The Battle of the Bus Stop

by Stoker

Last month Stoker brought you the press pack camping on the White House lawn as The Donald demolished the east wing of The White House.  This month; a few local journalists, more demolition, smaller scale .

To North Norfolk (again) where a little local difficulty is starting to blow up into a cause celebre.  Norfolk is flat and windy and when the wind is in the east, cold and wet into the bargain.  That means, if you are waiting for a bus to come along….;  but no, let us explore local politics a little. Don’t worry, not much. 

In rural England there is a network of small local councils known as parish councils or town councils which in many areas is the lowest level of government. Town councils don’t do much, and parish councils even less, but they are important consultees in the planning process for building-related matters, and they often run playgrounds and car parks and deal with minor local troubles.  Above them are District Councils which are responsible for actual planning decisions, run some local services (housing, rubbish collection, local tax collection).  And above that are County Councils which run education, many roads, social care, the emergency services. If this sounds cumbersome and pretty inefficient, it is. Though arguably it is democratic and consultative of the rural electorate.

Our late, not very much lamented, Conservative government and our new, unpopular, Labour government do have one thing in common – neither like the complexities and inefficiencies of local government.  The Conservatives started (in urban areas) to try to cut layers of government out, mainly by introducing a further layer, an executive mayor on an American or French model, where the mayor would have considerable powers to get things done.  This had been fairly hopeless in the one area – London - that had such a structure, where Mr Ken Livingstone (Labour) was followed by Mr Boris Johnson (Conservative), followed by Mr, sorry, Sir Sadiq Khan (Labour). 

But failure never stopped politicians and for some reason the incoming Labour government seized the new structures with enthusiasm.  About now there should have been a restructuring of four counties to introduce a mayoral system and merge the two upper layers of local government into one. Size and details to be advised.  This has mostly not been a hit with the electorate or indeed with many local politicians, who will be in many cases losing their roles and ability to lord it over their local electorate.   Suddenly though, Labour politicos have rather gone off the idea. For why?  Because in each of the four areas due to be put through the mincer, the leading party to win the mayoralties are Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. Er, whoops. Not the idea at all. Thus the government has postponed all the local elections for at least two further years (on the grounds that more time is needed to prepare).

With which thought, let us board a bus to the bleak ,windswept, little town (sorry, charming, pretty, seaside resort) of Sheringham.   Your bus, usually more or less empty, arrives next to the steam railway station – Greater British Rail, or whatever it is to be called, has retreated to a one platform single line on the other side of the railway crossing, where a tiny train arrives periodically, rests nervously for about seven minutes and then hastens back toward the civilisation that is Norwich, thirty miles away. But never fear, there is a rather handsome brutalist brick and concrete bus shelter, built in the early 1950’s, in which to tie your hat, don the wellies and scarf, and button the extremities of your coat, before stepping out for your seaside experience (see photo above).

Well, there is at the moment.  For Norfolk County Council (“NCC”) announced last Tuesday it was about to knock the shelter down and replace it with a smaller plastic shelter a few yards away, at a cost of, it seems, £400,000.  Why? The chairman of the finance committee, who we will call Councillor P, of the NCC says, as only a politician could: “The government has given us the money and so we must spend it”. 

Sheringham is a town of mostly older persons with a slight Green fringe. Conservative and conservative, quiet and well behaved. But something snapped last Tuesday and a group of unlikely militants occupied the bus shelter, vacuum flasks and sleeping bags at their feet.  Councillor P, who knows how to make a bad thing worse, had the shelter barricaded with crinkly tin sheets.  Perfect; what had been rather windswept became sheltered and cosy. The squatters moved in their sandwiches and laptops and settled down.  Councillor P sent in the bailiffs. The police arrived, and seemed to rather side with the occupiers.  The bailiffs left, rather tersely.  Councillor P professed outrage and complained that his men had been booed by the occupiers. (Oh diddums’.) The local MP, a LibDem in this surprisingly marginal seat, turned up and with some passion supported the squatting heroes.  At 4am on Monday morning Councillor P sent the bailiffs back to the shelter and the sleeping defendants and apparently kicked one to get him to wake up (told you it was cosy in there).  Further retreat of bailiffs; various notes made by attending police officers. Much laughter and sea-shanty singing.

In an unexpected swerve, the Sheringham Town Council announced that it was its belief that it owned the bus shelter, not the NCC.  It promised to hold a meeting to consider “further steps”.  Cheering by protestors.  But that the meeting would not be open to the public. Booing by protestors. It reflected and said the protestors would be allowed to briefly address the meeting. Rather faint cheering.

Which is where things stand at the time of writing.  By the time you read this no doubt things will have moved on*; in which direction your correspondent refuses to forecast, though with the acumen and sensitivity shown by Councillor P so far one fears a second Kett’s Rebellion**.

So often, indeed as with Kett’s Rebellion and the Sarajevo Crisis, minor things can get very out of control when greater issues lie under the surface.  In Norfolk, the electorate are not happy about effectively been disenfranchised for three years.  Councillors are not happy about losing their roles and status.  The major political parties are not happy about the Reform threat (Reform are sensibly keeping their heads down in the Battle of the Bus Shelter).The LibDem MP is very happy that the public mood is with the occupying protestors and he has a nice clear-cut cause to push.  Oddly, the people not so happy are bus passengers, who have nowhere to shelter from the storm.

And the Conservatives?  Knocking down architecturally handsome buildings is not very conservative; nor is spending ratepayers money in a county where services are being heavily cut.  The protestors are local heroes at the moment.  Councillor P may have a cunning plan, but at the moment it looks as though the local Tories will lose any election that comes along this century.  Maybe Mrs Badenoch should make a pre-Christmas visit to the seaside and get a grip on her party.  The protestors will happily give her a mince pie.

*[Editor's addendum] It has. Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, fresh from trying to save Ukraine from being invaded further by the Putin-Trump duo, stepped in to the Sheringham bus shelter row on Thursday 11 December (shortly after Stoker had submitted his article). He said: "NCC should listen and respond to local people who obviously have strong views on this and I am not surprised." Alongside him, the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander knew better how to speak to folk: "...the people also want to keep their bus shelter, so Norfolk County Council should pull their finger out and get on with the job."

**Kett’s Rebellion in 1549 began with the tearing down of new enclosure fences and ended with a major uprising around Norwich (during which the city was almost entirely burned); the government of Protector Somerset, ruling on behalf of his child nephew Edward VI, had to bring in Swiss mercenaries to supress the rebels.