It’s fun! This one was everything that traditionally happens at a summer weekend gathering by the sea, but with real, community-level politics.

If you walk along to the west end of Hastings seafront, you come to a pleasant, green space but with signs of the demolition of the former bathing pool, now ingeniously turned into cafes and seating areas by people (not developers) and lots of evidence of disastrous malpractice (by Southern Water not by people) and until recently, an HBC sign about them having given the space to developers.

This weekend, there was an event there, all about how commercial developers are wrecking everything. The organisers, campaigners for residents in the old bathing pool site area, were sharing ideas about how we could turn this round, and have some planning and building done that’s actually helpful to the people of Hastings.

The people’s opinions were presented by means of a speakers’ tent, various musical offerings and some lively games. Guess who won the developers v the people tug of war…

To me, the Hastings New Left Party stall felt quite a lot like the good old days in the Labour Party but better because back then, we were telling people what the party had decided they should want. Now, as the New Left Party project, we’re saying let’s have a local party for Hastings, and asking everyone to join in with deciding what we want and what we need.

People are mostly saying that rent, house prices and bills generally are becoming impossible to cope with. They don’t want big companies deciding what happens to everything in Hastings, if it means all the green spaces taken up by ‘affordable housing’ that most Hastings people can’t afford.

Of course, the people won the tug of war. I wish it were that easy in real life but, I do believe we’re doing what we need to do to build local power. This government is trying to take our local council off us, but Hastings is very good at energetic campaign groups, and now we’re building a party that will be an even louder voice for Hastings.

If you’re in Hastings, get in touch with the New Left Party project – anyone can join in.

If you’re not in Hastings, why not have a protestival in your town, and get your local campaign groups to come along and set out their stalls, so people can see everything that’s going on, and join in with what matters to them. It’s fun, and incredibly inspiring.

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