Thanks to website of Claire Wright: www.claire-wright.org for this report:
EDDC Leader of the Independents, Cllr Ben Ingham has teamed up with the Alliance and the group has registered with the Electoral Commission in order to provide a support network for dozens of hopeful district councillors.
The aim is to end the oppressive rule of the Conservatives at East Devon District Council, to be replaced by a fresh, new and progressive set of councillors.
This morning at the Thomas Whitty Centre at Axminster the atmosphere was excited and electric, as Alliance chairman, Paul Arnott and Ben Ingham outlined their plans for a new forward-thinking council.
Here’s Paul Arnott’s (Chairman EDA) speech:
A few weeks ago, some of the people in this room mounted a rather lovely evening. It was to launch this book, Literature and Landscape in East Devon. What was so lovely was that it was an entirely successful effort to give our District area, bordered roughly by the Axe to the east, the Exe to the west an identity from literature.
At a time when both the Leader and, perhaps more oddly, the Chief Executive of the East Devon District Council felt it appropriate to insult East Devon Alliance members in public, this wonderful publication, full of love for the landscape we know we are so fortunate to live in, confirmed that we are such a dangerous group of individuals that our militant wing is a Literary group. Oh yes. They know what we’re up to.
Photographing beauty spots, researching, reading books, we must be stopped …
But we won’t be silenced, EDDC apparatchiks.
Because we understand an idea which, if you you seem to have forgotten. Nobody has a god-given right to allow and faciliate the destruction of our precious landscape and environment. Or to stop people speaking truth to power.
What we understand is that when you live somewhere as astonishing as East Devon, you are stewards. We are but passing through. And we will be judged by what we leave behind. In terms of our landscape, but also in the quality of our democracy
Now many of the literary greats feature in this book, though nothing of William Shakespeare – probably because his beat was mainly the road from London to Warwickshire. He wasn’t an A303 kind of guy like us, more of an M40. So in recogniton of his absence, I’m going to use a bit of him now, and I’m going right to the top of his hit parade, Hamlet, to his most famous riff:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them?
This room is full of people with Hamlet’s dilemma. Just how many examples of outrageous fortune inflicted by our local authority are we meant to swallow. A celebration like today is not perhaps the moment to dwell on the negative.
But the straw which broke this particular camel’s back was the introduction last year of public speaking restrictions.
Just at the time when wonderful local groups and individuals were regularly appearing before the planning committee, saving the council from making terrible decisions, this same council decides to block more than a handful from speaking.
With no local plan in place – entirely the fault of the current ruling party – one of the most precious safeguards was removed. And in so doing it finally confirmed itself to be authoritarian and secretive.
So now I’m going to give you another one, rather more obscure, from a man who most certainly did not visit Sidmouth, Axminster or Honiton. Sophocles in the 5th century BC, and his rib-tickling entertainment, Oedipus Rex.
In which there was a blind soothsayer, a visionary, named Teiresias. I’m giving you this now, because this is my favourite ever quote. My children will be appalled, and would be happier of if I stripped to the waist and sang Katy Perry’s Firework verbatim – which I could. But for now, in English, because unlike Boris Ancient Greek is not one of my languages, Teiresias said this:
“To have perception, where the perceiver draws no profit, is a dreadful thing”
Or, in more prosaic terms, “If you can see what’s really going on around you, and you do nothing about it, you turn way, things are only going to get worse.”
So how do we react. Do we take our example from the comedians who have joined the national debate.
Russel brand, for example. Now what time is it, just after noon. I imagine he is getting out of bed about now and tousling his hair while a handmaiden reads great chunks out loud from his latest booky wook about Democracy Welll good luck Russel, and I mean that. But, when you say, don’t vote, why not? How about you pull your trousers up and stand for something. Start with a small council where you live. Actions speak louder than words.
Now the fray has been entered by the Pub Landlord, standing as a stunt against Nigel Farage. Again, Al Murray, possessor of an Oxford history degree in history, why aren’t you standing as yourself. What’s the point in just taking the mickey.
OR, do we take our example from someone in the room today, who has inspired many of us to real action – Independent Parliamentary candidate for East Devon, Claire Wright.
And only last week Claire made a point we would all agree with.
She said:“We have a conservative crime commissioner, a conservative MP and every council locally is Conservative. The county council…tends to be, fairly progressive, but the district council is…a dinosaur. It has always had a large conservative majority…getting things through is quite difficult because they block vote, and that can’t be good for democracy.
“People are tired of the old political parties, and May 7 has to be about getting a better balance on EDD, and [a greater number of] other councillors, especially Independents, because they don’t have to toe a party line and can vote with their consciences.”
Words such as that, which speak for so many, are why I am doing two things today I would normally want to avoid. I am wearing a name badge, in case I’ve forgotten who I am. It reads Paul Arnott,
Chairman, East Devon Alliance. I could not be more proud to wear that on my lapel. And for the first time since Charlton Athletic played Crystal Palace in the early 1970s, I am also wearing a rosette. I have never likeD these things – I feel rather like I have just won third best in show at Crufts. But I wear this today with pride too.
Because as you will have gathered by now, the East Devon Alliance has three announcements to be made today. The first, is that our new website, set up by a wonderful hard-working volunteer who is so busy with it that he can’t even be here today, has just gone live.
Why? Because today we also announce that we have formed an umbrella alliance to support independent candidates across East Devon who want to stand in the district elections in May. Two main reasons for this new site..
One. It can be very hard and lonely being an independent, and I think there is more than enough evidence by now to suggest that a large portion of the local ruling party are, let’s say, somewhat lacking in the milk of human kindness. We want independents to feel a sense of camaraderie and friendship.
The second reason is just as important. It’s great for independents to knock on doors and push leaflets through letterboxes, and they will often be well known in their communities.
But the voter is owed the right of being able to really check out what they will stand for – and as a first port of call, our website will allow them so to that. To see the issues in their own ward, an interview with the independent candidate, and a list of aims we have all agreed need to be addresses.
And the third and final Announcement is this. We are serious about this.
We want to help people to win this election. And to do that we need real leadership, political nous, experience, someone who knows where the levers are so that we can effect real change, actually make this awful district council obey some of the basic tenets of its own constitution, to set a new example all the way down the line to some parish and town councils too.
So we are delighted today to announce that we have appointed as our Leader a man with 20 years of experience as a councillor, the current Leader of the Independent Group, may I introduce our new Leader, Ben Ingham
