Greetham

Greetham, Stretton, Pickworth, Thistleton and Clipsham

I earned most of my campaign blisters in the service of prospective candidate, Martin Brookes, in Greetham, Stretton, Clipsham, Pickworth and Thistleton. We motored up there on several occasions and found posters strewn in public places, one within yards of Roger Begy’s home on Greetham High Street. The most vile accusations were thrown at Martin Brookes throughout the campaign. One would have thought this was not a very clever thing to do in a two horse race. Wouldn’t one?

At a planning meeting 48 hours before the election Martin Brookes was able to ask Mr Begy why he hadn’t taken steps to distance himself from these posters. What was Begy’s reply? ‘I don’t read your blog.’ A classic example of a non sequitur!

The first posters were black and white, stapled or drawing pinned to bus stops, wooden poles, fences and most worrying of all in the official Parish notice board in Clipsham. At Clipsham, on the first occasion we spotted the notice, we thought we might remove it. But this is an official Parish notice board. We decided instead to track down the Parish Clerk and found the Parish Clerk for Clipsham mowing his lawn. We took him to his notice board. He rapidly read the poster and asked whether any of the accusations were true, picking out one particular accusation. I must commend the Parish Clerk for his speed-reading of a document he said he’d not seen before. No doubt Clipsham have a very able and erudite public servant in their midst. What a treasure he must be.

As usual Martin Brookes wittered on at length in a convoluted explanation. Eventually I summed up more succinctly and the Parish Clerk said ‘Well I don’t understand it. There are a lot of funny things going on.’ I am not sure but did I sense a degree of disappointment in the Parish Clerk’s face when I offered my explanation?

We were satisfied that no more posters would appear in the Official Parish notice board in Clipsham. How wrong we were. New coloured posters slightly amended were issued this week and wonder of wonders there, skewed with just one drawing pin, in the official Clipsham Parish notice board was a new poster! This new poster, presumably in a vicarious distancing of Roger Begy from the poster, proclaimed: “This poster produced by ‘The Friends of Greetham Ward’. It is NOT produced by the RCC, OTC, The Conservatives. The Cabbie nor any individual Society thus accused by Mr Bookes to date.” Well that certainly makes it clear who produced it. Doesn’t it?

However my congratulations go to a user of one of the bus stops in Greetham who had torn down the leaflet. This was found flapping in the hedge at the first bus stop in Greetham. A deep thank you goes to the upright citizen whose sense of fair play led him/her to tear this poster down.

BBC Radio Leicester appeared at the Count in Oakham on 6th May. I bumped into them as they returned from a coffee break and showed them one of the latest anonymous leaflets, which Martin Brookes had removed and cut out his photograph, using the top part as his own election poster. The reporter immediately said ‘Are you Helen?’ Hardly anyone reads my blog, she had clearly been briefed by someone. Who had briefed her and why? She wasn’t prepared to say.

She asked for a copy, so I went to the library and, only having a 20p piece made two copies. One of which I handed to BBC Radio Leicester. They opened the boot of their radio car and fiddled with a couple of switches, turning off their equipment as one reporter sat reading the leaflet in the back of her radio car. The mike was placed in the boot, but I was not interviewed. Despite this I began to suspect that I was being surreptitiously recorded. Isn’t it amazing how paranoid one can become when faced with an anonymous campaign?

They asked who was behind this campaign. My reply was that I didn’t know but it was funny that the poster had been issued in an area in which there were only two candidates. They asked whom I might suspect. I pointed out that these people hide behind their anonymity, but said that they behaved like terrorist cells, the campaign is coordinated and yet each anonymous cell appears to be acting autonomously and separately.

What I didn’t say was that living through this onslaught of anonymous tweets, blogs, postings and posters is a little like living in a third world country with a despotic and dubious band of autocrats determined to silence any voice of opposition. Shenanigans in the Kingdom of Swaziland sometimes pale into insignificance beside the Kingdom of Rutland.

Like my childhood home, Rutland appears determined to silence any opposition. In Swaziland the opposition is regularly locked up and false accusations levelled at political opponents. The newspapers in Swaziland are prevented from reporting anything but censored news. Whereas in Rutland…

Rumour has it that the new editor of one of our local newspapers is a Conservative who tried to stand for election on RCC but was prevented from doing so since she had only just moved back into the area and did not satisfy the residential requirements for prospective candidates. If what Gene Plews tells me is true, this is only interesting as a litmus test of the political allegiance of our local press.

The only independent and free press would seem to be our blogs. At least one of which has been hacked. A local lady I bumped into recently said: ‘You have to stop otherwise they will destroy you. Your blogs and your emails will be changed. You just can’t win.’

The problem as I see it is – if I stop they will just grind me into the ground silently. Whether I blog and use email or take a vow of omerta, I will be silenced. Better by far to go out attempting, however vainly, to speak out, than to be silenced by fear of intimidation, which will continue come what may.

In the face of a despotic regime one should always struggle, however vainly, to speak out before one segues into oblivion. In the despotic Democratic Republic of Rutland let’s hope that we can find others with the courage to ensure that eventually the miscreants are traced and brought to justice.

1,072 words

Helen Briggs, Local Election, Rutland County Council, Roger Begy, Richard Gale, Greetham, Thistleton, Pickworth, Stretton, Clipsham, Rutland, Conservatives, Helen Pender, Multum in Parvo, Gene Plews, Martin Brookes