Dover Port Privatisation

The privatisation proposals for Dover's port are extremely unpopular.

Privatisation of the Gateway to Britain

Dover in Kent is commonly known as the gateway to Britain. Dover's geographical position in South East England, distancing only 22 miles from France, has made the town become Britain's busiest port, with an average of over 7,000 lorries and 10,000 cars transiting daily through the Eastern Docks ferry terminal.

However, the Gateway to Britain may be put up for sale following a proposal of Dover Harbour Board to attract large sums of money in order to build a new ferry terminal. The town's population has made petitions to prevent this happening, and at the 2010 general election all the local political candidates stood up and spoke out against the privatisation of Dover's port.

Dover Harbour Board

In 1606, Dover Harbour Board was created by way of a Royal Charter as a trust to administer Dover's port, its main objective being the investment of all port profits into the harbour's maintenance. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the harbour was situated in Dover's western area, in proximity to Shakespeare Cliff. The trust charter also granted Dover Harbour Board the administration of the stretch of shore going eastwards as far as the cliffs known as Eastern Heights, over which stand Dover Castle and the church of Saint Mary at the Castle.

The predominant reason that led to Dover Harbour Board's creation was the constant movement of shingle on the seabed and the subsequent silting of the harbour, which resulted in sailing ships having to use other ports. One of Dover Harbour Board's main functions consisted in constructing piers around the port that would stop shingle and sand from entering the harbour, as this would ensure safe transit for ships entering and leaving the port.

Port Expansion and no Town Revenue

During the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing port traffic passing through Dover, a new port has been gradually built up in what became known as Eastern Docks, situated below the Eastern Heights. Car-ferries operating from Dover to Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk in France use the Eastern Docks. The older Western Docks terminal is reserved for cruise ships calling at Dover, with an additional area designated as a dock for private boats.

The harbour is surrounded from east to west by two long piers and a central break-water, with two entrances for ships and ferries: the eastern and the western harbour entrance. Both of the ports, the harbour and the promenade, as well as a number of important buildings adjacent to the promenade, are administered by Dover Harbour Board as part of the trust status.

The port facilities at both ports – Eastern and Western Docks – are fully functional, and the modern construction methods employed to build the harbour's piers and berths exclude the need to invest significant sums of money in repair works. According to Dover Harbour Board's statistics, the use of Dover's Eastern Docks port facilities in 2008 involved almost 14 million passengers, about 3 million cars, 98 thousand coaches and over 2.3 million lorries.

These impressive figures outline the consequences of port traffic passing through the town, with all the streets directly parallel to the seafront being signed over to the traffic. A continuous stream of lorries and cars entering and leaving the Port of Dover has effectively cut off the town from the seafront, whereas the absence of any form of port revenue for the town prevents profits from the port being invested in the local economy.

The trust status of Dover Harbour Board does not allow for profits to be invested in the town or the surrounding district, and no compensation for the constant port traffic has ever been made to Dover, not even for the intense pollution that inevitably stems from such enormous volumes of traffic.

Dover The Gateway to Democracy

There are two official reasons why Dover's port may be up for sale: one is to finance a new ferry terminal at Western Docks, the other to pay off a fraction of the State's national debt.

The prospect of a private owner cashing in on a constant flow of traffic passing through Dover and using port facilities that are already fully functional, has led many local people to openly question the constitutional legality of port privatisation.

The idea that the Port of Dover and subsequently other British ports may be sold to private owners to service the 900 billion pound debt of the British Treasury, could mean that the democratic expression of the people might be overruled.

Private ownership of the gateway to Britain could only come about through the elimination of the democratic will of the people both locally and nationwide. The destruction of the democratic will of the people in Dover would be a precedent to trample down democracy all over Britain, and this would be a heavy price to pay to alleviate Britain's national debt.

Democracy must prevail for the Gateway to Britain. This is not only to spare the Port of Dover from becoming privatised, but also in order to preserve Britain from tyranny, to make sure that neither Parliament nor private capitalists, nor any other group of human persons, can ever brush aside the democratic expression of the people and replace it with their own decisions.

Surely if Democracy were to fall in Dover, the Gateway to Britain, the spirit of tyranny and despotic regime would spread all over the British Isles and replace freedom and prosperity with despotic dictatorship.

Written by D. Alexander

The original article: Dover Port Sale, is published on www.suite101.com/ on the following link:

dimitri-alexander.suite101.com/dover-port-sale-a299122

Read on: What is the Dover People's Port Trust? The Dover People's Port is a Trust that campaigns for the privatisation of Dover's port.
doverkent.blogspot.com/2011/09/dover-peoples-port.html