I would like to begin this article with a bit of a personal commentary. I couldn't write this without acknowledging the fact that this new drama is a true story from my hometown. These families are people I have known of vicariously through relatives, friends and their families for many years.
Therefore, this is a story very close to my heart. Some of the characters being played in the show went to school with my parents, lived close to my grandparents, making this a story embedded in both my town's personal conscious as well as my own.
The core of this story begins in 1979, when around 10,000 people worked at the infamous Steel Works, now I say infamous, it is infamous to me as everyone I know has some connection to it. My own relatives moved from West Lothian in Scotland to Corby in the 1950's and 1960's to work in the steel industry.
Due to a heavy decline in industry, at the height of Thatcherism, the site closed in 1980. Thousands were left unemployed, including many of my immediate family members and still to this day it has a lingering effect on the town. Many campaigned to keep the mines open, children dressed as mini coal men (sorry mum but you were one of them) and the whole town was in uproar.
My hometown needed rejuvenating, it was crying out for help, for some TLC if you like. It was a place that had once been so full of prospect and now was the shadow of its former self. This prompted the council to launch a regeneration programme to give people employment (and hope). The project involved moving millions of tonnes of contaminated waste to Deene Quarry.
'Toxic Town' is also giving a voice to the mothers who had to fight hard to be heard at a time where far too many people were trying to drown them into silence.
Now it wasn't until years later that all appeared not well. Mothers living near the site began giving birth to children with upper limb deformities. A journalist got in touch with some of the Victims' families in 1998, believing that toxic waste had caused the rise in birth defects in the local area.
Having spoke to many of my family who were have first hand experience of the story unfolding, it felt from the get-go that people (including some within the local community) were ignoring the story, refusing to believe that this was not the mothers fault. It felt as if they were being treated as mothers and families of Corby and not genuine victims of an environmental crisis.
Families were first denied justice in 1999 when the Northamptonshire Heath Authority found that there was no abnormal cluster in the number of children being born with birth defects.
However, when a solicitor assembled a team of Toxicologists and pollution experts they found heavy metal cadmium. A medical expert then cited research linking it to birth defects in animals. A three month civil case then took place where the judge ruled in favour of the families. This was the first time a UK court recognised that airborne pollutants had harmed unborn babies. A private settlement was reached with families in 2010.
It felt as if they were being treated as mothers and families of Corby and not genuine victims of an environmental crisis.
But the story was never forgotten in my hometown, it was regularly discussed and now it has the whole country talking, thanks to the Netflix drama. The four part series, led by Jodie Whitaker as Susan McIntyre, also features Claudia Jesse as Maggie Mahon and 'Sex Education's' Aimee Lou Wood as Tracey Taylor. All of which are real mothers who fought long and hard for justice.
The series was created and written by Jack Thorne and does a fantastic job in capturing the industrial landscape of Corby as well as the public anger and tragic reality that this case caused for many.
Not only is it giving recognition to one small town's huge environmental crisis but 'Toxic Town' is also giving a voice, most importantly, to the mothers who had to fight hard to be heard at a time where far too many people were trying to drown them into silence, dismissing them as merely just being mother's from Corby- a redundant, working class, Steel town.
This is a story that needs to be told well and with a stellar cast and community at the core of the production I am sure it will be done with justice and a touch of class just as the families deserve.