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What lays beneath Medway History?

In which local historian Chris Sams digs into an overlooked tale of Medway history..

The Tory led council are very proud of our heritage and landmarks and well they should be. However you would not be considered foolish if, as a tourist you got off at Chatham station and only went to the Dockyard, Fort Amherst. or soaked in the carefully engineered aesthetic that is Rochester town centre.  

The other Medway towns also have a rich and forgotten history and landmarks that are being allowed to rot that could be used as tourist attractions.

So what else is there to see within the Medway towns?

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A C Word

In which Vicki Sigston looks at cervical health, and finds some troubling details about screening in Medway..

So, it’s 2019. A whole new year to grab by the horns and make some positive changes in this mad world that we find ourselves in.

I’d love to say that our local government and councillors have been doing just that but sadly anyone with even half a toenail in politics is still embroiled in the B word, and frankly I don’t have the energy to talk about that.

So instead, something that I hadn’t heard of until recently.. January is “Cervical Health Awareness Month”.

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Remembering David Carr

On Saturday morning, Cllr David Carr, who has represented Rainham North on Medway Council since 2007, suddenly passed away.

During his time on Medway Council, Cllr Carr sat on more committees than any other councillor, served as part of the Cabinet, and was the Mayor of Medway between 2008 and 2009. While his time on the council was not entirely without controversy, friends, family, and political colleagues have been sharing their warm memories of his time in the chamber.

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Voice of the Leader: January

Once a month we will be offering the Leaders of both Medway Council and the official opposition the opportunity to talk unedited about.. well, Medway politics. Today we hear from Alan Jarrett, Leader of Medway Council and the Conservative Group.

Alan Jarrett

‘Going forward I promise that we will protect Medway from those who
seek to close down facilities and services; against those who belittle
Medway and its hard-working people; and against those who snub our
military heritage and insult our monarchy.’

This was the promise I made in my first article for The Political Medway, and it is relevant to reinforce it here as most of us celebrate the incredible success achieved by Gillingham Football Club in defeating Premier League club Cardiff City in the FA Cup.

Gillingham FC is Kent’s only Football League club, this year celebrating its 125th anniversary, and as such has a special place in the history of Medway. The FA Cup is the world’s oldest cup competition and for these two things to coincide is noteworthy in itself.

When we agreed the shirt sponsorship deal for this season with Gillingham FC it was on a nil cost basis to Medway tax payers. But still we had our Labour opposition firstly trying to stop the sponsorship, and secondly to criticise and denigrate it. We’ve been here before, and it is another shabby example of how Medway Labour disrespect our heritage.

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Much ado about Labour

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
To finish the week, we are taking a look at Medway Labour.

On paper, the omens should be pretty good for Medway Labour heading into the 2019 local elections. With a confusing national picture that has seen them polling roughly equally with the Conservatives, a string of council blunders, and facing a set of councillors that seem tired, Medway Labour should be well placed to mount a challenge to control the council.

The problem is that we’ve been here so many times before. 2011 and 2015 should have been fruitful years for the party for similar reasons to those above, yet Labour rarely seem able to capitalise to improve their standing. As such, a few minor seat fluctuations aside, Medway Labour have held pretty much the same number of seats on Medway Council for the past 16 years.

Could 2019 be their breakthrough year?

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Much ado about UKIP

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
Today we are looking at Medway UKIP.

The four years since the 2015 local elections have not been kind to Medway UKIP. Riding high on Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless’ defection to the party and subsequent by-election victory, the omens looked fairly good heading into the last set of elections. Yet, despite the results not being as strong as some faces within the party were expecting, they won a solid four seats on the council, immediately placing themselves as the third party in local politics.

This success lasted a matter of weeks, given two tactical errors that undercut them from day one. The leader of the group, Chris Irvine, a sitting councillor in Peninsula, decided to fight for a seat in Rochester East instead and lost. More devastating was the loss of Mark Reckless as an MP. These two issues immediately destroyed any momentum Medway UKIP had, and others in the party quickly began to fall away. One of their councillors, Mark Joy, declared independence from the party in no time at all, before eventually joining the Tories. A second, Catriona Brown-Reckless, resigned and moved to Wales. Most recently, Cllr Mick Pendergast resigned to sit as an independent, and has since formed his own group to fight the 2019 elections.

Ostensibly, this leaves only Cllr Roy Freshwater as both the leader and the entire membership of the Medway UKIP group.

Where can the party realistically go from here in Medway?

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Much ado about Liberals

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
Today we are looking at the Medway Liberal Democrats.

The story of the Lib Dems in Medway is not a particularly happy one. When the unitary authority was formed in the late nineties, they were the second largest party on the council, but it was not to last. They quickly fell to third party status and spent the next fifteen years on a slow decline into oblivion.

In 2015, they were wiped out from Medway Council completely.

So are they prepared for the coming elections in May?

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Much ado about Tories

We are interrupting our regular schedule for the rest of the week to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections.
We begin today with the Medway Conservatives.

The Medway Conservatives have been in control of Medway Council for 16 years of the 21 years that it has existed. Since 2003, they have held an unbroken run of running the council. That level of success can very easily breed complacency, and complacency can breed incompetence. Could the party be heading for a reckoning in May?

From the signs coming from within the local party, that may well be the case.

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