Notes from Brexitannia
The iconic image of Hastings is not, thankfully, the charred ruin of the Victorian pier that burned down in 2010; nor the minimalist replacement funded partly by public money, which many of the more diehard natives hate; nor the remains of the Norman castle on the West Hill above the town (there’s very little of that left); nor even the Norman abbey on the hill that is the disputed site of the eponymous battle of 1066 (that’s about three miles inland, next to the village now called Battle).
No, the image Hastings Borough Council has adopted in its logo is that of the so-called “net shops” of the Stade (the name by which the fishermen’s beach at the foot of the Old Town is known): black, tarry (towery) structures wherein the nets of Europe’s largest surviving beach-launched fishing fleet used to be hung vertically to dry.
When Elaine and I came down from London (“DFL” is a disparaging acronym employed by entrenched natives to designate all middle-class incomers) to start our new life in Hastings Old Town in 2004, we found a strangely mixed community. Or set of communities, actually — there was not that much mixing. There were incomers like us, many being musicians, artists, and writers, attracted by the low property values and the seaside air. There were pockets of bourgeois and second-home affluence in the Old Town itself, in the lee of the East Hill and parts of the West Hill. There were holidaymakers using the increasing number of short-let and Airbnb properties. There were people who had lived most of their lives in Hastings, including some who had migrated as youngsters to go to college or experience life in the big cities, but had returned to where they felt at home, despite the poor job opportunities — though they mainly lived in the less expensive new town.
And then there was the fishing community. Local historian Steve Peak (Fishermen of Hastings, 1985) has traced its origin to at least 400 or even 600 years ago. The Stade is a name of Anglo-Saxon origin designating a shore. The present fleet is a shadow of what it once was, but the boats, these days mostly fibre-glass and motor-powered rather than clinker-built and rigged with sails, are still launched from the beach. There have been several abortive attempts over the centuries to construct a proper harbour, the ruin of the 1896 Harbour Arm being the only remaining evidence.
It’s a hard life. The fishing community is dominated by a few families, and they tend to keep to themselves. They have felt discriminated against over the centuries, and bitterly dispute any perceived encroachment on their territory, whether by the local authority or commercial interests. Shortly after moving to the Old Town, we innocently supported a proposal by the Jerwood Foundation to build an art gallery on land next to the Stade to house its collection of 20th century British Art, second only in scope and quality to that of the Tate. It would boost the cultural profile of Hastings and bring visitors and employment to the town. But the fishing community hated it. We had put up a poster in our window supporting the project. Late one night there was a fierce pounding on our front door, and there was a very drunk man who identified himself only as “a fisherman.” He railed against “people like you” who were to blame for destroying his town and pricing him and his kind out of it. It was impossible to reason with him. Eventually, the art gallery was built: it’s now called the Hastings Contemporary. It has been closed throughout the pandemic, but will re-open soon.
It’s not surprising that the Hastings fishing community were enthusiastic supporters of Brexit. They blamed the European Union Common Fisheries Policy for keeping them out of their own waters and depriving them of their catch. Like other fishing communities around Britain, they campaigned and voted heavily to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum (Hastings as a whole voted Leave by 55-45 per cent, compared with the national figures of 52-48). They relied on the Conservative Government’s assurances that after Brexit it would extend the fishing exclusion zone round Britain’s coast to 12 miles. But Boris Johnson failed to achieve this (following strong bargaining by the French in particular) and it remains at six miles. Not only this, but the expansion of red tape following the UK’s departure from the single market has hugely damaged the fishing industry’s ability to sell its catch in Europe. “The government has sold us down the river,” Paul Joy, Hastings fishermen’s representative, has been quoted as saying.
The pandemic has been a further blow. With most restaurants in the UK and Europe closed during the lockdowns, the market for fish has collapsed. So the Hastings fishing community is on its knees once again.
The town of Hastings has not fared much better. The depredations of Brexit have still to make themselves fully felt, but those of the pandemic have. The vibrant live music scene in the pubs of the Old Town, where you could hear rock, blues, jazz, and folk most days of the week, has fallen silent. A town that relies so heavily on the holiday trade for its economy is seriously struggling. Hotels, pubs, and restaurants are closed, the thriving business created by English-language colleges hosting school parties from the Continent has disappeared for now, and who knows whether it will regain its prosperity even after things open up again post-pandemic. The town, deserted by visitors, experienced one of the lowest Covid-19 rates in England during most of 2020, but this was not to last, and in December, with the influx of the “Kent variant,” infection figures started to skyrocket and suddenly hit the top ten in the country, putting local healthcare services, which had suffered particularly badly from years of public service austerity, under immense strain.
We moved in 2018 from the Old Town to the adjoining municipality of St Leonards on Sea, which has a more multi-ethnic mix in its population, feeding our nostalgia for London — though unemployment and homelessness are also more visible. We overlook empty beaches and the starkly pointing finger of Hastings’ new pier to the east. The coast of France, across the English Channel, is just too far away to be seen on the horizon. It isn’t a bad place to live if you can survive. We are lucky.
Ken Edwards’ books include the novels Futures (Reality Street, 1998), Country Life (Unthank Books, 2015) and The Grey Area (Grand Iota, 2020), as well as the prose works Bardo (Knives Forks & Spoons Press, 2011), Down With Beauty (Reality Street, 2013, a book with no name (Shearsman Books, 2016) and Wild Metrics (Grand Iota, 2019). Before that, he had many books of poetry published by small presses, and his Collected Poems is expected in 2021 from Shearsman. He was editor/publisher of Reality Street between 1993-2016 and now shares the new publishing venture Grand Iota with Brian Marley. He lives in St Leonards on Sea, England, where he plays bass guitar and sings with Afrit Nebula, a band he co-founded with Elaine Edwards and Jamie Harris.