MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPEN

Published in the National League South game v Chelmsford City Saturday 2^nd November 2019. We won 2-1 in front of 731

Last week I was in Hastings talking about the Bevy Pub and how we achieved the impossible. Re-opening a dodgy estate boozer and turning it into a co-operatively owned community centre which runs everything from seniors lunch clubs, kids cooking, art clubs, dementia café, parkrun etc. You sing it, we will put it on. Joining me on stage were some very impressive people.

There was Sally from Watchet in Somerset, a town devastated by the closure of their 250 year old paper recycling mill. She is part of the Onion Collective a remarkable group of women bringing investment and jobs back into their small town. Two of their team had been raised in a zoo their parents had built from scratch and so have a we-can-do-anything attitude built into their DNA. Their latest venture is working with a bio-tech company to use mushroom mycelium (the thread like material of the mushroom that grows underground) to eat plastic waste and turn that into building materials which will create the hundreds of jobs that had been lost when the paper mill closed. The Library of Things is a simple idea where equipment is lent out so you don't have to buy stuff like a drill which you will only use once in a blue moon. Repowering London put solar panels on some of London’s poorest housing estates creating training, jobs and cutting electricity bills for people with few opportunities.

What we often ignore is that most of these people and their ideas come out of protest movements. The ones like Extinction Rebellion where people dress as broccoli and octopuses, block roads and have put climate chaos back on the agenda. Of course its easy to pick holes when people protest. 'How can we take you seriously, when you're not wearing potato sacks for clothes' they cry. 'You've got a phone! You don't live in a house carved out of a mushroom.' (that will come later from Watchet).

But let's be honest 'Please Sir can we have some more' just never really washes with the powers that be.

Take the Suffragettes, who everyone now idolises but did a lot more than stop a few cars to get the vote. We all know about Emily Davison who threw herself under the King's horse in June 1913. But less so about the letter boxes they set alight, the thousands of windows they smashed, the telephone wires cut, and graffiti scrawled. They burned down the empty houses of the rich and dug up golf courses. They attacked British Museum exhibits and paintings in the National Gallery. Imprisoned suffragettes went on hunger strike and were force-fed while others started planting small bombs until the outbreak of the First World War saw the abandonment of the campaign.

As Nicholas Klein quoted at a Trade Union convention in 1918. 'First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.'

The people who spoke in Hastings have a pig headed never say no attitude that started on the streets protesting but has metamorphosed into creating something that will make everyones lives better. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

This attitude is one Slough supporters had to adopt when everyone in authority turned their back on the club and even suggested we merged with Windsor. It was the supporters who formed a Trust and started campaigning outside the Town Hall; held a red card protest during our FA Cup game with Walsall, and stood candidates during local elections. I knew the leader of the council at the time who complained bitterly that people had been rude to him on the phone because his Liberal Party brushed aside the Rebels pleas. While we plummeted homeless down the leagues, others said that no one really cared about football in Slough. Yet here we are. A mix of stubbornness, business brains and volunteer hours, which means we are already part of the fabric of the town despite only being back home for three years.  

There's so much amazing stuff happening in this country but it is drowned out by politicians simple slogans or ridiculed by newspapers owned by billionaires written by columnists born with a silver spoon. We get more in-depth football analogy than we do political. So turn off the TV news, recycle those newspapers, ignore social media and sit down with a good history book.

The politics of pointing fingers and blaming everyone else can take you down a dark road. I'd prefer to try and work with people to make things better. Sometimes that will be on the streets, sometimes that will be hunched over a computer or chatting over a pint or on the terraces. It's a lot more fun as well than moaning and waiting for others to make things happen.