Hadleigh: a middling place with middling leaders?

The Revd. Taylor was a sixteenth century Hadleigh priest martyred for speaking out against the establishment of his day. This is a regular column that channels one resident's inner Rowland, but which seeks to avoid the martyrdom bit.

For decades now, Hadleigh has been punching so far beneath its political weight that it if it were a human it would be a seven-stone, asthmatic weakling with a victim syndrome to boot.

Why is it that our town has got so used to having sand kicked into its face every day of the week by smarter politicians from elsewhere?

It is decades since the town produced an outstanding political figure. You know the type: both charismatic and thoughtful, both a tribune of the people and someone willing to stand up for their principles.

Regardless of party political affiliation, Hadleigh doesn't seem to do leadership very well. For decades, at both Babergh District and Suffolk County Councils, no elected representative from the town has actually held an important and influential post.

None of the current Babergh cabinet comes from Hadleigh. The leader lives in a village near by, as did his predecessor and indeed so did hers before that. But no Hadleigh representative has chaired an important district council committee since the Peasants' Revolt. Yes, we've produced the occasional chair of the Council, including its current incumbent , the affable and charming Kathryn Grandon. But her role in these pandemic days amounts to little more than opening and closing Zoom meetings with a sprinkling of well-meaning fairy dust.

The last Hadleigh district councillor to even ascend to the giddy heights of leading their own political group was the late Jim Quinlan during the early years of this century.

At the County Council, all the big boy and big girl political posts are held by folks from elsewhere - as has been the case for many, many long years previously. Hadleigh doesn't seem to have had someone at the top table of the authority that decides on really big ticket items such as highways, social services, community services and, to a much lesser extent these days, education within living memory.

And without that senior political presence, the needs of our community are always secondary to those with sharper leaders elsewhere. Hadleigh's voice is about as loud and as significant as a fart in a wind tunnel......in North Carolina.

Now, I'm not having a general pop at the intentions of those who are or have been our district and county councillors. Most have been well-intentioned men and women, although one or two seem to be replaying the psychodramas of their, earlier failed, political endeavours. The majority stood in the first place because they felt they had the commitment, energy and time to make a positive difference to our community.

But most, according to everyone I've spoken to, and have witnessed personally at first hand, are treated as little more than useful backbench fodder. Well-paid district and county staff know how to run rings around any Hadleigh councillor who comes knocking on their doors with a bright idea or a dark concern.

I haven't mentioned Hadleigh Town Council until know, but with the current crop of councillors excepted, previous town councils were outplayed in every consultation and engagement because of their general negativity and lack of nous. Pargetting before people! might as well have been the local slogan before 2019 as the Council obsessed about listed buildings more than local jobs and services.

Hadleigh Town Council was the Charles de Gaulle of the lowest tier of local government. It was 'non, non, non! to everything.

So why does a town of at least 8,500 according to the last census, much certainly more now, so significantly fail to attract influential heavy-hitters to its democratic ranks?

There are two reasons: one positive and one negative.

On the plus side, Hadleigh remains a place where civil society, the little platoons as Edmund Burke named them, are active in delivering so much of what still makes the town a great place to live. From church groups to secular societies, from the Porch Project to the Memories Cafe, Hadleigh people look after Hadleigh people well.

The incredible, spontaneous, response of the town to the Coronavirus lockdown, which ensured that no-one who was self-isolating or more generally vulnerable went without their shopping or their prescriptions or were left for weeks without anyone to talk to, showed that that is where the community's leaders were to be found.

Hadleigh's county and district councillors were only needed in a supporting as opposed to a principal role.

The more negative reason as to why it's mainly our 'B' team who stand for elections is because of Hadleigh's self-perception. Many residents with family connections going back generations still refer to and think of the place as a village. Many incomers are happy to buy into that conceit as it gives them warm gushy feelings and justifies their, over-inflated, house prices.

Many are content to live in such a middling place, represented by middling leaders who don't get in the way too much and who don't pose too much of a threat to their own myth-making. The last thing they want are political leaders with a vision: they prefer middling and muddling as they can control that with ease.

But Hadleigh is a town, diverse, complex and growing. It can no longer afford to be middling. It needs the best to be the best it can be.