Here indeed were the very sinews of power visible to the commoner: Rye’s Member of Parliament down from her ministerial office in Westminster; the tribal chiefs from Lewes and Bexhill; the lady Mayor of Rye from her council chamber farther up the hill.
And it was that lowest rung of the ladder that came under most strain. The open meeting with Amber Rudd at Rye’s community centre [Friday November 28] left the mayor and Rye council under severe pressure to do something about the abuse of parking that has endangered lives in the town twice in the past six weeks when fire engines have been unable to reach emergency calls. Clearly ambulances would have had the same problem of access. The general feeling, shared by Rudd, was that the town council should incorporate the monitoring of car parking within the job description of the new town steward.
Only two of the other 15 town councillors (Granville Bantick and Michael Boyd) bothered to turn up with the mayor for what was an important and critical meeting about three of the major issues currently affecting Rye: the parking, the progress of the proposed rail link, and the future of the Lower School site following Sainsbury’s announcement that no other supermarket is interested in opening a retail outlet there.
Unlike the town councillors, the Police did attend the meeting, sending two representatives who very reasonably explained how day-to-day monitoring of parking is not presently possible due to lack of resources. Both Rother District Council and East Sussex County Council (ESCC) then held up their hands and cheerfully admitted they were going to do nothing at all about Rye’s problem of access and illegal obstruction in the citadel.
The county councillor Keith Glazier spoke eloquently of ESCC’s pitiful poverty; the puzzled district councillor David Russell seemed at a loss to understand how Rye’s parking problems could have anything to do with him; and the local MP left both county and district councils to shoulder the blame for spending cuts imposed from Whitehall. No one mentioned the contrast with Kent County Council who, despite huge spending on policing the “frontier” at Dover, still manage to contribute, for example, £26,000 a year for a traffic warden in the small town of Headcorn, similar in size to Rye (Tenterden also has its own warden(s) employed by Ashford Borough Council).
On a happier note, progress was reported on the proposed Javelin rail link for Rye, Hastings and Bexhill, and gratitude voiced for the considerable amount of work and energy devoted to this by our MP, even if she remained rather vague about who might actually pay for it (hope was expressed that the UK will stay in the EEC long enough to claim any grant Brussels might make towards the cost of the project, given the officially deprived status of both Rye and Hastings).
There was instead total confusion about the future of the Lower School site, where it seems neither supermarket nor school will be built. Once again local government representatives washed their hands of involvement or responsibility. But then the deconstruction, nay, full-scale destruction of the nation’s education infrastructure is hardly the fault of East Sussex County Council.
After the generous wine and mince pies offered, public opinion greatly sympathised with Amber Rudd in what might be an uphill task to retain her seat next May, since both local Tory councils are doing their best to antagonise her potential supporters in Rye.