Nine Years
It is nine years since the UK experienced the worst demolition accident in living memory. And the wait for answers goes on.
Nine years is a long time. A very long time. That’s how long it takes for a baby to go from newborn to school child; for a teenager to go from childhood to adulthood.
Think about it. In the past nine years, here in the UK, we have seen six prime ministers come and go, each of them as forgettable, regrettable and inconsequential as the last.
We bid farewell to the longest-standing monarch in our history.
And we cast ourselves adrift from our European neighbours.
We endured a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. We enjoyed two World Cups and three Summer Olympics.
In the US, they have seen three presidents come and go, although one of them has recently returned like a divisive orange boomerang.
Personally, during the same nine-year period, I lost both my parents and my father-in-law.
I had three near-death experiences - one from a burst appendix, one from sepsis, and another from my car being t-boned when I was driving to the JCB World Headquarters.
I became a grandfather not once, not twice, but three times.
Two of my four children left the family home to start new lives of their own.
I moved house twice. And my career took a sharp left turn when I left the familiar surroundings of print journalism to embrace daily LiveStreaming and video production.
Nine years. 108 months. 468 weeks. 3,288 days.
So much has changed. And yet one thing remains the same.
Nine years on, and we still do not know how or why four demolition workers went to work at the Didcot A Power Station and perished.
Those four men walked onto site that terrible day, and for them and for their families, time stopped. Their futures were stolen.
Over the course of nine years, I have been orphaned; I have become a grandfather three times; and I very nearly died.
What could Mick Collings, Ken Cresswell, Christopher Huxtable and John Shaw have experienced? What could they have accomplished? What could they have seen, heard, enjoyed, contributed or shared? What wisdom and experience could they have imparted?
We will never know. All of that was taken from them, and from their loved ones, in an instant.
Their names are spoken now only in sorrow, their memories kept alive by families still waiting for answers that may never come.
Speaking of answers. Obviously, the main question is how did these men die and why? It is only when we have answers to those two questions that the families might be allowed to move on; and the demolition industry can extract whatever lessons are required to ensure we never go through this again.
But there are many, many more questions than that.
How did Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Grant Shapps and James Cleverly keep their jobs as Home Secretary whilst allowing this investigation to fester?
Why wasn’t the Didcot Disaster top of Yvette Cooper’s priority list when she took over the role?
Why wasn’t Thames Valley Police chief constable John Campbell fired
Why has there been no public inquiry?
Why has no-one at the Health and Safety Executive been forced to resign for their role in all of this?
How have the police, the HSE, local MPs, and various other officials allowed this investigation to be pushed further and further from the public consciousness?
Why has the demolition industry not staged a public protest at the injustice that has been visited upon four of its number?
Over the past nine years, and with each passing anniversary, I have railed against the Thames Valley Police and the Health and Safety Executive and their combined failure to conduct a thorough investigation in a timely manner; to provide the demolition industry with some vital findings; and for failing to provide the families of the four men with some justice and, possibly, some closure.
But not this year. This is not about them. It never has been.
It is clear they have failed those four men and they have failed their families. So why should we talk about them on the day we remember those men and grieve with their families.
What I would say, however, is this.
Didcot will set a precedent. The investigating authorities have dragged their collective heels for almost a decade without explanation, without a public inquiry and without anyone being held to account.
This will be the new normal. The investigation into the four deaths at Didcot has dragged on for nine years. The investigation into the double death at Redcar has been drawn out for more than five.
As an industry and as a nation, we have allowed this to happen.
The inaction of the investigating authorities is a national disgrace.
Our lack of protest and outrage is to our eternal shame.
Justice delayed is justice denied. And our collective silence makes us all complicit.
With each passing day, the length of time taken to resolve the Didcot Disaster heaps insult upon injury; rubs salt into an already festering wound.
Even if the Didcot investigation resulted in real, positive and meaningful change, it is too late. That ship has sailed.
The legacy of Didcot is the realisation that working men are viewed as expendable; that their bereaved families are barely worthy of consideration; that the investigating authorities have no real interest in delivering justice for those left behind.
If we claim that our industry is safer, more professional and that we take better care of our workers and their families than ever before, we are lying to ourselves.
I was 51 years old when the Didcot Disaster happened. In just a few days’ time, I will turn 60.
Didcot has cast a long dark shadow over the demolition industry and across my career.
But I am just an onlooker. A bystander.
For me, that cloud is fleeting. It comes and it goes. Not far and not for long. But it goes.
For the families of the four men that lost their lives that day, that shadow is ever-present.
It must be suffocating. Its weight unbearable.
For them, Didcot is not a coat they wear once a year.
They are reminded constantly. Each anniversary of the incident. Each Christmas. Each birthday. Each family gathering. Each family holiday. Each family dinner.
All those conversations that have gone unspoken; all that laughter that never was.
And all the while, the wheels of the demolition industry keep on turning. More new projects started, more money to be made, more working men and women exposed to known hazards and dangers in the pursuit of profit.
How many more lives will be lost? How much longer must we wait for answers?
Nine years is a long time. A very long time.