Earlier this week I moved to Dover to help an inspiring project based around transferring the ownership of its historic port to the town’s people and their successors – forever.
The Department for Transport has recently closed a consultation on the port’s future, centred on plans to sell it to an overseas private equity-backed group.
The proposals have attracted condemnation from across the political spectrum, including everyone from Labour parliamentary candidate Clair Hawkins to Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, along with over a thousand registered local residents, workers and union representatives.
Instead of auctioning the town’s future to those whose motives lie in achieving returns over the 5-8 year private equity lifecycle, many opponents have called for a solution that sees the infrastructure held by Dover’s people ‘in perpetuity on behalf of the nation’.
The significance of this phrase becomes clear on speaking to the founder of the community group set up to oppose privatisation: the Dover People’s Port Trust. If only people knew how important our maritime industry was to the economic health of the whole country, says Neil Wiggins, they might view this classic ‘family silver sale’ with a little more anxiety.
Without healthy ports – whose owners recognise the importance of continual investment and strategies for adaptation – we can’t trade and we can’t grow.
But concern over the quality of management isn’t the sole concern for those who support the asset’s transfer to the community. They believe that the port – a rock-solid commercial investment that has been profitable for several hundred years – could provide a much-needed source of capital for regeneration of Dover and the surrounding area.
Like many English coastal towns, Dover used to play host to a number of different industries, from paper milling to brick making, with the port as the jewel in the crown of its economic success. Nowadays there are few job prospects for young people, many of whom leave the town to find work.
The sons and daughters of port workers have witnessed their parents being made redundant and rehired by private contractors on insecure ‘zero-hour’ contracts that erode employer-employee trust, reduce the quality of service for customers and the safety of working conditions, and contribute to the long-term deskilling of the area.
The Dover People’s Port Trust proposes a detailed and radical plan for using revenue from port operations to fund new transport links, conservation work and maritime vocational training: serious projects that look to the town’s extended future.
Our party likes to talk of people ‘deserving better’. Of course, the people of Dover deserve a better-run port, the dignity of a local future for the next generation, and a town whose status and heritage is acknowledged and celebrated by townsfolk and tourists alike.
But ‘better’ is not the pipe-dream which the word ‘deserve’ so often implies; it is reflected in the economic necessity of the port for UK trade. It is reflected in the town’s historic western docks, in Dover Castle, and in its Napoleonic fortifications, all of which could be a magnet for visitors – if only the freight lorries’ dual carriageway were diverted out of the town centre.
Above all, Dover is England’s doorway to the world: as the closest point to continental Europe, it always has been, and it always will be. On our behalf, it suffered some of the worst of the second world war’s aerial bombardment; now it suffers the non-stop to-and-fro of traffic so we can eat bananas, wear good value clothes, and nip over the Channel for some cheap booze.
That’s why the port is the last bit of our home that we can afford to sell overseas. That’s why Dover must stay forever England.
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Patrick Macfarlane writes the Blue Labour column on Progress and edits BlueLabour.org
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Hopefully the White Cliffs themselves are already safely in the hands of the National Trust or similar. Can you lock the town of Dover into its ownership of the port inalienably? Might not future town fathers grant a long lease to some shark in exchange for readies? But the principle of ensuring the town’s port future is safeguarded by civic ownership is surely sound.
What happens if the Trust goes bust?
What happens if the Trust wants major capital investment (e.g. to build a cross-Channel toll bridge) – where would control then lie?
The Trust doesn’t need to borrow, or to guarantee. Its property can be made to be inalienable. There is a well known procedure whereby operations are carried out through a company or companies, which have contracts of suitable lengths of time. Proper accountancy and legal advice will sort this out. Previous privatisations have “sold the family’s silver” in a horrific way so as to do down the British people.