MARKING A HUNDRED YEARS OF THE BENEFITS OF TWIN TOWNS
There seems to be a feeling in the council that if they make any effort with twinning, it could be mistaken for a ‘ jolly’... We want them to show support for twinning from the top. Alan Brentnall, Chair of the Barnsley- Schwäbisch Gmünd Twin Town Society
NESTLED IN the northern foothills of the Swabian Alps, Schwäbisch Gmünd is, for all intents and purposes, a typical southern German town.
Were you to stroll through it, you’d encounter all the usual hallmarks: gothic church spires; brightly- coloured “toytown” houses on wide, open streets; a pedestrianised Marktplatz ( marketplace) bordered by 400- year old buildings. Wander a little further, however, and you’d come across something rather less conventional: a British red telephone box.
No longer functional, today you’d find an international library inside, with books in English, Hungarian, Italian and German free to borrow, read and return. On sunnier days, locals and tourists sit reading in the adjacent “Barnsley Garden”, so named because Schwäbisch Gmünd and Barnsley, South Yorkshire, have been twin towns since 1971 – though unofficially linked since 1954.
The telephone box was a gift from Barnsley to Schwäbisch Gmünd, and, in the days before mobile phones, locals from the two towns would regularly orchestrate calls to and from the booth, chatting to old friends from hundreds of miles away. Alan Brentnall, Chair of the Barnsley- Schwäbisch Gmünd Twin Town Society, has it on good authority that of all Schwäbisch Gmünd’s twin town links – spanning Italy, France, Hungary and beyond – Barnsley remains “their favourite of all”. It’s a story of long- standing friendship that’s far from unusual among UK towns and their international “twins”, some of which have been linked for decades.
Though there is some dispute over the matter, Yorkshire is generally acknowledged as the home of the world’s first link which we’d recognise today as a town twinning pact. One hundred years ago, Keighley soldiers who’d been stationed in Poix- du- Nord, France, during the First World War, saw the devastation wrought on the battle- scarred town and implored Keighley council to draw up a town twinning agreement as an official gesture of solidarity.
The twinning was made official in 1920, with a fundraising drive by the people of Keighley leading to the erection of “Keighley Hall”, Poix- duNord, in 1922 - a venue still in use today. Keighley’s link turned 100 this year, but ask most Keighley locals – indeed any UK locals – what their “twin town” is, and you may be met with a blank stare.
Even Keighley Mayor, Coun Peter Corkindale, who was pouring his energy into centenary celebration plans before the pandemic hit, sheepishly admits he only knew of the link “because I previously worked on roadsides – I saw it on the [ Keighley] sign”. It’s a fitting example of how many in the UK experience their twin town links today, with many partnerships suffering decline in recent years at the hands of crunched council budgets, ageing volunteers and a shift in travel patterns – especially among the young.
Yet for town twinning advocates like Alan and Coun Corkindale, there’s never been a better time to renew and encourage links both old and new. With an increasingly divided political climate, Brexit looming and the pandemic demonstrating the need for international cooperation, they believe links could be more valuable than ever.
At a hundred years old, Keighley’s link with Poix- du- Nord is significantly older than Yorkshire’s other town twinnings, many of which were forged post- Second World War as a gesture of reconciliation between former enemy nations in Europe. Since the war, however, twinnings have stretched beyond Germany and France to all corners of the globe, from China to Australia. Dr Holly Ryan, who is currently researching these more modern links as part of a research project on “International Friendship”, says that a number of later twinnings allowed areas to express solidarity with other nations, and even “push against national government lines”.
In 1984, for instance, Sheffield twinned in solidarity with Estelí, Nicaragua, after the city suffered a huge amount of violence during the revolution of the late 1970s and contra war of the 1980s. A decade later, antiapartheid activism in Leeds led to a solidarity twinning with Durban, South Africa. Those involved with twinning activities recall a period, in the late 90s and early noughties, when the national government’s focus on community cohesion and international partnerships led to ample funding for exchanges, knowledge- sharing workshops and other twinning ventures. When austerity hit, however, council budgets dried up - and twin town activities were first to go.
Negative press – accusing councillors of exploiting twinning for “jollies” and “junkets” – also served a blow to twin links. The result, explains Alan, was that councils have become reluctant to even vocally support twin links, let alone fund them. “There seems to be a feeling in the council that if they make any kind of effort with regards to twinning, it could be mistaken for a ‘ jolly’. We’ve had several meetings with [ Barnsley] Council where they kept telling us, ‘ we haven’t got any money’. We keep telling them we’re not looking for money, what we want is for them to show support for town twinning from the top. That happens in Germany... the twin town society in Schwäbisch Gmünd is strongly supported by the council – a public, community thing.”
Without such support, says Alan, the public remain ignorant to “all the good” that’s come out of twin links through the years.
And while economic, investment and knowledge- sharing opportunities are often focused on in modern discussions around twinning, Alan believes that genuine friendship still beats at the heart. In Barnsley, he gives the example of the miners’ strike, when the people of Schwäbisch Gmünd “raised the equivalent of £ 15,000 which was distributed to mining families in need”. More recently, the people of Schwäbisch Gmünd sent over a van load of PPE to Barnsley earlier this year after hearing they were struggling for supplies. The masks were handed out in the street, but, to Alan’s frustration, it “wasn’t made clear enough who it came from”. It’s an issue Dr Ryan has seen come up repeatedly in her research, driven by the “lack of national body... to collect these local stories”.
Though some might assume that Britain’s official exit from the EU at the end of 2020 could further damage European twinning links, many societies in Yorkshire have in fact used Brexit as an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to friendship with their European counterparts. “We simply won’t allow [ Brexit] to affect our relationship with Poix- du- Nord”, says Coun Corkindale, who hopes that postponed centenary celebrations will be able to take place in 2021.
Though acknowledging the issues that could lie ahead for Barnsley’s near- 30 year old German partnership, Alan has similar confidence that the strength of their friendship will weather any future storms. “They can take us out of the EU”, he says, “but they’ll never take us out of Schwäbisch Gmünd.”
A hundred years after Keighley made historyas thefirst UK town to ‘ twin’ with another, Sarah Wilson looks at the factors threatening town twinning with extinction.