Republic Towns – Suffolk Coastal Republic – Nearly 2 weeks in….

In response to the call from Republic to create Republic Towns, I asked James Gray to send an email to all members and supporters in the Suffolk Coastal area to ask if anyone was interested in forming a Suffolk Coastal campaign group. Suffolk Coastal is the district council area and stretches from Felixstowe to Walberswick on the eastern coast of Suffolk, the population is about 122,000.

The response from the area was good and we arranged our first meeting for about a week later in a central venue (actually, The Crown pub in Snape – we liked the irony!).

The first meeting was informal; we used it to get to know each other, and find out what our strengths were. We had a look at Republic’s criteria for Suffolk Towns and agreed that they looked a little challenging for our mostly rural area, but achievable nonetheless.

We agreed to start things off by setting up a blog, a Suffolk Coastal Republic email address (the group didn’t want .uk on the end though, as it involves the word Kingdom), a twitter account, to do some research on the Suffolk Lord Lieutenancy, and meet again in about six weeks time.

Within a couple of days, Steve Smedley had worked wonders by setting up a blog/website, a twitter account, a Facebook group, and we had an email address working. We designed a logo to use as an avatar (we actually based it on the Plinthland polka dots, and the Republic Town of Newport’s logo – perhaps all Republic Towns could have the same dots in different colours?)

By a stroke of good timing luck, I was invited on to BBC Radio Suffolk on the following Thursday to discuss my hour on the 4^th plinth. I was interviewed for about half an hour and was able to publicise the Suffolk Coastal Republic group, the Republic website, and reply to the ridiculous arguments about how the monarchy is good for tourism in London, and who would open our hospitals if the royals were to go! The interview was very positive and friendly, and it was amazing really that I was given so much air time to publicise Republic at 3pm in the afternoon on the BBC. Although they weren’t read out, the presenter, Lesley Dolphin, did receive some supportive emails and texts during the interview. One said something along the lines of “that woman on the radio has got the right idea, get rid of the lot of them. Go girl!”   Strange how they weren’t read out!

The momentum continued the next day, as we found out that the Suffolk Coastal Liberal Democrats group was having an evening event about constitutional reform. Three of us from the group decided to go along, and it was a really good evening.

Cllr Barry Slater, a Lib Dem District Councillor from the area, did an excellent presentation about the British constitution, and how weak our system of democracy is. He hosted a quiz that everyone took part in, with questions about our democracy and electoral system. We then went into workshop groups to discuss what changes we would want for constitutional reform. As there were three of us republicans there, we were able to get into three different workgroups. When the groups reported back, an elected Head of State was in the overall “shopping list”. Alongside this, were strong demands for a written constitution, a fully elected upper house, and a change to the voting system.

Cllr Slater declared himself as supportive of Republic and our campaign, and we had requests for further information from a couple of other people too. There was a small group of politics students from St Felix School. Their tutor spoke to us afterwards and said he would try to get permission for us to visit the school for a debate or presentation (not sure how many supporters we’d get here!).

All of the above took place within 7 days of our first meeting.

Now in our second week, Steve Smedley has written an excellent blog rounding up media reports of constitutional issues in the media over the last week, as well as a brilliant letter to the Treasury about the proposed Civil List increase.

Our group will meet again in mid November.

If you live in or near the Suffolk Coastal area and are interested in joining us, please do get in touch, contact@suffolkcoastalrepublic.org. A simple message of support will be as welcome as a new active member.