WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
Letter
Community Resilience in Practice
Dear HIP
What a pleasure to read about the formation of HASTE – Hydraulic Activity Stabilisation Training Enterprise CIC – and the co-operation between experts, Bexhill College, the local community and the Council. (Landslides Action Plan 19 December 2015).
It marks a significant advance by the Council. It follows the community led approach of the present administration and hopefully its lessons can be learned by all the political parties.
In particular it shows the need to work across the divides of political parties: it is noteworthy that if the Labour and Green Parties had joined forces in the Ashdown and Conquest Council by-election they would have won.
Yours sincerely
William Ackroyd
Letter
The Science of Muddling Through
Anyone involved with management and/or town planning will surely be aware of the article ‘The Science of Muddling Through’ which broadly makes the point that bureaucracies only ever make change incrementally and that, of course, means slowly and in small step adjustments to the status quo. And, of course, that position has been qualified in some later articles by stating that publicly funded bodies have a duty to protect public funds and that large or rapid changes are unlikely to be well received by the general public.
So, it is understandable why the housing strategy is so lacking in innovation and creativity. But in an age when global warming threatens in all manner of ways and in a town with such poor housing and yet full of creative people, is such a protectionist status quo position still viable? Should not our political representatives be more radical?
Of course, this is only a strategy and not an action plan, but for me at least, it misses the opportunity to be bold, to be ambitious, and mostly to show how it will be possible to work across the usual local authority management silos. There is mention of working with housing associations (HAs) who have considerable land assets for additional housing provision, there is mention of working with the planners to identify more housing opportunities, but the consultative group being referenced by the Council was never able to develop the sort of collaborative working with those other bodies that will be so vital in providing more sustainable communities. The strategy process could have been used to build bridges across some of the people that are vital to creating more high quality housing in the town.
Much of the housing association estate in Hastings was built when land was cheap and that also applies to employment areas which are also built as quite low density and, indeed, are now quite often shops rather than factories, offices, or workshops. Some increase in density designed well and sustainably could provide more housing and more communal facilities without taking up more countryside and, at the same time moving out of areas subject to long term flooding or land slippage.
We need Housing Association management that looks beyond such immediate solutions as large scale demolition and that could be achieved by very specific planning policy and guidance. We need clear and locally distinctive planning policies/guidance such as for small infill sites (including in conservation areas), tall buildings, mixed use and housing co-ops.
Above all else, we need locally to learn from each other and from across the world if needed. We need to be visionary, we need to be confident, and we need to embrace the creativity that already drives much of Hastings.
Ken Davis
Letter
There is no bread. We are dying.
Dear HIP
I read with interest your article “An Evening of Sadness and Hope” (05/12/25) commemorating the 1932/33 famine in Ukraine that has in recent years become known as the Holodomor. Whilst it is right and proper that all those who died in the famine should be honoured and remembered it should also be remembered that, though the Ukrainian experience was particularly horrific, not all the victims were Ukrainians. Millions of Russians, Kazakhs and other Soviet peasants also perished in what was a catastrophe afflicting the peasantry all across the USSR. As part of Ukraine’s nation-building project there has been a growing temptation to blame Russia for the famine and indeed to portray it as an act of genocide against Ukrainians, a narrative that has also recently taken hold in the West as a result of Russia’s invasion. Accepting such a picture without question is no doubt tempting at a time of war but doing so should be resisted by those who put the importance of history above that of politics. Despite it being a main plank of Ukraine’s ‘memory policy’ in recent years most objective historians reject the genocide thesis and recoil at the idea that it was an ethnically-targeted attack by Russia. It wasn’t. The perpetrators were the multi-national Bolshevik party, led by the Georgian, Joseph Stalin, and the famine killed on the basis of class, not ethnicity. The causes were many and complex but chief among them was the ruthless, ham-fisted way in which collectivisation was implemented and the fanatical way grain was requisitioned to fund industrialization. For that it “was not so much the Soviet Government as the world crisis which is to blame”. So wrote my great uncle Gareth Jones, someone who, credited as the first journalist to expose the famine, did so with the words, “Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, Central Asia.” The famine was an historical tragedy for all its undivided victims. The Holodomor is a way of looking at that tragedy that, by claiming exclusivity in victimhood, itself has problematic aspects.
Yours faithfully,
Philip Colley,
the Gareth Jones Society
Letter
Violence and Administrative Coercion.
The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain responded to Mr Colley’s letter:
The Hastings & Rother Branch is grateful for the opportunity to respond to the letter submitted in response to the article “An Evening of Sorrow and Hope.” We fully agree that the famine of 1932–1933 was a profound human tragedy that affected people of different nationalities throughout the Soviet Union, and that all victims deserve to be remembered and respected.
At the same time, it is important to recognise that Ukraine suffered the most devastating and disproportionate losses. In the case of Ukraine, the famine unfolded alongside an active process of state-building and widespread resistance to Soviet policies. A significant body of historical research demonstrates that food requisitioning, punitive measures, and repression were deliberately used as tools to suppress resistance and to dismantle Ukrainian rural society.
Modern recognition of the Holodomor does not view it as an act of “Russia,” which in its current form did not exist at the time, but rather as a crime of the totalitarian Soviet regime. This distinction is crucial. The famine was not caused by a lack of food; it was the result of the systematic confiscation of grain, foodstuffs, livestock, and other property from those deemed disloyal, carried out through violence and administrative coercion.
Policies were applied in Ukraine that were not implemented elsewhere, including internal blockades of villages, strict bans on travel from famine-stricken areas, and the deliberate obstruction of international aid. By contrast, such measures were not applied in the same way in other regions, where mortality rates were significantly lower.
According to widely cited historical studies, millions of people died during the Holodomor, with estimates commonly ranging from 3.5 to 6 million victims in Ukraine alone. These findings are documented by authoritative institutions, including the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv, as well as in academic research and archival sources.
In recent years, these findings have been reflected not only in public discourse but also in formal, documented recognition. The United Kingdom officially recognised the Holodomor as a genocide in 2023, following similar resolutions adopted by other national parliaments. These decisions were based on historical evidence and scholarly analysis, not political speculation.
The event, organised by the Ukrainian community, was an act of remembrance. Its focus on Ukrainian history reflects both the purpose of the event and the community’s responsibility to speak about its own past, drawing on documented facts, survivor testimonies, and internationally recognised historical research. This does not prevent others from sharing their histories; rather, it affirms the right of each community to do so honestly and with evidence.
Commemorating the Holodomor is not about exclusivity in suffering, but about recognising the specific historical mechanisms through which it occurred. Honest remembrance, grounded in facts, strengthens rather than weakens our shared understanding of history.
The Committee of AUGB – Hastings & Rother Branch
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply