Making sure we all have a say in the future of Beeston and compiling a dossier of comparative data

The boundary marker dated 1933 which you can see on Broadgate and is within sight of Beeston town centre — that is how close Beeston is to Nottingham (historically, the parish of Lenton, which voted to become part of the then Nottingham Borough Council in 1877). Given the opportunity, will Beeston vote to do the same?

The following piece by me appears in the latest edition of the Beeston & District Civic Society Newsletter, but first what does not appear is the table below showing council tax band charges by local authority and location in and around Nottingham. Because of parish and town council charges, different rates are paid depending on where you live. My list uses the council tax rates applicable to the urban areas which may decide to go with Nottingham rather than the county.

I would prefer that Beeston joins with Nottingham City Council and not Nottinghamshire County Council, should Broxtowe Borough Council be abolished, simply because Beeston is part of the same conurbation as Nottingham and has more in common with the city than Bingham, Mansfield, Newark, Retford or Worksop, for example.

Click on the table to enlarge.

Nottingham's council tax charge is, for band D, £106 higher per annum than Beeston (£2.03 per week), but Beeston residents benefit directly from many city services and facilities (subsidised bus routes, such as the L10 and L11, theatres and museums, Highfields Park, the tram, so the list could go on). These are all points and arguments you will hear and read about many times over the coming months.

I strongly believe that should Nottingham City Council decide to make a counter proposal to the county council's it will do so in a way which which gives Beeston more control over its own affairs and that has to be a good thing by any measure. 'Partnership working' in some form has to be the way forward. 

Now, the piece by me which appears in the latest edition of the Beeston & District Civic Society Newsletter:

Who will decide Beeston’s future?

On 12 July 2018 Nottinghamshire County Council proposed the creation of a unitary ‘doughnut’ county council. This would result in the abolition of all the county’s district councils. Nottingham City Council would continue to exist in splendid isolation. 

Should the County Council’s proposal reach the point where it is formalised, Nottingham City Council has indicated it may submit a counter proposal to extend the city’s boundary to create what can best be described as a ‘Greater Nottingham City Council’ covering the conurbation.

What does all this mean for Beeston?

Well, to some extent, that will depend on us.

Do we see the County Council’s proposal as none of our business, a threat or an opportunity?

For my part I see it as an opportunity.

To begin with, a reading list which might be helpful, so that a historical perspective can be part of our reasoning. I would like to suggest five titles, one of which I have yet to find a copy:

The Illustrated History of Nottingham’s Suburbs by Geoffrey Oldfield, published by Breedon Books, 2003.

A History of Basford Rural District Council, 1894–1974 by Geoffrey Oldfield, published by Basford R.D.C., 1974.

A Centenary History of Nottingham Edited by John Becket, Manchester University Press, 1997.

Local Government Reform, Urban Expansion and Identity: Nottingham and Derby, 1945–1968 by R P Dockerill, School of Historical Studies, Leicester, 2013 (https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/28203).

The fifth title, What Shall We Do With the Erewash Valley? by (Stapleford) Councillor Stanley Woods, 1947, is a pamphlet I have yet to read, but it is quoted in R P Dockerill’s thesis*. It interested me because chairing the Midlands Regional Museums Service in the 1970s and East Midlands Airport in the 1980s led me to the conclusion that we need a ‘twin city’ approach to the Derby/Nottingham conurbation and that there could be some merit in a Erewash/Browtowe unitary council acting as a buffer between the two city councils, should any future partnership arrangement come about. Stanley Woods seems to have understood this 70 years ago.

* See his reference Hancock Local Government Commission Consultation with local authorities: Nottingham County Borough Council (National Archives search ref. T 184/298). 

The map I have included provides a web link to an excellent Phd dissertation by R P Dockerill. 

Together, what all these writers make plain is that proposed local government changes to boundaries and powers rarely happen, and when they do the outcome can be less than satisfactory. The late Geoffrey Oldfield, a respected and well known local historian who lived in West Bridgford, wrote in the Introduction to his Illustrated History of Nottingham’s Suburbs: ‘The urban districts and smaller parts of rural districts (around Nottingham) escaped becoming administratively part of the city in 1974. Under local government re-organisation they were absorbed into four new district councils. This did not affect the reality of their affinity to the city as suburbs’ (hence 14 entries for suburbs outside the city, including Attenborough, Beeston, Bramcote and Stapleford, complete with excellent potted histories).

A Centenary History of Nottingham contains an excellent chapter/essay: ‘The government of the city, 1900–1974: the consensus ethos in local politics’ by Nick Hayes, which ends with a brief reference to how we ended up with ‘post-1979 conviction politics’. In reality, the halcyon consensus days of local government were coming to end in the 1960s, with the abuse of aldermanic elections and the exclusion of opposition councillors from new style policy committees on some councils (aldermen with votes were abolished in the 1970s).

I admit to being no fan of, exclusive, conviction politics and believe that, when it comes to government, consensus works best, and I see this as one of the prizes to be won if local government is re-organised in and around Nottingham. How we elect councillors and councils has to be part of the outcome. I believe the London Assembly, Scottish and Welsh proportional added member voting system should be extended to include England too.

For this to happen, all of us need to understand, and engage, in the entire process. Too many local and national politicians have narrow agendas which exclude the wider community. The decimation of towns like Beeston, be it the townscape or what it can decide for itself, can be reversed. Now is the opportunity we have never had before.

I believe Beeston & District Civic Society could play a leading role in the process, perhaps organising a public briefing on the proposals and the history of local government change in the Beeston area over the past 100 years.

Understanding the past is the best way to ensure a better future for Beeston.

Robert Howard

beestonweek.blogspot.com

799 words.

CAPTION TO PHOTOGRAPH:

A rusting extant City of Nottingham boundary marker on Broadgate, in sight of Beeston town centre.

Rosie Lea's Tea Room has a temporary resident, so watch where you sit!

Rosie Lea's Tearoom on Wilkinson Avenue, which runs between Wollaton Road and the car park in front of the Council offices, is one of my two favourite Beeston eateries now that Mason & Mason has gone (the other is Local Not Global on Chilwell Road). The trouble is it's too close to home for me to visit as often as I would like.

Yesterday we called in for a snack lunch and I ended up having Rosie Lea's 'All Day Breakfast', which came with generous portions plus two pieces of toast and butter, for just £5.25. The Earl Grey tea rivals Rudyards on the High Road and for two came in a very large pot.

During our 90 minute stay we were watched over by a friendly snake of sorts. Well, I say 'snake', but I will let this pic of our companion speak for itself:

On Tuesday a customer brought this home-grown cucumber in as a gift. The face was added in the tea room. It was friendly enough, although I'm sure I saw it move. Reminded of Metro's annual Halloween guests, which I have featured in a past post.

Rosie Lea's Tea Room, despite its town centre location, is a little off the beaten track. Here they are on a map I posted in March 2018:

Voting, age and representation – what can numbers and polls tell us?

Below, a collection of tables and links I have captured, prompted by a BBC News report on 10 August 2018 which told me what I know, but presented the information in such a stark way that I felt unable to ignore what I saw and that I need to try and do something about it. More than what I occasionally do anyway — which is to stand at the west entrance to the main campus of Nottingham University handing out Labour Party leaflets encouraging students to register as voters.

I will come back to this in a bit, but here are the tables I mention above, taken from the BBC News report:

Click on the tables/graphs to enlarge

What struck me was the shared symmetry in each graph. It made me wonder how common this symmetry might be across a range of political questions and data. For my part, as a 74 year old, I am with the 18–24s in every graph: I would vote remain if there was a 2nd referendum; I would stay in the single market and I support the free movement of people and I have come to the conclusion that there has to be some kind of vote on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations and I would choose a 2nd referendum if that was the only option.

Despite understanding why young people make assumptions about oldies, such as myself, it doesn't stop me feeling annoyed at the fact that many of their assumptions are wrong and often ignore their own shortcomings as a group.

If more young people took an interest in politics and voted then I would be much happier. The chances are that the quality of life for everyone in the UK would be much better than it is. My wife, Susan, and I, like countless other over 65s have always voted and continue to do so. It prompted the question in my mind 'When did the number of young people voting drop?' and what I found can be seen in the table below (remember, click on the image to enlarge):

1970 was the first general election in which 18 year olds could vote in and maybe contributed to the spike in 18–24 year old voting that occurred that year. In 1966 young voters were on a par with over 65 voters. What jumps out are the general elections from 1997 to 2017. I wonder what part young people staying in education longer played in the downturn?

Once upon a time most young people would have left full-time education at 15 (16 if they had attended a grammar school or a college of some sort). Most of us though left school at 15 and found ourselves in a world of work, surrounded by men and women of all ages, many of them having lived, worked or fought through two world wars. You sat in canteens or or rest rooms during breaks listening to the gossip, the banter, the football (cricket during the summer) and talk about politics. The national newspapers people read told you their politics before they uttered a word, and there were a lot more newspapers then.

Our MPs were different too, a lot less precious and, I suspect, better known, mainly because nearly every household at the beginning of the 1960s read a local newspaper of some kind. In Wembley, we had two weekly papers and our two MPs featured in every issue. We had three London evening newspapers to choose from: The Standard, The Star and Evening News. Pop, my grandfather read the Wembley News, the Evening News and The People on Sunday. For my part I had a newspaper round from when I was 7 until I was 14, so I got to see who read what and looked at them all. The point of this ramble is to remind myself and you, my reader, that we got our news and politics different before TV took off. TV news was in its infancy and BBC radio's news was mainly national and stilted at best.

Thinking all this led me to think about where our MPs have come from, class and occupation wise. Again the tables and graphs show us in stark terms how the world of politics has changed over the last 50 years.  Here is a graph and a table from the House of Commons Library website:

The table below is from the same report and relates just to Labour MPs (this is not made clear in the table's heading).

Here is the report's cover:

The graphs and table tell you a great deal about why Labour's fortunes have changed over the years and it has alienated many voters of my generation. In a nutshell, as the occupations those who become Labour MPs has changed, so has the attitude of the Party to its core voters has changed.

The word which I have used for many years now to describe the attitude of all too many Labour Party activists, Labour councils and governments councillors and MPs is 'disdain'. Gordon Brown caught the moment forever when he was caught on film describing a 65 year old working class woman, who challenged him over the economy and immigration, as 'bigoted' (See Guardian link here). 

As a party, Labour does little to engage with the wider community, except in its own interests. I know this first hand from decades of being a community activist, often fighting a local Labour Establishment.

The occupations of Labour councillors, I am sure, have also changed in a way which mirrors the demise of working class MPs among Labour MPs.

The evidence for my argument is there to be seen above table and graphs. 

Of course how political parties communicate with the the public at large has changed with the coming of the digital 24/7 media. There is also, in my view, a growing disconnection between the world we live in and the ones many choose to immerse themselves in. It is a form of escapism; a way of making the present bearable.

As to how we deal with these challenges I have to admit I have no answer. My 19 year old grandson is a Labour Party member and student activist in Wales. We agree on most things political, but we see different things, hear different things. For example I have no experience of anti-semitism in the Party, whereas he has and it, rightly, disturbs him.

Like me, he is no fan of Momentum or Labour First. Few voters share the certainties of either. In the end I believe Labour has to be the Party of consensus not dogmatism; of empowerment not control; of localism not centralism,  because it is in the former that we find the global, shared, experience and, yes, internationalism which should underpin any claim to be a socialist.

Finally, last Sunday's 'Reunion' programme on BBC Radio 4 brought together the founders of the Social Democratic Party for an all too short 45 minute discussion. Of those who made the Limehouse Declaration in 1981 only Roy Jenkins has passed on. David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams all took part, as did a few other founding members. It made fascinating listening. David Owen impressed me. Did the SDP have an effect on the Labour Party? The answer has to be 'yes'. Anyone active during the Militant madness of the 1980s knows that we should be grateful for that.

Right now the Labour Party seems destined to repeat history, much as I hate saying it.

A FOOTNOTE: This morning (Thursday 16 August 2018) I opened an email from Anna Soubry, which contained a thoughtful piece headed 'Political We can't go on like this' in which I found echoes of this post. At one point she says, not for the first time, 'It is surely only a question of time before the more moderate Labour MPs, members and supporters face the reality and leave to form a new movement'.

I have emailed her office suggesting that she listens to last Sunday's 'Reunion' programme of Radio 4. At the time their actions were seen even by many ordinary members of the Labour Party and critics of Militant as self-serving, and destined to split the left coalition (for that is what Labour is and always has been) to the advantage of the right and the ever opportunistic Liberals. And so it did for a while.

I suspect many Labour MPs understand this and are sitting on their hands waiting...