I was born in Cheadle, Cheshire, moved age one to Farnworth in Bolton, and then when my parents separated at the age of four, I came to Hyde.

It’s sad really that Hyde is famous for the sadness and pain of the moors murders and Dr Shipman in the rest of this country, because actually Hyde was once such a beautiful place. I say was, because today I think it has been allowed to die, and as this is the place I consider to be my home town after 45 years of living here, I have seen so many changes that it feels heart breaking to walk around, and see the destruction and neglect brought upon us by a Metropolitan Council.

You see, back when I was a lad, Hyde was run by its own local council, my grandfather ran as a liberal candidate for it at one time, like many of the other locals, because it was run and maintained by local people who saw it as an act of local duty and pride, sadly that too is a thing of the past.

Hyde was a country dwellers place in the early days, it was run by the gentry, and it was a thriving market town, which actually boasted the biggest market in the area. I remember well the busy Saturdays, I think in many ways it was the hustle and bustle of those wonderful Saturdays that at the middle of my life in Horticulture brought me onto the markets myself as a trader. My mum in my youth worked right at the top of the long market street, in a store called the Economy Store, I loved the place, it was the second shop down at the top of the hill, and it sold everything under the sun to help clean the house or fix it up, and all at reasonable prices. I remember standing out on the wide pavement as a boy and looking down the hill that was crawling with thousands of people, as they hurriedly did their weeks shopping before heading home for their Saturday meal. Hyde was so beautiful, Market Street was lined with trees that ran all the way down to the town hall and the market, where the trees were bigger and lush and filled your eyes with clouds of deep green foliage. I look at it now and despair.

The beauty of this town was inspiring, never in my life had I seen such beautiful buildings. We paid the rates on Greenfeild Street where there was the most magnificent building with tall Roman pillars. It felt like walking into an old Roman forum, and my brothers and myself would fantasise about gladiators and the Roman Legion. The post office, and the theatre, were massive and architecturally stunning, the fire station was opposite and we would run up and look through the large glass windows and wave at the firemen. The town hall contained the police station, and we shuddered with nerves as we passed, even though we had done nothing at all wrong, but the site of the old architecture was enough to bother us. The Town Hall was a beautiful and impressive building, today it still stands but looks a little Jaded due to lack of care. The Library was my Mecca, I visited it every week and devoured as many books as I could, it is still the one place in Hyde I love the most for all the happy memories I have of it, but that is soon to end.  

Then came the merger into Tameside, a metropolitan borough, and out went the old local council and the people who cared, to be replaced with what I can only describe as career politicians. Since that time I have watched it fall brick by brick as it was uncared for and unloved by those who enjoyed the power and status as they moved everything slowly to the centre of Tameside, and their jewel in their crown Ashton.

There is no more Roman Forum, the fire station is a mile away up a side street, the beautiful Old Post Office was closed and moved to a new modern building with no charm. The theatre is empty and dilapidated, and the market has gone and been replaced with a glass roofed enclosure filled with expensive shops and cubicles no one can afford, governed by a company in Liverpool. Half the shops inside are empty, and the cubicles are being removed because no one can realistically afford to pay the high business rates and rents. The same can be said for Market St, you no longer see the sea of people walking up and down, and all the shops are take a ways and shabby. There are very few trees on the market, and even less market stalls, we did have free parking until Tameside wanted to sell the land, so they started to charge a stupid fee and that left it empty, so they told us no one uses it and demolished it to build a KFC, yet another part of American heritage added to our country, as we wipe away ours.

We do have large superstores, but that is why we have no local shops, Hyde had so much diversity to offer, and the narrow minded profit thinking of the Metropolitan Council wiped it away, we do have young women’s fashion, Agos and take a ways, stood next to nail salons and estate agents, the bedding shop has gone, so has the kitchen supplies, Old Mr Brooke the tool shop has gone along with the gardening shop and the many other small unique traders, and we have endless charity shops on discounted rates, and we have also lost the lights at Christmas.

We moan the destruction of youths, and yet like us older ones they have been robbed, gone are the disco’s and boys clubs, where are the meeting places we all attended? They have been wiped away in the so called needed cuts, yet there is always money for demolition and new buildings, they can find the cash to improve their offices. They call it progress; I call it heartbreak, narrow vision and greed.

The council at Ashton do not care about us, they sleep at night in their posh homes safe in their fat cat lives, they will not lose a nights sleep knowing that our Library will be moved so the building can be sold, one of the last beautiful buildings of Hyde and a shining remainder of what our town was once like under the caring hands of those who lived here. They deny it will be sold, but we have been here before, and everyone knows what their agenda is. The grammar school is going, the college moved to Ashton, and Hyde is a sad reflection of what it once was, and there will be no lights this Christmas. I remember the lights as a lad, they were magical as they lined the whole of the long Market Street and all of the market, strung across the road in many colours, they were so bright in the dark evening as we gazed down the street in wonder. The shop owners would decorate trees and put them in brackets above their shops to add to the beauty, it made Christmas feel so special, it just feels like another dark winters eve now, its hard to believe it is a week before Christmas, there is so little to show it.

I hear all the time that Britain is losing its identity, well I am not surprised. How can we maintain any sense of who we are, when the places we live have been asset stripped and sold off by the pound? The very thing we held pride in has been ripped away from us by local councillors who care for nothing but their own vanity, they tell us they care when they need our votes, but if they get in, the last thing they do is what we want, they are cold and self serving with no idea of value, they are wrapped up in their arrogance and see us as nothing but underlings to rule over. They are the reason Britain has fallen, and they are the ones who have destroyed our identity, and then they sit around griping how people are disenchanted by politics, hell can you blame us? We have been lied to far too many times and listened to your spin as you side step our questions and divert our answers, your lack of openness and honesty has appalled us to the point where we are weary and worn out trying to understand why it is you do not fight with us to improve the places we call home.

Hyde has died, the green has gone and been built on, the beauty was sold or torn down and replaced with ugly, what little that is left we fear will be taken; even the park has less for our children to admire. It’s so sad, because the people who live here really care about the place, and they like me are as heartbroken.

Where did the hope go, we had such high ones? Progress for the sake of progress does not bring attraction, it brings destruction, and replaces heritage with limited life. My Grandfather ran for the local council not for power or prestige, he felt it was his duty as a proud member of the town, I shudder to think what he would say if he was still here. It is called a modern metropolis, and it’s brash and dirty, and for too long now it has swept the land changing the face of the places we live, to the point where we recognise nothing. It is yet another sad reflection on the world today, where progress is built on greed, with no regard for need.