When we formed the Homeland Party, local community politics was to be at the heart of what we do. You have probably seen posts from the last couple of days of us out on hikes or other social gatherings. However, on Saturday afternoon I attended a demonstration in Livingston, my local town.
The protest was orchestrated by a local group against the closure of Howden Park Centre, a local theatre and arts hub, plus the swimming pools in Broxburn, Armadale and Livingston.
There was an excellent turnout for the march, with estimates ranging between 300 to 500 people including the local MP Hannah Bardell and MSP Angela Constance, both of whom were very well received by organisers and attendees alike. Also in attendance were a couple of Scottish Socialist Party members who couldn’t help themselves but hand out their own leaflets before disappearing off halfway through the event.
Did I attend representing Homeland or trying to push our brand of politics? No. Unlike the SSP I have an actual interest in these closures: my entire family, from my 52-year-old brother down to my 3-year-old great niece, have learned to swim at either Broxburn or Livingston.
These closures are a catastrophe for our local community. As I said, there isn’t a child who’s grown up around here who didn’t learn to swim in one of these pools. To close all of them is nothing short of criminal. I’ll confess right now I personally never used Howden Park Centre, but to hear from the people who run and attend classes there, you’d need to be inhuman to see this as anything less than a local tragedy.
So, the reason for these closures? Cutbacks, of course, not enough funding and, as usual, we find ourselves on the finger-pointing merry-go-round of local council blaming Westminster, Westminster blaming the Scottish government and so on.
The fact remains that, whoever is responsible, they always find money for garish art “installations” that no one wanted dotted around our towns and villages at the cost of tens of thousands of pounds; they always find hundreds of thousands for some quango or think tank or government enquiry whose outcome no one cares about. And what about the millions of pounds spent on putting asylum seekers up in hotels? They have always got enough of your money for that!
