Who’s in charge here?

Free tickets for the Library campaign and Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

A personal reflection after 3 months of The Save Our Library campaign by Jon O’Connor.

A little Latin does you good – the famous phrase means who is watching the watchkeepers – which seems ever more appropriate in contemporary Britain than it ever was in Roman-times Rome. Political mistrust is as always polling well.

And that mistrust is pervasive – with a truly widespread community campaign to Save Our Library seeing just a flicker of mistrust, anger, all the usual elements of social media at its very best. In my view, this was always to be expected.
To see a coalition like this hold together constantly would take more glue than you can buy in WH Smiths.

We have seen a wonderful mixture of actions and activities, with an amazing assortment of people and perspectives.

a community campaign, first and foremost

Among the first to spring into action were the radicals, political activists who draw a not unreasonable link between the plight of our local Library with austerity, cuts in public services and the case for a strong anti-government movement and resistance to cuts. They created protest marches, visible actions and helped to give profile and strength to the early days of the campaign. Some may well have found the militant approach challenging, but it was a necessary building block at that point.

Remarkably a very firm line also came from a much more conservative grouping of civic voice collectives, angered at the evidence of contempt by the local authority for their work, their role in the community and the value of this to others. Creatives were vocal in their recognition of the stunting of personal exploration, identity development and opportunity for absorbing raw material to influence the process of expression through visual, performance and other art forms.
The reply they received from Cllr Peter Oakford disclosed possibly more than expected – with the admission that the 2011 review and downgrading of County Council asset management policy from proactive to reactive appeared to have stored up significant problems.
Many would be tempted to say “We told you so!”

Children and families joined in protest and showed in simple, expressive terms their dismay at their special place being barred to them. Story sessions, sing-songs and favourite music beat at the doors of childhood, firmly closed in a fairytale of villainy.

Powerful support and encouragement has come from erudite sources, including Kent Maps Online– who provided snippets of history, anecdote and links into academia where more groups became aware of this significant place and the risk to its future.

Local politicians, with honourable exceptions – finding themselves caught in the mire of the local election season – struggled to find a position which adequately responded to this unexpected crisis, which had evolved over the last decade….
Kudos should go to those who stuck their head above the parapet to say that the decision to close Grace Hill was wrong.
Some still remain quiet long after the election, while others are quietly working in the background to help set a framework for ways forward.

The newly elected leader of Folkestone and Hythe District Council, Cllr Jim Martin and the FHDC Chair, Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly, has met with campaign members and expressed the wholehearted support of the District Council – acknowledging this challenging but significant issue in a heavyweight in-tray.

A swelling chorus

Most powerfully of all, the local community have voiced their disapproval loud and clear…

Shops and businesses have displayed posters, some of which will become collectors items – designed by local parent Chloe, with updated versions, stickers, leaflets and more being crowdfunded – some £900 being offered to support this campaign.

An e petition, originally drafted by Bryan Rylands, a slightly scary scourge of the establishment, well known for his Shepway Vox blogs, met the threshold for KCC acceptance and was adopted for paper versions – gaining over 3000 signatures in weeks. Queues formed at trestle tables in the town centre, with at least ten separate signature points opening up rapidly.

Legal advice provided by the remarkable Public Interest Law Centre led to a legal challenge – technically a ‘pre-action letter’ forcing a detailed response from KCC and offer of mediation talks with the client (acting on behalf of the SOL campaign).

A Freedom of Information request was submitted – resulting in a routine request for more time to determine how and whether alements of this were in “the public interest” – however ludicrous such a quibble might sound, it demonstrated a growing awareness of the need to improve the performance and public perception of Kent County Council.

So where next?

It’s been an interesting week in which several of these elements came together, creating a natural point – see previous blog ‘SeeSaw campaign’ – to refresh and move forward with cautious optimism.

Finally, there are very clear signs that the Kent County Council administration is recognising the strength of local community feeling and becoming more open to discussion with the local community about meeting their responsibilities, within a challenging economic context.

The petition was delivered last Thursday, in a simple ceremony at County Hall to make clear where the responsibility lies – along with a unique photo-opportunity showing County Councillors apparently supporting the campaign against their own decision making…
Some spoke out to publicly describe this necessary process as an act of betrayal, perhaps not recognising the publicity value and the compliance with the petition signatories wishes – which was to tell those responsible to sort out the mess.

There have been a handful of similar angry exchanges, accusations of person or persons unknown – the community? – ‘hijacking’ the campaign, while others have become habitual critics of others for having a different viewpoint in good faith.

Some of this could be seen as unhelpful if you are looking for something akin to a tightly directed marketing campaign – but this is actually a fairly free-form piece of work, where many different perspectives and actions have collided and colluded constructively. And that is for me the imperfect nature of self-expression, freedom of thought, open discussion and keyboard warrior syndrome combined: this is an emotive subject.

My view is that this campaign has shown how many disparate elements can find positive common ground – albeit not always standing together forever. Our energy going forward needs to remain focused on the goal.

All those involved remain committed to the original principles of a fresh approach which shows transparency, is solution focused and offers real community engagement to build new opportunities for Folkestone: never more needed.

Retain, Repair and Re-open was and still is a great slogan

A new programme and diary of campaign actions will be emerging in the week ahead:
further meetings by civic groups; work on creative events; public awareness work; plenty of political manoeuvring and some practical propositions – all of this hopefully leading towards our goals.

The culmination of all the hard work on this campaign so far means that we are now ‘in the room‘.
Everyone deserves credit for that. Let’s see what comes out of it.