Medway Messenger column, 1st August 2003: Disunity In Medway

So Medway doesn’t exist. All those logos with the blue wavy line representing the river are an illusion. We must be in The Matrix. 

Actually, it just means that the Department of Transport won’t put us on road signs, despite a campaign by the Council. They want to put Medway on the map for regeneration and tourism reasons. The mayor and his friends wanted signs such as ‘Medway (Rochester) 2 miles’ to appear on motorways. 

Am I alone in thinking the Council was misguided? 

Effectively, we are a Borough. Marriage certificates in Medway say that a wedding took place in ‘the Borough of Medway’.  At a quarter of a million population we are about the size of a London Borough. You don’t drive into south London and suddenly see signs for ‘Lambeth (Brixton)’, do you? 

So I think the Council campaign was half-baked in its execution. Motorway signs at the boundary, welcoming you to Medway would make sense. ‘Medway (Chatham) 5 miles’ is plain daft. 

But the sentiment was right. A common identity as Medway would be a good thing. I am one of those who were disappointed when we didn’t win city status at the Millennium or the Golden Jubilee. 

I know many people disagree with me. When it became known that Rochester had lost its city status due to an administrative error, I saw a woman in Rochester High Street interviewed on the regional TV news saying, “I want Rochester to be known as a city, because we don’t want anything to do with Medway.” 

As a resident of inner Gillingham I laughed out loud at such snobbery. Especially when not all of Rochester is special. Had the lady ever made the short trek to the Delce? 

At the other end I have friends in Rainham who wish they were still part of Swale. They were insulted enough when they were brought into the old Gillingham Borough Council and told they would be renamed ‘East Gillingham’. They also tend to think they still live in a village. They haven’t noticed the creeping concrete. 

Somewhere in the middle you get my local councillors objecting to the Council developing the middle of Chatham as a city centre for Medway, because they fear that Gillingham High Street will be neglected. (That’s to imply it gets a lot of attention now. Oh really?) But there is no reason why it should be neglected in a ‘Medway vision’. 

To me, the objections to a focus on Medway boil down to petty jealousies and rivalries. We still have the mentality of five Medway towns that happen to lie next to one another. We want to score points off one another. We want to raise ourselves up by putting our neighbours down. 

And we wonder why the facilities of the largest urban conurbation in the South East outside London are so poor. Our largest regular entertainment venue, the Central Theatre, holds less than a thousand seats. 

Other population centres of a similar size in the country do far better for concert venues, conference centres, and hôtels than we do. I wonder why. Could it be they’re not afraid to think of themselves as cities? Plymouth, Stoke, Swansea, and Wolverhampton all have a similar population to us. They also have a higher national profile than we do. 

So this is just a simple plea from a Christian who believes that the Jesus can reconcile rivals and warring factions. Let’s quit the silly infighting between residents of Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and Strood. Let’s pull together instead. Right now, all of us are the losers. 

And anyway – what if God thinks of us as a city?

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.