Why I joined today’s march to clean up Britain’s polluted rivers

There was a time when our rivers were the heart of our towns, cities and villages – there’s a simple reason why I’ve made it my mission to help revive them, says Joe Shute

The River Irk was once renowned for the clarity of its water. The name denotes fresh, clean and pure in the ancient Brittonic language, previously spoken in northern England, while the Irk is also thought to refer to the fleet-footed Roebuck deer.

In more modern times, however, this stretch of river, which runs from the Lancashire countryside to the middle of Manchester, has become synonymous with pollution. Of all the nation’s rivers represented at today’s March for Clean Water in central London, there are few in a more dire state than the Irk.

Earlier this year, the wider river catchment was named among the worst sewage dumps in England – with 6,307 spills over 2023. According to the same study (based on Environment Agency data), the River Irwell – into which the Irk flows via an underground culvert beneath Manchester Victoria station – was blighted by the worst sewage pollution of all.

We have mistreated the Irk for centuries now. During the Industrial Revolution, the river was lined with textile mills, slaughter yards and dye works, and treated as little more than an open sewer.

In his book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845, Friedrich Engels calls the river “a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse”. By the end of the 19th century, the Irk was described in one contemporary report as “not only the blackest but the most sluggish of all rivers”.

Today, pollution still blights the Irk. As well as all too regular discharges from sewage outflows, a report analysing microplastic pollution via toxic tyre particles published earlier this year found concentrations in the Irk tenfold higher, compared to another sampling site on the River Thames in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

While its water quality has improved in recent decades and is now classed as “moderate” for supporting ecological life, it still fails tests for chemical pollution – alongside, shockingly, every single river in England.

For the past two years, I’ve worked with communities along the River Irk, where it flows through northeast Manchester into the city centre. Supported by Groundwork Manchester and the Mersey Rivers Trust, I have led creative writing and arts workshops to help connect people to a river described as “culturally lost” in a recent council report.

I have witnessed first hand the state of this pollution. One creative writing workshop with a primary school, for example, was hastily rearranged after the riverside spot we intended to visit was inundated with bleach and used condoms, following a nearby music festival.

On warm summer days, a noxious smell often rises from the river. Meanwhile, when it rains (and sometimes when it doesn’t), the water turns brown with sewage and other human waste dumped along the riverbank.

And yet, even in this denuded state, the Irk is still home to an array of life. I have watched kingfishers dart down the river and grey wagtail, heron – and even dippers (a bird associated with fast-flowing clean water) – forage in the shallows.

Last month, when a stretch of the river was drained during construction works, two eels and a large brown trout were recovered (the former once thrived in the Irk as a result of fatty waste dumped by textile mills, but was thought to have vanished altogether in the modern era).

Discovering this wildlife clinging on, and the affection and fascination which people still hold for even the most maligned urban rivers, offers glimmers of hope.

That is the essence of what campaigners were marching for today. And it extends well beyond recent government pledges of a crackdown on water companies via its Water (Special Measures) Bill.

Above all, it is about repairing our broken relationship with Britain’s rivers, and ensuring they are no longer regarded as mere sources of exploitation and profit.

Joe Shute is a postgraduate researcher funded by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Leverhulme Unit for the Design of Cities of the Future