Under the Tump

by Oliver Balch

  The experience left him, and other incomers, with a profoundly dim view of the local council. ‘They are entirely policy-less,’ he says. Compared with his subsequent comments, the criticism sounds close to a compliment. Sexist, nepotistic, secretive, unaccountable: these are just some of the barbs he throws at them. ‘Even when I was battling with Lambeth in the 1970s against Tory cuts, the councillors were never that bad.’

  The council is made up of a small clique of locals, in his view. They all know each other from old. Half are in business together or connected by marriage. Elections are largely uncontested. They co-opt their friends to join. They never think to explain their decisions to the public. ‘“Oh, well, it’s like that everywhere,” they argue. I say, “It’s like that in North Korea, mate.”’

  To his credit, one of the councillors called a public meeting in the wake of the supermarket scrap. The idea, according to Rodney, was to heal some of the wounds caused by the conflict. This was back when the Conservatives were talking up their ‘Big Society’ policy. It was out of that meeting that the proposal for a Community Plan was born.

  Rodney levers himself up out of his seat and walks across to a bookshelf by the fireplace. ‘You know who came up with the whole Big Society thing?’ he asks, and reaches for a slim volume from the shelf with the same title. I don’t. Jesse Norman, he tells me. The MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire. He passes me the book and recommends I read it. An Anatomy of the New Politics, reads the subheading.

  While he’s up, he searches for another book. He bought it the first time he visited Hay, back when the book festival was just starting out and long before he moved here permanently. ‘Now where is it?’ He can’t put a finger on it. Later that day, he sends me an email with the title and some blurb. It’s a four-volume set on the life of General Sir Charles Napier, who fought against Napoleon in the Peninsular War and whose statue stands in Trafalgar Square. In the mid-1970s Rodney wrote a book about this popular London tourist spot. Emblem of Empire, it was subtitled. It sold well in the USSR.

  As he returns to his seat, he passes me a copy of the Hay Together Constitution. It’s a ten-page document, printed on A4 paper with a rainbow-coloured swish on the front page. I scan the ‘Objectives’, which are bulleted on page 1 and which note the aforementioned Community Plan. Also appearing on the list are the goals of promoting the town ‘as a centre of books’, encouraging pride in our community, and working with local government agencies, including the Town Council.

  Preceding the bullet points is a single paragraph entitled ‘Aims’. It reads as follows:

  To safeguard Hay-on-Wye and its environs (the area of benefit) by gaining local and national support for Hay Together’s intention to create an influential community voice in the planning and development of the area of benefit’s social and environmental future.

  The word ‘safeguard’ leaps out at me.

  The supermarket fracas, which was unfolding just as we arrived in the area, is undoubtedly the most convulsive brouhaha to have hit the local area in recent years. Yet it is by no means the only one. Barely a month goes by without someone launching a campaign about something.

  So recently there was a fight to keep the public toilets open. Before that there was the to-do about a phone mast above Hay Primary School. Then came the struggle against a proposed wind turbine on Clyro Hill. Next, the fight over a potential chicken broiler complex in Dorstone. The latest skirmish is over the possible closure of Gwernyfed High School.

  All, in some way or other, represent exercises in safeguarding. It may be homeowners wanting to protect their view, or ‘landscape character’ as planning-speak would have it. It could be parents worried about their children’s health or residents fretting over noise levels or a village concerned about traffic. Anything, basically. All it needs is for people to feel that something they care about passionately is under threat.

  Looked at from outside, such community squabbles can seem terribly parochial. A strong element of self-interest undergirds much of what motivates people to get off the couch and complain, for sure. The classic ‘Not In My Backyard’ syndrome. As one anti-turbine advocate put it to me, ‘If I’m not going to look after my backyard, who is?’ She had a point.

  Despite its pejorative contemporary associations, however, ‘parochialism’ as a concept has its merits. The term literally means ‘of the parish’. In its purest sense, it speaks of ‘the small and the particular and the specific’, to quote the writer Paul Kingsnorth, author of Real England: The Battle Against the Bland.

  As global brands engulf the globe, his argument goes, more and more of us find ourselves living in the shadows of McDonald’s Golden Arches or a Best Western hotel. In such circumstances, the particularities of individual place become ever more important. When they disappear, part of us disappears with them. It is hard to persuade yourself that your community is distinctive and different when it looks so similar to everywhere else. The same is true for our own selves.

  Viewed as such, the obverse to parochialism isn’t open-mindedness. It’s placelessness. The doctrine of the ‘global citizen’, at liberty to globetrot through life, never putting down roots, always floating through. It sounds attractive. It’s probably quite fun. But really, deep down? Never having anywhere to call ‘home’. Never having anywhere specific to go back to or think back on. We belong to the world, such people say of themselves. This is true. Equally, they belong to nowhere. They are ships without a flag, adrift on the waves. Floating. Anchorless.

  Kilvert could never have imagined an era in which such dislocation was possible. How much more prescient then his passion to record the singularities of parish life in the Marches. The villagers’ tradition of begging for milk from the farms so they could bake cakes for Michaelmas, for example. Or the fact that ground ivy is known alternatively as Robin-in-the-hedge in Radnorshire and Hay Maids in Herefordshire. Kilvert sensed that such quirks and customs could perish with the wind, as indeed so many have.

  There’s more to it than this for Rodney, though. The lifelong agitator in him sees a point of political principle at stake. The democratic process, no less, is under threat. It all sounds rather alarmist, so I ask him for proof. Plan B put up a dozen or more candidates for the Town Council elections, he tells me, five of whom won seats. Yet within six months, all had acrimoniously resigned. Pushed out, one by one, Rodney would have me believe.

  I look back down to the stated ‘Aims’ in Hay Together’s constitution. Rereading it more carefully, I’m struck by another phrase: ‘To create an influential community voice.’ How high does he rate his chances of achieving such an outcome? He strokes his goatee for a second or two. His thick spectacles have slipped down his nose and he pushes them back up with his forefinger. People clearly wish to speak up, he says, his own voice more measured than ever. The issue is whether the ‘old guard’ are prepared to listen.

  ‘And are they?’ I ask.

  He scrunches his shoulders and offers a broad grin. He couldn’t possibly comment. I should go along to a Town Council meeting, he suggests. ‘Judge for yourself.’

  *

  Much of what Hay Together stands for rings true with me. The importance of all voices being heard. The idea of safeguarding what makes the town unique. The hope of moving forward together. I struggle to see where the problem lies. Yet it may well be that my incomer blinkers are blinding me. For the sake of balance, I feel compelled to take Rodney up on his idea.

  And so it is that, on a Monday evening a few weeks later, I find myself sitting in the upper room of Hay’s centrally located council building. The walls are covered with wood panelling and adorned with various plaques. ‘War Savings Campaign, 1944’ reads one. Another thanks the town’s citizens for their refuge and hospitality during World War II, signed ‘London’s children and teachers’. Among the other wall-hangings are a print of Hay Castle and an aerial photograph of the town.

  Outside the room’s only window, the clock tower looms large. Nine counc
illors plus the clerk are seated round a boardroom table watching the minute hand. They are all ‘born and bred’. Two of the nine are women. The clerk is the only one in a suit. Five members of the public, all of them women of pensionable age, are sitting on a row of chairs against the far wall. The evening is close and the unventilated room already stuffy.

  The clock strikes seven and the meeting commences.

  From an accountability perspective, the proceedings start well as chairman Robert Golesworthy, a tall imposing man with a thin face and large, basketball player’s hands, invites the councillors to declare any conflicts of interest. An elderly gentleman puts his hand up and lets it be known that he is a Friend of Hay Castle. Another reveals himself to be a member of the Royal British Legion.

  The next half hour proves promising as well, with the floor given over to issues raised by the public. First up is the interim director of Two Towns, One World, a two-year government-funded project to support Timbuktu. The programme is wrapping up and the director is here to present a concluding report. When she finishes, a councillor asks her if she’s happy with the document, to which she responds that she ought to be, given that it was she who wrote it. There are no further questions.

  Next up is a retired gentleman from Rail for Herefordshire, a local action group. He is concerned that the Sunday bus from Hay to the train station in Hereford is due to be axed. Weekend tourism will be affected, he fears. Again, the councillors listen attentively. A short discussion follows, although the Town Council resolves that it can do little to help. Public transport falls outside its remit.

  A report from the local police then follows. In total, 138 calls were registered last month, a constable informs them. Most relate to speeding drivers, uncontrolled dogs and petty theft. A nineteen-year-old was detained for abusive behaviour while drunk. A thirty-nine-year-old was found with cannabis in Clyro. Otherwise, all quiet as usual.

  With the constable’s departure, the Town Council moves on to the main business of the evening and very quickly its true colours begin to show. It is suggested, for instance, that the toilet subcommittee ‘needs a man’. No reason is given. Urinal experience, presumably. One of the male councillors thinks a role should be found for the younger of the two women. ‘That would scare the lot of them.’ The men all laugh. The woman in question does not.

  Rodney’s allegations about democratic process gain more weight when the subject of new officers crops up. There are currently two vacancies. A call for replacements went into the community’s monthly magazine, although as yet with no response. An announcement in the Brecon & Radnor would gain wider reach, but it’s deemed ‘too expensive’. Instead, councillors are encouraged to sound out their contacts to see whom they might co-opt. ‘I’ve already frightened two off,’ says one of the longest-standing representatives. Another genuinely asks, ‘What’s Facebook?’

  A little later, the agenda moves on to the renewal of the town’s grass-cutting contract. The tender was awarded to the lowest bidder, the chairman announces. ‘But how do you know they will do a good job?’ one of the female councillors asks. Someone else enquires about the identity of the other bidders. The chairman shuffles in his seat. He looks ruffled. It’s not appropriate to discuss the matter, he eventually says. Not with members of the public present. ‘We can always leave if that makes it easier,’ one of the elderly observers says. Astonishingly, all four of the women then pick up their things and troop out of the room.

  I’m flabbergasted. My instinctive reaction is to get up and follow them. I resolve against doing so, partly out of truculence, but mostly on principle. We’re there to bear witness. It’s ridiculous if onlookers absent themselves the moment controversy arises. So there I remain, fixed in my seat, looking down at my notes, pretending to be ignorant of what has just unfolded around me.

  A palpable discomfort descends. For a moment, everyone fidgets awkwardly. All eyes eventually turn towards the chairman. He coughs. ‘So, to the next item,’ he says, his voice halting. And there the grass-cutting contract remains, unexplained. ‘Ah yes, the Community Plan.’ He audibly groans. I feel vindicated.

  The National Park Authority, the body responsible for Brecon Beacons National Park, has asked whether the Town Council would be interested in developing a forward-looking strategy for the town. The brief is more or less identical to that of Hay Together. A logical step would therefore be to pass it on to Rodney’s group, which is already out canvassing residents for their opinions.

  The consensus among the councillors is that the buck stops with them. This seems legitimate. They are the town’s elected representatives, after all. So a subcommittee is duly established and a date set for an initial meeting in three weeks’ time.

  One of the replacements for the ousted Plan B councillors pipes up. He thinks it’s important to involve ‘other important people in town’. The suggestion earns him some disapproving stares. ‘That’s at a later date,’ a veteran councillor says. The new recruit persists nonetheless. People will expect to have input, he suggests, his tone apologetic. The key step is for the subcommittee to get going with it, he’s told.

  He tries one last time. ‘So, at what stage do you think we need to identify – “partners” is perhaps the wrong word – “other participants”, let’s say?’ Later on, the general verdict runs. The veteran councillor is more emphatic. ‘I don’t think we want to get too close to anyone else yet, thank you.’

  A dozen or so other items remain on the agenda. Doggedly, the board of the Town Council works through them. Residents’ parking, dog-fouling, the playground, the Cheese Market. I watch the clock. There’s at least an hour more to go, I’m guessing. I am tempted to leave, although, having shown such determination not to do so earlier, I feel honour-bound to stay.

  The final item on the agenda is ‘Reports from Representatives’. Each councillor is assigned to liaise with a community group. Two or three brief updates are offered. At the end, it’s noted that the Town Council currently has no designated point of contact for Hay Together. ‘Do we need one?’ The question comes with a sneer. No one is appointed.

  It is past ten o’clock when the councillors finally leave. I trudge home. Rodney is right. The Town Council is hardly a beacon of representative democracy. At the same time, it is no North Korea. The public is given a hearing, anyone can observe (even if they volunteer to leave) and full minutes are published afterwards.

  Nor, I sense, are the councillors venal power-grabbers. Some may well harbour private ambitions. Some certainly entertain illusory notions of aggrandisement. Yet the Town Council operates in a tiny, and shrinking, pond. Its budget is small and getting smaller. Footpath maintenance, signposting, anti-littering: these are the kinds of powers within its purview. Not multimillion-pound supermarket investments. Indeed, control of the public lavatories only came its way because of County Council cutbacks.

  Yet the councillors’ antipathy towards Hay Together is undeniable. It seems demonstrative of a wider dislike of opinionated incomers. At one stage in the meeting, mention was made of ‘Making Hay’, a proposed web-based database to promote all the events happening across the town. It’s the idea of an entrepreneur ‘from off’. A councillor mistook the initiative for ‘Hay Makers’, a co-operative of designers that rents an outlet in town. The confusion pushed the chairman over the edge. ‘Hay Together, Making Hay, Hay Makers!’ His head sunk into his hands. ‘These paracetamol aren’t working,’ he declared.

  I wonder what lies behind such hostility. Rodney would waste no time in telling me. It’s because the town is run by a feudal-minded cabal that feels threatened by the prospect of participative democracy, he’d say.

  I decide to ask the chairman for his views, and a few days later I pop into the country outfitters that he owns in town. The business has been in his family for five generations, their surname imprinted in the pavement outside in swirling, gold-coloured script. He is not there, so I leave my number. A few hours later, my phone rings. He’d be happy to meet
, he says. I ask when would suit. ‘How about now?’ he suggests. Twenty minutes later, I’m climbing back up the stairs to the Town Council’s second-floor meeting room. I prise the door open. Without all the councillors, the room feels distinctly less cramped.

  Robert Golesworthy is sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet resting on the boardroom table. He invites me to sit opposite him. The soles of his enormous shoes are pointing directly in my face. I’m close enough to read the logo on the rubber tread. ‘Brasher’, it says.

  I resolve to be as cordial as possible. From his performance as chairman, he strikes me as a man who doesn’t take kindly to being crossed. His views about incomers also seem clear enough. I fear my card may already be marked.

  My concerns prove unfounded. The chairman is in a breezy mood. ‘So, tell me,’ he says. ‘What would you like to know?’ He rocks back in his seat and opens his large hands to indicate his candidness.

  I start with a softball question. What was the town like when he was growing up? He answers without hesitation, depicting an idyllic childhood swimming in the river, playing sports and being chased by farmers for trespassing. His parents had a car and they would travel down to the Pembrokeshire coast as a family. Everyone knew everyone back then, he says, echoing Tony’s remark in the Rhydspence.

  It was also a time of considerable social change, he reflects. ‘A flexible time, you could call it.’ The fifty-nine-year-old chairman grew up during the tail-end of the Swinging Sixties. He remembers a Vietnam draft-dodger rocking up in Hay. Wealthy dropout types started arriving as well. That’s when drugs started appearing in the town for the first time, he maintains. It was also around then that Richard Booth started ‘building up his empire’.

  Now I’m not to get him wrong. Mr Booth has done much for the town, the chairman concedes. Raised its profile, generated employment. But he also brought a number of … how to put this? The councillor pauses a moment. ‘Unpleasant people.’