Truth About Zane article written for Green Party Women website by Elizabeth Mansfield – Lewes District Green Party, Truth About Zane Campaign Committee, GPW Committee Co-chair.
I’m so pleased to have been invited to write about the Truth About Zane (TAZ) Campaign for the Green Party Women (GPW) website. One of GPW’s key aims this year is raising women’s voices. Excellent. I’m raising my voice for Zane.
Truth! Justice! No More Deaths from Toxic Waste! Three urgent demands we’re crying out to be heard in the name of Zane Gbangbola, son of Kye and Nicole, who died in February 2014, when he was only 7-years-old, during terrible flooding at his home in Chertsey, Surrey.
Yet it wasn’t floodwater that carried this much-loved little boy away, but Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) poisoning, detected at high levels in his home by the HAZMAT Fire and Rescue team on the night he died. His Daddy, Kye, is now a rest-of– his-life wheelchair user, with a diagnosis of ‘Rhabdomyolysis due to Hydrogen Cyanide’, from the same incident – a diagnosis made by his Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist.
So, why at Zane’s Inquest, held two years after his death, did the coroner find that Zane died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty petrol pump? Good question. The Fire and Rescue team did find a petrol pump at Zane’s home that night, but they logged it in the National Incident Recording System as having been found ‘cold and unused’. They had also tested for Carbon Monoxide (CO2), but none was detected, which fact they also logged.
Despite this clear evidence, on the morning after Zane died, the police publicly announced that CO2 poisoning from a faulty petrol pump was the most likely cause of Zane’s death. The announcement came hard on the heels of an urgently called emergency COBRA meeting, and before any investigation had begun.
The CO2/ faulty pump theory continued, unswervingly, to be the authorities’ official ‘line’ right the way through to the coroner’s verdict, given in 2016, which confirmed the same. Kye and Nicole (Zane’s Mummy) were not listened to when they repeatedly said that they had not used the petrol pump, that it was faulty (a fact confirmed by the coroner’s own pump expert at the inquest) and that they’d only hired it as a back-up. Their statements were ignored, and they were accused of lying. Worse still, the implication that they were ’negligent parents’ was stuck on them. Disgraceful! Nothing could have been further from the truth.
More and more evidence has since emerged that the land next to Zane’s home was a historic landfill site, and that the land is contaminated. Post-war, it was commandeered by the MOD for amphibious tank testing (munitions), and in the 1960s thousands of tons of experimental waste were dumped there.
Kye and Nicole also discovered, shockingly, that the local authority knew all this, and that four years before Zane died, they’d advised the Environment Agency to put a gas proof membrane into a new property they were building, right next door to Zane’s home. The gas proof membrane was recommended following a report made from a desk top study, assessing the land, which had concluded that the land posed an ‘Unacceptable risk’ with a ‘high risk of migrating landfill gasses’, capable of causing ‘significant harm, serious injury and capable of causing death.’ The local authority kept quiet about the report, refused to test the land further, which had been strongly recommended, and failed to inform local residents that they were at risk. Now, that does sound like negligence!
None of this crucial evidence, however, was heard at Zane’s inquest. The coroner had determined that Zane’s death did not touch on ‘matters of public interest’ and therefore did not warrant an Article 2 type inquest, which would have required a jury, and would have put the verdict on Zane’s death into the jury’s hands. By making this decision, he awarded himself, as coroner, absolute power to determine which evidence was heard at the inquest and which was not. There was zero ‘parity of arms’. Kye and Nicole were denied legal aid three times in the period leading up to the inquest, while all other parties were represented by top QCs, including the coroner himself.
The Fire Brigade Union have stood solidly next to Kye, Nicole, and the TAZ Campaign, questioning the coroner’s verdict and calling for a full and fearless Independent Panel Inquiry to determine the truth of what happened to Zane. So have many other organisations and political parties, including the Green Party, trade unions and thousands of individuals. Our petition calling for an Independent Panel Inquiry for Zane, was delivered by Kye and Nicole, together with Matt Wrack (then General Secretary of the FBU), to No.10 Downing Street, in October 2022, on what would have been Zane’s 16th birthday. The petition, signed by over 117,000 people, has been completely ignored by the government.
Andy Burnham’s (Mayor of Manchester) ‘Hillsborough Law’, now the ‘Public Authority Accountability Bill’, would reform coronial law, preventing the cruel injustices that have been perpetrated on the Hillsborough families, and now on Zane’s family. The Bill is still waiting to be passed into law. We can only hope that if Sir Keir Starmer becomes PM at the next election, he will do the right thing at last – speed the passage of this Bill and immediately grant an IPI to uncover the truth about Zane and the landfill next to his home.
No More Deaths from Toxic Waste!
Natalie Bennett has been supporting TAZ since I invited her to meet Kye and Nicole in 2016. She’s attended many events we’ve organised since then, including one she arranged herself, at the House of Lords. At Cop 26, together with Kye and Nicole, Natalie launched a new branch of the TAZ campaign ‘Zane’s Law’, at a Peace and Justice event hosted by Jeremy Corbyn.
‘Zane’s Law’ aims to close loopholes in the Environment Act 2012, by tightening up authorities’ obligations in relation to the registration and remediation of landfill sites and public health safety. And the law would require the government to provide the necessary funding and resources, following the polluter pays principle, to enable this work to be carried out. Zane’s law would be the first progressive UK law in decades to provide enforceable protection for local communities endangered or harmed by toxic landfill and polluted waters: A law to protect our children now, and in the future, from the dangers of contaminated land.
I tabled a motion to define and support ‘Zane’s Law’ for the October 2023 GPEW conference. The motion made it onto the agenda but wasn’t debated. However, I succeeded in getting the ‘Campaigns Committee’ on board, who have been immensely supportive in helping to promote ‘Zane’s Law’ as a GPEW national campaign. We created a resources pack, a dedicated website, and I set up a ‘Make Toxic Landfills Safe’ petition. Tom Scott’s support (chair of the committee) was especially invaluable. We included the as yet unheard ‘Zane’s Law’ conference motion in the resources pack, as a ‘model motion’ for campaigners/councillors to present to their local councils.
In Lewes, where I live, 17 Green councillors form the majority on Lewes’s Tory-free District Council. With the resources pack now launched, and the website and petition live, my friend and colleague, Councillor Imogen Makepeace* (see note at end of article), took the motion forward and it was included for debate at a full Lewes District Council meeting on Monday 19th February.
Kye travelled to Lewes to be with us for this momentous occasion. Imogen spoke brilliantly, the motion was carried unanimously, and a standing ovation from all the other councillors followed… it was a very emotional moment I can tell you!
Since then, four more councils have passed the motion and hopefully there’ll be more to come. Special tribute to Green Cllr Kerry Pickett at Brighton & Hove City Council, Green Cllr Gabe Crisp at Adur Council, Green Cllr Rebecca Aldham at Stroud Council and Green Cllr Polly Gray at Rother District Council. Thank you!
Since I launched the petition, which now has over 3,500 signatories, people with concerns about contaminated land and water have been getting in touch with TAZ, rather like the postmistresses and masters who came forward when Mr Bates put out a call to them, during the Post Office Scandal. As a result of this, Kye has recently launched l ‘UK Landfill Campaigns’, a supportive network and resource for campaigners, through which people can connect, learn, and empower each other. Together we are stronger!
I’ve known Kye and Nicole for over 10 years now. I was living not far away from them at the time of the tragedy, and I also experienced that terrible flooding in 2014. I met them at a huge ‘post flood’ meeting held at the Spelthorne Leisure Centre, in Staines, and it was here that I first heard the shocking news of what had happened to Zane. I’ve come to know, love, respect and admire them both. They are amazing people, whose love for their beloved son blazes through them as strongly as does their grief and despair at his loss. They are fearless, brave, courageous campaigners, who will not rest until Zane has the justice he deserves, and until UK landfills and water supplies are made safe for people, for our environment, and for our beautiful planet.
Little Zane had helped to set up an ‘Eco Team’ at his school. And when he was asked about why sustainability is important, he carefully explained how much he and his family liked to look after their own garden… but that the world is one big garden and that we’re all responsible for looking after it together.
Rest in peace Zane, we heed your words.
What can you do?
Find out more about the Truth About Zane here: www.truthaboutzane.com
Find out about Zane’s Law here: www.zaneslaw.co.uk
Sign the petition here: Make toxic landfills safe – Support ‘Zane’s Law’! | 38 Degrees
Help get my Zane’s Law motion onto the agenda for the upcoming September conference, by clicking ‘Like’ (at the bottom of the motion) on Green Spaces here: spaces.greenparty.org.uk/content/perma?id=230661
- Find out about and connect with any local campaigns about landfill and/or contaminated water in your area and connect with the ‘UK Landfill Campaigns’ network by emailing truthaboutzane@gmail.com.
- Bring up the ‘Truth About Zane’ and ‘Zane’s Law’ in your local party. You could suggest a showing of these excellent films, with a discussion to follow:
- If you have a Green Councillor, talk to them about getting the model motion put forward at a council meeting. The Zane’s Law resources pack, including the model motion, is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Vv0c1vef0LhhmZXutFH2j-_PIqhzlgm/view?usp=sharing
Further information
Kye Gbangbola speaking about the need for Zane’s Law – (3.5 mins)
Paul Mobbs – Forgotten but not Gone: Contaminated land, climate change and government inaction (18 mins)
The Truth About Zane – a film (11 minutes)
*Imogen Makepeace
Not long after that victorious night, when Imogen successfully moved the first ‘Zane’s Law’ motion ever to be passed by a local Council, she was put on a ‘No Fault Suspension’ by the Deputy Chairs of the Disciplinary Committee, on what I consider to be spurious grounds. As a result, Imogen has now resigned from the Green Party. This has been a huge loss to our local party. We have been very upset and we rallied to support her at an EGM. Imogen’s ‘No Fault Suspension’ is, again in my opinion, an indictment of the Green Party’s disciplinary processes, which have been much used and abused of late. The Green Party’s loss, however, is Lewes’s gain – Imogen Makepeace was elected Mayor of Lewes on Thursday 9th May.
