SAVING PEVENSEY BAY LIBRARY: This leaflet is appalling, at best an embarrassment, at worst an insult. The campaign is about saving the local library not saving the soul of the local Conservative party.
—Bay Life, 29 October 2017
What has been described as a ‘shambolic’ leaflet by a tory insider, put out by the local party, has drawn a sharp intake of breath in the local community.
The campaign to save Pevensey Bay Library is on a firm footing. Local Conservative MP, Huw Merriman is performing a community role par excellence. He is working hard to gather together a community team to fight the closure.
At a breakfast meeting (Friday 27 October), he drew together all levels of representation from his own Parliamentary level to County, District and Parish level, with the right mix also from key stakeholder organisations.
One of the most important parts of the constituent elements is the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library, a body that has a powerful, strong and articulate voice in the community.
If the result of the consultation by East Sussex County Council is a conclusion that there is to be no Pevensey Bay Library, the safe bet is that Huw Merriman will not walk away from the challenge.
Increasingly, it is looking like the campaign team will form a plan to launch a community venture library, which will see both the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library and, in particular, the Parish Council, take a leading role in the foundation of a local library that could indeed be ‘fit for the 21st century’.
Without question, this theme hammered home by the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library., and often quoted, has resonated with the community.
The personal pledge to support the campaign to save the local library is a credit to local MP Huw Merriman.
Bay Life believes that along with key members of the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library and the weight of Pevensey Parish Council behind the challenge, that what may well emerge is indeed a local library fit for the 21st century.
This is what a good local MP for a rural constituency should be doing on behalf of her or his constituents, and that is what he is doing.
The credit should be given where it is due. It is also noteworthy that during the campaign to re-open the library during the 17 month, almost biblical period, that it took to re–open the library, following the flood in January 2015, he also pledged publicly support for the campaign.
In a constituency surgery held at the Bay Side Diner on 4 December 2015 he pledged his personal support to the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library. At the time they were aiming to nominate the Beach Tavern site as an asset of community value.
He told Bay Life, “I am prepared to be involved in this issue and I am going to be investigating the matter in more detail, and I am perfectly happy for Bay Life to say that this is the case”.
Records matter. In relation to the fight for Pevensey Bay Library, Huw Merriman has an impeccable record. His work is a textbook example of what local rural MPs should be doing and he is doing it.
As he said himself at the recent public meeting held to save the library in the debating chamber at the Priory Court Hotel (25 September) , he takes his children to his local library on a Saturday. He recognised the value of local libraries as part of the community.
As a local Conservative Party insider put it to us, ‘he doesn’t have to do this’.
In the view of Bay LIfe, the campaign to found a community venture library, if we get to that stage and the consultation process fails, will succeed, and the endeavours of Mr. Merriman will be very much a part of that success.
In the light of the campaign therefore, this leaflet from the local Conservative Party is a huge disappointment. The leaflet is ill timed, poorly presented and most obviously ill judged.
Nobody doubts that a party of any persuasion will aim to make make capital out of a big local question, that is what they do, but to have timed the challenge faced by Pevensey Bay Library with a leaflet of this description is at best an embarrassment and at worst an insult.
Slapped on the front is a big picture of four Conservative representatives and the words Save the Library. The leaflet is a pretence.
The leaflet is just an advertisement for the local Conservative Party with an invitation to join the party.
How possibly can this leaflet be the literature that we were promised by Huw Merriman at the public meeting?
Looking at the representatives fighting the campaign, which ranged from district councillors to the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library to the Parish Council, he explained that ‘we would be producing a leaflet that would get to every household in the community’.
The campaign has disappeared to be replaced by four local representatives of the local Conservative party and the kind of literature that they would offer at election time, with an invitation to join the party.
District councillor Dianne Dear, (who is also the publisher of Bay Life) has given and continues to give, an honest account of herself, with regard to the campaign for the library, but to be honest, the presentation of the campaign in this way, with this picture, disrespects the value of the campaign.
New Conservative county councillor Tom Liddiard, for example, in the picture, did not even give the constituents the respect in voting for him that they deserve.
He may be the only ever East Sussex County Councillor winning an election who did not even bother to turn up for the count.
That is not a very good start, and if there is any evidence of his hands on the production of this leaflet, then in the view of Bay Life, he owes the people of Pevensey and Pevensey Bay a public apology.
As one local Tory insider suggested to us, ‘perhaps not our finest leaflet’.
The Parish Council was well represented at the public meeting at which this leaflet was announced. Chairman Daniel Brookbank spoke with passion, authority and knowledge. So where is his voice, and the voice of Pevensey Parish Council, he appears to have been air brushed out of the campaign.
The decision to ignore Pevensey Parish Council as a linchpin part of this campaign may be a chicken that comes home to roost for the local Conservative Party.
If we are to have a community venture library it is likely to be the Parish Council playing a major role not just with funding questions but also quite possibly with a shared ownership of a building that is to become the library.
The meeting held by Pevensey Parish Council (3 October) over the question of the library campaign, may perhaps go down in local parish council minute books, post the Localism Act of 2011, as a seminal moment.
The passion and commitment expressed was extraordinary. Bay Life believes, having witnessed the event, that the meeting may well have set the foundation for a successful community campaign that will indeed lead to a library fit for the 21st century.
East Sussex County Councillor, Tom Liddiard, again, did not even bother to turn up to the meeting.
You would not know the powerful role being adopted by the increasingly pro-active Pevensey Parish Council if you browsed the local conservative party leaflet inviting people to join the party would you?
The anger over the leaflet has been somewhat explosive.
Local resident, Peter Dryden wrote to Bay Life and said “I have today received a copy of ‘Voice’ with the headline “SAVE OUR LIBRARY”. On reading it I became aware that this was from the local Conservative Association and only mentioned by name local representatives of the Conservative Party. There was no mention of Margaret Martin who has worked so hard to save the library closure. I am also minded to point out that it is the Conservative Council who are proposing to shut the library. Is it only therefore, a little squeal, that these elected members are making….. to be heard (just about) making the right noises?”
Pevensey Parish Councillor Helen Burton said that she was angry and disappointed to see the leaflet which she described as “just political literature for the Conservative party”
The irony in this Kafkaesque world in which we live is that it is the (Conservative) Government forcing the cuts to close our local library and a County Council (Conservative) implementing the cuts, and it is a MP (Conservative) leading the campaign to form a community team to save the library.
You could not make it up really could you?
The irony has not escaped most people linked to the campaign.
An earlier interjection by local campaigner, Carol Mills, over the fact that the local Conservative MP is to lead the community campaign perhaps expressed what we see best, she said, “Tory MP and Tory councillor speak up against Tory led cuts. Why not? I wonder if they could get David Cameron’s mother on board with this? Oh sorry. Wrong county. But seriously. Well done Pevensey people. Keep going”.
Carol Mills makes a very good point does she not?
Bay Life, like many people is aware of this irony.
Having said that, we based our judgement in giving Huw Merriman and his band of very able community sisters and brothers our full support.
It might perhaps be a crass thing to say, but we believe in Huw Merriman, the sentiment may well be the same one expressed by the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library team.
When they met him at a constituency surgery in December 2015, here in Pevensey Bay, one of the campaigners said, “just want to say how impressed I was by meeting MP Huw Merriman. He took in a lot of information from us and was able to see the issue in a very positive way”.
The Friends of Pevensey Bay Library are also not known to be local Conservative party supporters.
We believe that Huw Merriman MP will help us win a library fit for the 21st century.
Margaret Martin who has been instrumental in the library campaign since the beginning is a very able, articulate and informed campaigner.
Listen to her talk, particularly at the beginning with what she says.
It is not unknown for her to thank the people that have started and supported the campaign to save the library.
She has been known to begin by thanking the local WI, and she is right to do that because they were indeed the first local organisation to raise a petition about the proposed closure of the library.
It is important that the role not just of the local Conservative Party is noted in this campaign, but the role of everyone, the WI, the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library, most certainly the Parish Council and all the other key stakeholders organisations that are working so hard to see a local library fit for the 21st century.
Increasingly, day by day, it is beginning to look like we may win this campaign. we will win, you can feel it in the mood and momentum that is here amongst people.
This leaflet is appalling, at best an embarrassment, at worst an insult.
It will come as no surprise to see the local Conservative Party so ashamed, that they pulp the leaflet.
If this leaflet is delivered to the doors of the constituency in this corner of Bexhill and Battle, perhaps it will come as no surprise on the doorstep to hear that there is palpable anger.
Most certainly the views, comments and a number of letters that have come in to Bay Life are expressing anger.
Whoever was responsible for this shambolic leaflet in the local Conservative Party has got a lot to learn.
The campaign is about saving the local library not saving the soul of the local Conservative party.
Lead and rhythm guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards said “When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.”
When the foundation stone has been laid with the new community venture library, the quote would not be a bad one to consider as people first cross the threshold
The little blue stain left by this leaflet will be long forgotten.
It will be for the local WI, the friends of Pevensey Bay Library, the community team being founded by Huw Merriman MP, the Parish Council, all the key stakeholders that have put so much into the campaign to celebrate.
That day and a headline that says ‘We Saved Pevensey Bay Library’ will be worthy of note. The day will fit well with the Keith Richards quote, because the day will belong to them.
The picture with all these fabulous people holding a good book will be one for the local history books, because every picture tells a story.
Simon Montgomery
Editor, Bay Life
