chemicals. But the more pervasive question about fluoridation had moved to more ideological territory: ‘Are personal liberties infringed?’
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Popular concern about environmental toxicity was linked to the health-food zeitgeist. A resident of Stoke Newington, an area associated with alternative culture and politics, wrote to the Board in August 1963: ‘Surely the only and best way to combat decay in children is more fresh fruit and vegetables, 100% whole-wheat bread, regular meals and brushing clean after each?‘
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Her view was representative of an international swell of concern about industrialised food production. In America, for instance, the publication of
Silent Spring
by the scientist-cum-environ-mental-activist Rachel Carson in 1962 is credited with inspiring the organic food movement and creating the scientific discipline
of ‘environmental toxicology’.
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Public outrage caused by the revelations in Carson’s best-selling book about chemicals entering the food chain, and killing wildlife, influenced John F. Kennedy to launch a U.S. Government enquiry into pesticides’ impact on the environment.
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This issue infected British scientific and public discourse, but the response in London was also a product of post-war and Cold War concerns about state interference in the private lives of individuals

By the 1960s, one of the more inflammatory phrases used in anti-fluoridation literature in Britain was ‘compulsory mass-medication’.
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In a document entitled
The Ethical Question is Paramount
, the National Pure Water Association wrote the following: ‘…it is subversive of personal freedom and medically, socially and politically unethical to use the public water supply as a vehicle for administering to the public any substance which is intended to treat the human body.’
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Reaction to fluoridation’s green light by the Ministry of Health in summer 1963 was met with this and many more arguments.

In August 1963 the Board wrote to the London Anti-Fluoridation Campaign (LAFC) complaining that one of the Board’s customers had received a postcard from the Campaign with the following message: ‘It is proposed to put a poisonous substance in your water supply.’
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With barely concealed exasperation, the Board’s Clerk wrote that the LAFC was warning people that London’s water was about to be treated with fluoride, when it already knew that no such decision had been made; at least not by the Board.
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The Clerk requested the Campaign to stop issuing the postcards, however, by November some 20,000 of these postcards had fluttered through Londoners’ letterboxes.
The Times
reported the story, quoting from the besieged Clerk: ‘Dozens of people have written to us saying, “Why are you trying to poison us?” and “Stop it immediately“. Many of them are extremely angry.’
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This correspondence was the start of many years of heated
communication between the LAFC’s Chairman, Patrick Clavell-Blount and the MWB. Having served in the RAF as a catering officer, Clavell-Blount did not believe that the war had been fought for a Welfare State system that was, in his view, corrupt.
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Several anti-fluoridation activists were serial correspondents to the MWB, however Blount was especially prolific. He produced missives such as
Fluoridation: A Monstrous Violation of Human Rights
. That publication claimed that ‘fluoridation was one of the greatest infringements of individual freedom ever to have been attempted in a civilised country’.
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More understandable was his and others concerns about the long-term health impacts of artificially fluoridated water. The LAFC was somewhat dominated by the voice of Patrick Clavell-Blount, but more powerfully placed anti-fluoridation organisations also bore on the fate of London’s water supply and, consequently, its population’s dental health. Lord Douglas of Barloch, as the President of the National Pure Water Association, wrote to the Board promptly following the Minister’s instructions to health authorities to proceed with instigating fluoridation. The Lord claimed that under existing legislation it would be ‘illegal for water undertakers to add fluorides to their supplies’.
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His warning was bound to make London’s water supplier nervous about the solidity of the Ministry of Health’s legal protection.

In the records of the Board, the file entitled ‘Fluoridation: Supporters’ is noticeably slimmer than any of the many ‘Fluoridation: Objectors’ files. One of the few supporters was Marjery Abraham, who wrote: ‘I enclose [a] cheque for my colossal rate. I shall feel it is worthwhile when [you] have made up the fluoride content of the water. You have delayed far too long in my opinion. The propaganda against it is misleading and disgraceful.’
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A second letter pronounced the anti-fluoridation lobby to be ‘ignorami and fanatics’.
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Unsurprisingly amongst other supporters were the British Dental Association and the Royal Dental Hospital.

Whilst London’s water remained ‘pure’, in 1964 Birmingham took the fluoridation plunge. It was the first city to adopt fluoridation as an outright policy, rather than a demonstration. Birmingham’s health authority was convinced that it was a sound preventative health-care investment, in a place where ‘three-quarters of the city’s children had dental caries by the age of five’.
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Calculations showed that upwards of £90,000 was likely to be saved by the city’s health authority in the move from treatment to prevention.

In November 1965, the Minister of Health, Kenneth Robinson addressed the London Boroughs Committee. His speech applauded the capital’s complex democracy but decried that it was resulting in the denial of social justice to young citizens. He pleaded with the councils resisting fluoridation: ‘I hope all concerned will recognise in their turn the vital importance of their decision to the children of London…[and] not deny the community they serve.’
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‘All concerned’ were not ratifying national health policy and, despite his pleas, London’s fluoridation question
was still unanswered in 1968.