Kriti Mehrotra
With Netflix’s ‘Toxic Town’ chronicling the infamous Corby waste case — dubbed in some western areas “the British Erin Brockovich” — we get a four-part drama that can only be described as baffling. After all, it focuses on the town’s mothers as they take on the mammoth task of going against their council upon realizing it was mis-administration that led to their kids being born with deformities. The Deputy Council Leader at the beginning of all this in the show is Roy Thomas (Brendan Coyle), and he maintains his governing body’s innocence at every step of the way.
Roy Thomas is the Personification of the Former Council Leaders of Corby
While Roy Thomas is not a real individual, the character plays a significant role in the production since he embodies the way council leaders managed the situation from the get-go. This once-thriving steelwork factory town was indeed close to being a ghost town when the Corby Borough Council (CBC) decided to make a change for the good, but their execution wasn’t great. After the British Steel Corporation shut down its operations there in 1980, leaving over 11,000 locals unemployed, the plan was to clear their homes and redevelop them into a new Corby.
For this, the CBS took on the biggest land reclamation project at that time in Europe, which meant they decided to remove all the waste from former steel plant sites to rebuild for the locals themselves. Whether it be activity areas, homes, shopping malls, or wonder parks, they had an entire 10-year module laid out, but as time passed, the leaders began cutting corners to get things done faster. Instead of paying attention to who they were giving the clean-up work to, their number of mandates, and how the toxic waste was being handled, they reportedly focused more on profits.
As if that’s not enough, once it was brought to the leaders’ attention that their ignorance, as well as neglect, had possibly resulted in harm caused to newborns in the form of deformities, they denied any responsibility. They had hired now-dissolved contracting companies Noone & McGowan and Shanks & McEwans for the job (not Rhodes and Miller, as in the show), yet they dismissed/ignored how they were transferring the toxic waste to dumpsites in open lorries on public roads. This meant toxic dust was all around Corby, causing kids to be born with deformities, a truth that was proved in a court of law in 2009 despite the council leaders’ denials.
Roy Thomas Depicts the Hopes and Wrongdoings of Former Corby Council Leaders
When the whole reclamation project began in the mid-1980s, societal pillar Kelvin Glendenning was the leader of the CBC, and he had big dreams for what he wanted his hometown to be. But alas, when the controversies began, they spiraled to the extent that it was even suspected that the leader had taken shortcuts to deliver his promises in the timeframe he had initially given. He once even said, “I don’t think that Corby Council has anything to regret… If there was toxic waste – and I am sure there wasn’t any toxic waste at all that was floating about in the air – they shouldn’t be blaming us.” Kevin stepped down in 1995 after 11 years in his position of power in the hopes a new leader could give a fresh start to the situation while continuing on with his dreams, yet it didn’t make any difference.
Chris Mallender was the next significant leader of the CBC – elected in 2003 – yet his insistence on their innocence by continually denying the claims made by the mothers of Corby didn’t help. In the end, with the decision the council would not settle, the matter went to court, and a judge ruled in 2009 that it was indeed mis-administration and neglect by them that caused harm to the kids of the town. So, while Roy is not real in any way, shape, or form, he does represent the people who should have known better and whose ignorance led to what is arguably the most haunting environmental-related birth defect case to ever exist.
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