MIKE HILL: Hartlepool needs a vision, a purpose and a true sense of direction

Proclaiming the town as being East Durham’s health and holiday resort, it really does capture a time when Hartlepool was considered an attractive tourist destination by the railway industry of the day.

Of course it still is, but long gone are the posters adorning stations up and down the East Coast mainline advertising the town as a place to visit and because of COVID there’s even uncertainty at the moment about the important link we have with the capital - the Grand Central.

As a weekly commuter to London I know just how popular the service from Sunderland to Kings Cross is and it is vital that it keeps going, not only because so many jobs depend upon it, like its Hartlepudlian crew members and town folk working in the city, but also for those wanting to get away to York or further afield.

Our own direct rail link to the capital is the only beacon of light we have right now, given the awful transport infrastructure we have here in the Tees Valley. Through Transport for the North, the Northern Powerhouse and the Tees Valley Combined Authority we are ambitious to see vital improvements to our road, rail and air connectivity but, unless you own a yacht, getting to Hartlepool ain’t plain sailing, as the saying goes.

Which takes me back to the old railway poster and a recent conversation I’ve had with leading local politicians. We’ve had a wide-ranging discussion about the local economy, the effect of Covid-19, the migration of young people and families to other places and the many issues which affect our town. We, very clearly, have some stark socio-economic problems which need to be tackled and over the years have topped too many tables for all the wrong reasons. Low life expectancy, the highest number of Universal Credit claimants in England and some of the most deprived wards in the country. We were even described by a Cambridge University report in 2017 as a “town full of neurotics”, with people exhibiting anxiety, depression and a lack of aspiration because we hadn’t moved on from the slaughter of our traditional industries in ship building, steel manufacturing and coal mining up the road in Easington, Blackhall and Horden.

While I very clearly took umbrage with what I called at the time ‘The ridiculous Dickensian like descriptions of Hartlepool and the North used in the report’, and that ‘attributing current psychological problems of the people of the town to a genetic link to 19th century workers migrating out of poverty to the nearest industrial place and settling there with only the ambition to survive, and not to aspire to anything beyond that, is just plain stupid’. I repeat it again in light of the pandemic and with the inspirational railway poster in mind.

We are truly ‘Healthful Hartlepool.’ We have worked our socks off to stand together, look after each other and stop this killer in its tracks. Over the months we have consistently been bottom of the league table in regard to the unfortunate number of deaths in the region and maintain that position because we have largely obeyed the rules. You deserve respect for that, the town deserves a better press profile for it and, to be honest, those in charge of the ‘Love Hartlepool’ campaign need to broaden their horizons and do what the old LNER Poster did; get our name out there, big us up beyond our boundaries and, for goodness sake, get visitors in when the opportunity arises. Our people deserve it and our future survival depends on it.

But equally, to be fair and having sadly heard the thumping boom of music into the small hours last Saturday from a garden party somewhere nearby, I have to say that the Government rush to relax the lock down rules threatens all that we have achieved so far. Don’t be fooled by a false sense of security; it’s simply not worth it. The killer is still out there and all that we have achieved so far could end up being futile and pointless. Frankly Hartlepool deserves better, but it’s down to every single one of us to deliver on that.

Our town needs a vision, a purpose and a true sense of direction. Let us get beyond COVID 19 and make it happen.