EU REFERENDUM DEBATE:
Priory Court Hotel, Pevensey
7:30pm, Thursday 16 June 2016
Chair, Huw Merriman MP for Bexhill and Battle
On the day that Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne announced (15 June) that ‘when we walk through the door, there is no way back, there is a one way exit’, all bets are now off for what will happen on the historic day that people vote with regard to the future of the country and our relations with European Union on 23 June.—Bay Life, 15 June 2016
All the evidence suggests a massive swing towards the Brexiters, but nobody can guess what is about to happen. If we vote to leave the European Union will David Cameron resign the next day?
Where would that leave this Conservative Government? Would we then be in the hands of the 57 varieties of UKIP flavoured Conservative MPs, who this morning declared that they would vote down an emergency budget?
There is talk today of an emergency budget that will vote in £30 billion worth of cuts, and the response of these MPs is that they will vote down the plan. They are standing to the right near the bus stop marked UKIP, that is the big bus that says that the EU costs us £350 million a week, except of course that is not the case.
Meanwhile in Pevensey Bay, the flags are out, flying big red, UKIP flags.
The Pevensey Parish Council is to go into emergency session to see that the new signs to Pevensey Bay, as well as saying no skateboards, no ball games, no drones and no fun, will also say no entry.
They will specify that everyone entering the area is to have a passport, clearly stamped ‘Independent Country, Passport to Pevensey Bay’.
Somewhere down the line, we are in the second scene, as savvy Normans Bay tweeter Matt Castle points out that is looking very much like an episode in Passport to Pimlico, the 1949 comedy classic with Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Hermione Baddeley. in which Pimlico declares independence.
Presumably we have Michael Gove, Ian Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson playing the lead roles.
All of them argue that the money we save could go the NHS, except, as John Major pointed out on the Andrew Marr show, “Gove had wanted to privatise the NHS, Johnson wished to charge people for health services and Duncan Smith advocated moving to a social insurance system.
“The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python”.
What kind of Python he did not specify. Monty Python perhaps. Boris Johnson could do a very good turn as Stanley Holloway if we are in Passport to Pimlico territory
After all the remake of the classic Dads Army worked a treat.
Talk to some people in Pevensey Bay and you will get a groundswell of something and however much it smells, some is best flushed into the gutter.
A gardener along the Eastbourne Road told me yesterday “it is all the fault of those bloody immigrants, it is those bloody immigrants, when you go down the A&E at Eastbourne Hospital you have to wait four hours now, four hours, did you know that? It is all the fault of those bloody immigrants.
Not clear where all these immigrants are queuing to cause this four hour problem, but apparently my gardener friend knows that this is the case.
Point out that if it was not for bloody immigrants we would not have an NHS service and the information falls on deaf ears.
Where do you start to explain that this release of bile, fear and ignorance can be questioned.
There is no reason. If someone is sure that there is a four hour queue to be seen at A&E at Eastbourne Hospital and the problem is caused by bloody immigrants, then I guess that the only way to test whether this is true is to get in a car and go down to Eastbourne Hospital and see where this four hour queue composed of immigrants is sited.
On both sides of the Eastbourne Road now we have UKIP flags. It is one of those be careful what you wish for moments.
If the Cameron Government collapses next week, it will not be the Labour Party, that will step into the breach, because their support of the European Union is at best lukewarm. They can hardly be called a Government in waiting. We found out that this was the case in the Election of 2015.
Stepping into the breach will be Nigel Farage with his Huguenot name and his German wife, as British as a pint of beer held in the hands of The Pub Landlord, Al Murray. In the early 17th century his antecedents came to this country as economic migrants, but they were also fleeing oppression.
Is that where we are heading as a country and as a community, is that what we want?
The UKIP councillors will descend on the community and start talking about the Chinese restaurant owners as ‘ting tongs’.
In my favourite cafe I talked to Dave. Send the bloody immigrants back, he said, send the bloody immigrants back, all of them.
I did not like to point out as he was enjoying his full English Breakfast that the cafe owner was from Sri Lanka, the person who had served him was Indian and the person who had made his breakfast was from Bulgaria.
We are in uncharted waters in unprecedented times. There is no moment in our history when we can point to anything of the description that have with the EU Referendum, because there are no precedents,
We are eight days from the EU Referendum, perhaps the most important voting day not just in a generation, but in all our lifetimes and local people, it would appear, along with the country, are going to vote to come out of The European Union and go it alone.
Go it alone where exactly? Shall we go back to the fears of a Napoleonic invasion and build some more Martello Towers, 15 million bricks in every one, and just for the record, never used.
Look at the years of the invasion fears at the time, look at what people were saying and look at what they did and you begin to see something in comparison.
The effort then, by the way, led not to a French invasion, it led to what we now call income tax.
Into the foray comes our MP Huw Merriman. To his great credit he has now hosted 6 special debates about the EU Referendum and they have gone down well, audiences of 200 + in all the places where he has hitched his caravan.
Chairing the events has enabled him to give both sides in this most polemical of campaigns their fair share in terms of talk and debate.
This is what our MP is doing, it is called promoting democracy and he is doing it well.
Tomorrow night (Thursday 16 June) at the Priory Court Hotel in Pevensey may go down in local history as a seminal moment, the night will see the community rise up and to a woman and man explain how they intend to vote. Those that are still unsure, will listen to the debate.
That will leave one man standing, Huw Merriman MP. He will have to say at some point in the next few days which way he intends to vote.
Perhaps the EU Referendum debate at the Priory Court Hotel will be the moment in our own local history when we will all say after the event that we wished we were there.
Arrive early, if there is a four hour wait to get in the Cattle Market Car Park and the Priory Court Hotel car park, then blame the bloody immigrants.
Credit to Huw Merriman and his very able support team. If anyone has heard any of the debates from communities across the Wealden area then they will know that the quality of the debate, the balance and the opportunity for communities to really speak has been offered to everyone present.
This is what good MPs do, of any colour, and this is what our MP has done, done ably and done articulately as the chair of these events.
Be there tomorrow, or be Colonel Square.
The Church of England humanist English poet and cleric, John Donne (1572 – 1631), sent in a written statement to the Parliament of Humankind that resonates in an uncanny way with regard to the EU Referendum.
From almost 400 years ago, he speaks to us all now. If we are headed back to 1702 in this country and the break up of the United Kingdom, then presumably piece by piece, logically we will indeed end up with a situation in which passports to Pevensey Bay will be in operation within the lifetime of this government, even if the 57 members of Parliament in that Government are all comprised of people like Boris Johnson, the young turk, with a direct line back to the German speaking George II whose name was made on the playing fields of Eton. Along with their favourite dessert, the Eton Mess.
Places at the EU Referendum Debate at the Priory Court Hotel in Pevensey on Thursday 16 June are limited. Advice to people is that they arrive early.
Simon Montgomery
Editor, Pevensey Bay Life
. . .
‘No Man is an Island’
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
John Donne
Passage from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
