Most residents of the city will recognise that culturally Newport is a shadow of its former self. You only need to look back to the 1980s and 1990s to find a city that was culturally vibrant with a hugely successful and throbbing nightlife, a global reputation for music, and when the likes of Sir Elton John and David Bowie were performing at the Newport Centre.
David Mclean, Green parliamentary candidate for Newport East said, “The museum used to attract major touring exhibitions. There was a time when queues formed across John Frost Square for entry to an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Gerald. As you walked around the town you got the feeling of a town built on a rich heritage played out on grand murals that most of Newport’s residents took for granted. That was just the way it was. It’s hard to think of Newport then and Newport now without being struck by the scale of the contrast.”
“History, heritage and culture doesn’t really fit with multinational retail. The two tend to live in entirely different unconnected worlds. But if and when history, heritage and culture become an obstacle or an inconvenience, Newport City Council has no qualms in brushing it aside. Chartism is not as important as Next and Nandos to this Council.”
We can’t blame it all on Westminster austerity, or the Cardiff Bay lapdogs who meekly do as they are told. We know austerity hasn’t worked for the majority no matter which way you look at it. The poor have got poorer, the rich richer. Shutting down our culture, our history and our access to works of learning is tantamount to shutting out our quite remarkable past.
Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party leader and Parliamentary Candidate for Newport West said, “Greens are horrified that Newport Council are not only propping up austerity, but propping up the demolition of our culture, be it the Chartist Mural, or our museum and library. I remember when Newport was a thriving town throbbing with life and energy.”
Pippa Bartolotti added: “It seems to me that history, heritage and culture have become an obstacle to the erection of shiny new shopping sheds. It was no problem to vote through £90 million of taxpayers money for new temples to consumerism, yet it is now horribly apparent that there is no appetite to find the much smaller amounts of money to retain our temples of learning.
“We now have a battle on our hands: learning versus consumerism. How pitiable it is that the cultural desert of consumerism is the top thing on the minds of Newport Council.”