It’s worth making textile museum re-opening an issue at elections
IT’S now two years since local councillors and other politicians vowed to stop the closure of Helmshore Textile Museum, a historic gem of an attraction which tells the story of the Industrial Revolution.
Those politicians were, in the main, Conservative politicians. They were quick to point the finger at the then Labour-run Lancashire county council, accusing their rivals of badly managing budgets while deftly side-stepping any mention of the tens of millions of pounds the authority had lost in funding from the Tory-led government in London.
Local MP Jake Berry gathered up 9,000 signatures in opposition to the closure.
One local councillor, Brian Essex, claimed the decision could be open to legal challenge. But despite a reprieve, the museum did shut to the public in September 2016. You can still visit, if you book in advance and round up a group of friends to go with you.
It’s a disgraceful way to treat a piece of our history. Indeed, Mr Berry used the word ‘disgraceful’ to describe the county council’s decision to ‘ignore 9,000 people’ and push ahead with the closure of the museum.
Equally disgraceful, in my view, is the fact that the Tories who lined up to condemn their Labour rivals when there were political points to be scored have done so little since to get the museum re-opened.
The decision to close the museum was taken as part of £130m of cuts which also included shutting some libraries and axing some bus routes.
The latter two decisions were reversed when the Tories took control of Lancashire county council last summer – they were issues the Tories had, apparently, campaigned on (although having never received a leaflet from a Tory candidate in the run-up to those elections, I have to take their word for that.)
They didn’t, it seems, campaign to reverse the closure of the Textile Museum, which given their outrage when it closed, seems odd. Or opportunistic.
And here we are, two years on from the original decision, with fencing pinned with ‘danger’ signs surrounding one of the sculptures outside the museum.
Scaffolding has gone up against one wall – a clear sign that while the public might not be allowed in, the county council is still having to maintain the building.
For a while, it seemed as though Historic England might take on the building, as well as the Queen Street Museum in Burnley – but declined in the end.
I’m not the only person convinced had the county council had the real will under Labour to keep the museum open, a solution could have been found.
Quite why the Tories haven’t set out to re-open the museum is beyond me.
I’m sure I’m also not the only person who suspects that had the museum been a little closer to Preston – say in Grimsargh, Goosnargh, Fulwood or Bamber Bridge – it would probably have got far more attention from the Tories as they arrived to take over at County Hall.
Next month’s local elections are borough elections, not county council ones, so not strictly about voting for the people who can (or won’t) re-open the museum.
But it is worth making this an election issue all the same.
Where there is a will, there is normally a way. Local Conservative councillors were quick to condemn the closure of the museum – and rightly so.
They now need to put pressure on their colleagues at County Hall – and remember, Rossendale is represented by five Tories in County Hall these days – to get the Museum re-opened.
Historic England may have passed up the chance to help save something as priceless and a historical and working re-enactment of the Industrial Revolution, but there are other organisations.
Take the National Trust. Yes, they have other mills already, but they also have plenty of big houses too, and lots of parks. They operate locally too – they own woods not three miles down the road from Helmshore, and crucially, operate Gawthorpe Hall in nearby Padiham in conjunction with the county council.
But you can’t expect the National Trust to just turn up and take something like this on – LCC need to come up with an attractive reason for them to do so.
It’s time for local Tories to show there is some fire behind the smoke of their closure campaign. They hold the keys to Helmshore Textile Museum now … and they’re the ones choosing to keep the doors locked.