Historic Towns and Cities

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) on calling this debate. However, my sentiments and sympathies are more with the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), which is perhaps not surprising, given that I represent Britain’s oldest recorded town. For the record, it was the first capital of Roman Britain when London was just a few huts on the mud banks of the River Thames.

When we talk about historic towns and cities, we must recognise the need for central Government. They cannot be left to the local council of the day. We are, after all, today’s custodians of yesterday for tomorrow. Short-term, quick decisions that are made can have a lasting legacy of the wrong sort. I say thank goodness for English Heritage. None the less, I wish that it had more powers in the decision-making process rather than had its powers weakened. Often, it takes a wider view. Is it right that a local authority should, to all intents and purposes, be lumbered with the financial consequences of maintaining national heritage? Colchester has the largest surviving Roman walls of any town or city in this country. They go back some 2,000 years, and they desperately need £500,000 to maintain them.

Colchester has applied for world heritage site status. It deserves such recognition not only in view of its status as the first capital of Roman Britain but because, in December 2004, the remains of the only Roman chariot-racing circus, or stadium, were discovered. The circus would have been a massive structure, accommodating 16,000 people in an all-seater stadium. We are lucky that the Victorians who designed the Colchester garrison in the mid-1850s left a huge expanse of greenery between the barracks to the east and the barracks to the west without even realising that they were doing so. The barracks have now moved out to the new barracks site and the standing requirement in Colchester for planning is that there must be an archaeological dig. In the dig at that site, the circus was discovered.

Colchester has a pre-Roman history. It was the home of the Trinovantes, the local Celtic tribe. The Romans invaded in 43AD and it was in the ancient British settlement that was located two miles to the south of modern Colchester—if we can call a Roman town “modern”—that eight Celtic kings offered their surrender to the Romans.

In 60AD, Colchester had a visit from Queen Boudicca, ruler of the Iceni tribe in Norfolk, who destroyed the town. In those days, the town, which subsequently became a Roman city, had a population of 10,000, a huge figure for that time. Remarkably, Colchester is the only Roman city that today does not have city status. When I queried that at the time of the millennium city appeal and the golden jubilee city appeal, I was advised that the only person who could remove city status once it had been granted was the head of state. The head of state who granted city status to Colchester was the Roman emperor. There is no record from the subsequent 2,000 years of the head of state ever withdrawing the title of “city” from Colchester and I put it to you, Mr Dobbin, that justice demands that we should have that city status reinstated.

We have to be careful with our historic towns and cities. I can show people around my town and show them that the Roman street grid pattern still exists today. The high street is the Roman road—people can see that it is still straight. Unfortunately, in the early 1970s in a street parallel to the high street, the “experts” said that the street pattern ought to be broken up. Consequently, a street that had stood for nearly 2,000 years—or rather the line of that street—has now been obliterated by a new shopping precinct, because that is what the “experts” said should happen in the early 1970s. However, about 10 years ago other “experts” said that that was the worst thing that had ever happened to Colchester, so we have to be careful with “experts”.

We are also a Saxon town. In fact, the tower of Holy Trinity church was built by the Saxons before the Normans came and it was built out of Roman remains. Furthermore, the Norman castle, which is vastly superior to any other castle that still remains in Britain and indeed is the largest Norman castle in Europe, was also built largely out of Roman remains.

I mention the Norman castle because it also needs loving and regular care and attention, as do the Roman walls, the Roman circus and Gosbecks archaeological park—or rather, Gosbecks would be an archaeological park if the Heritage Lottery Fund had coughed up the money that was sought in the park’s application to achieve such status.

We cannot expect a local authority to fund nationally acclaimed historic tourist attractions. So I am making a special plea that we need to provide national funding for such attractions. However, it is quite interesting that the last Government recognised that tourism had an important role and it provided millions of pounds, through the Arts Council and urban regeneration funding, for the arts. In the case of Colchester, what they thought would make a great tourist attraction was not all that Roman or Norman heritage, nor the fact that Colchester was one of the last major scenes of the English civil war—during the siege of Colchester, Colchester lost more lives within the Roman walls than it did during the two world wars. No, it was decided that what Colchester needed was not something to do with history but rather a visual arts facility to promote contemporary Latin American art. Such art is a subject that the people of Colchester constantly talk about—actually, I think not.

The original project price of that facility was £16 million. Today, the construction of the facility is running approximately four years late and £8.5 million over budget. I recognise that that money came from different pots, but I am criticising the previous Government for channelling it through “culture” when, in the case of Britain’s oldest recorded town, it should have been channelled through “history” and gone into the town’s history. If that £25 million had been spent on the various Roman and Norman sites that I have mentioned, it would have been far better spent.

So that is where we are. I want to conclude by referring to a relatively small part of the history of Britain’s oldest recorded town. The world’s most popular nursery rhyme was composed in Colchester in 1805. That nursery rhyme is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. I will not recite all of it. However, the house where the Taylor sisters wrote it, which is in West Stockwell street, is currently on the market. I believe that the purchase of that building and its promotion as the place where the world’s most popular nursery rhyme was composed would draw in more visitors than the visual arts facility, which will also require an annual subsidy from the public purse of £600,000. So, on top of the £25 million that it cost to build an arts facility that most people in Colchester did not want but that was dumped on them, taxpayers will have to find £600,000 a year to subsidise the facility. As I have already indicated, if we had national financial support for our national heritage—whether that heritage is Roman settlements or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—that money would be better invested and it would bring in the tourists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

It is true that the Government need to set national priorities for transport infrastructure, but if those priorities are set outside the assumptions and wishes of local communities at sub-regional or local level, they will be frustrated. They will be unpopular at best, and undeliverable at worst, so getting a better balance between local wishes, sensitivities and understanding of economic need, and Government priorities, is at the heart of what we hope to do.

[Bob Russell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will do so briefly, but I want to have time to make more points of substance.

[Bob Russell]

Of course localism is crucial, but does the Minister agree that if a local council has responsibility for buildings or structures that are, in effect, of national or international significance, there has to be financial support from the centre? It cannot be left to the local authority to pick up the bill.

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, that is a fair point. Where there are, for example, buildings of national significance, it is right that we take a bigger view about the contribution that they make to their locality, but also to what we are as a people. In those cases, there must be an overarching view. Indeed, the hon. Member for York Central made it clear that the Government’s approach to English Heritage reflects exactly that view.

Let me briefly describe how I think the marriage of local decision making and national priorities can be made. The approach that we seek is one that distinguishes between strategic national needs and local economic priorities. A distinction must be made between what is best determined at national level—for example, innovation and sector leadership—and specifically local issues such as transport, planning and housing, notwithstanding the point that I made in response to the hon. Member for Blackpool South. We will publish a White Paper on sub-national economic growth outlining the way forward in those terms.

Our approach is that we can promote growth by freeing enterprise and innovation, and that it is vital to do so. Business confidence depends on sound finances and a Government who are there when they are needed, and who offer support that does not get in the way. Our growth White Paper will set out a new relationship between business and the state.

Our approach will empower local civic and business leaders to determine how to enable their community to create wealth and jobs. If we want to build a bigger, better society, we must bring forward and make real new forms of community engagement. In the strategy that we are putting together, the tension—I believe that was how it was described by one speaker—between the local and the national must be embraced, as must the marriage between the strategic and the tactical. We must find a happy solution to that and I am not sure that that has always happened in the past. I do not want to be excessively party political—this debate is not about that—but I am not sure that previous Governments got that marriage right.

That was well illustrated by some of the points that were made about what was described as the tension between the old and the new. I do not think it is necessary to have tension between the old and the new. It is only through a symbiotic relationship between the two that we can accommodate the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty which make all that is disturbing and surprising in life tolerable, and the constant need for change. The hon. Member for Blackpool South quoted Deng Xiaoping, but I prefer to quote Disraeli, who said:

“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”

However, change is dependent on seeding an acceptance of it in people’s hearts, and, to some degree at least, that is about local decision making, and local people taking ownership of change.

Governments have been insensitive to that symbiosis. It is true that York, Chester, Colchester and Bury St Edmunds are fine places, but much damage has been done at street level—at human level—in many towns. As well as the scars of much of the building that has emerged since the war, there is also the pain of what has gone. I am sure that that has happened because of an insensitivity to beauty; the triumph of soulless utility over all that elevates and provides our sense of pride and purpose.

The issues that were listed at the beginning of this debate are too numerous for me to cover in detail, but if I had the time, I would be delighted to do so, Mr Hollobone, as you know. In drawing them together, we must take a view about what we see—the buildings, townscapes and landscapes; what we feel—the values and ideas that permeate the towns and cities that we have heard about today and the whole of the nation; and what we do—what workplaces look like, and how our communities are shaped. What we see, feel and do add up to what we are as individuals, as communities, as a people and as a nation.

I am grateful for the opportunity in this all too brief time to congratulate again my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, and to thank all those who contributed and also you, Mr Hollobone, for it is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.