Corby Video

I've posted before about Corby, where I was mostly raised. It was a centre of the steel industry with very many Scottish, Irish, Serbian and other groups within it. The heart was torn out of it when the steelworks were massively scaled down. They weren't completely closed, since I managed to work in them one summer long ago. My brother and sister still live there, my mum still works there, and some of my fondest memories are of wandering around it between the houses of my extended family. Many of the people I have loved, including my father, are buried there.

Corby developed a reputation as not just nasty but 'escape from New York' bad. Though I recall that there were some estates decades ago that strong men got worried in, that is true of any city or town. The spirit of the place was and is democratic and open, and communities still exist.

When I left for Balliol, I left on a national express from the town bus station. My mum and brother and sister walked me to it one cold morning. I was stunned and scared, and the only student from Pope John school ever to go, I think, though four eventually went either to Oxford or Cambridge. One of them, Philomena Cullen, now works for the Irish Chaplaincy in London as I understand it and does genuine good in the world.

When I went back to my lovely granddad's in the vacations, it was to a plate of sandwiches and a jobsearch with the agencies that I returned. My first real kisses were on Rockingham Road, with a girl who was a singer; when my dad died I cried alone at the side of the stream that is now built over by houses in Stephenson Way. I skipped pointless physical education lessons at school to sit with my dad in the football supporter's club on occupation road, and I am glad I did. Mum and Dad ran the Royal British Legion for a time, because we ran pubs after Dad left the steelworks. It took us from Corby through very tough pubs in the Midlands before it brought us back.

My school, Our Lady and Pope John, was closed because it was catholic recently more than it was failing. My first proper job on the tills and then in sales at Texas Homecare now can't be associated with a place because the company went out of business a long time ago.

That the Conservative Party should be attempting to force a soft-core porn author, Louise Bagshawe, who thinks that offering people a place in one of her books is a substitute for helping people get jobs, homes, and the chance of a good life disgusts me. As I remember, she is a middle class Oxford Union hack who will be straight up the road here when she isn't patronising people down there if elected. It was the Conservative Party, after all, who tried to kill the town. She may be elected if people feel that Labour (the MP is a co-operative party man) doesn't speak to them anymore.

Now, some Corby citizens have given up on the official media, and have decided to respond to videos that 'badmouth' Corby. The internet is offering them the chance for genuine, agitational community defence and they have taken it. This is their film. Have a look. I have very fond memories of Corby, and part of who I am was made in the public library there.

Well done to the video-maker, Lawrence Ferguson. If you're ever in Corby, go to the fish and chip shop on Occupation Road. They are, or were, one of the best in the country, and I remember them as being between the church where my parents were married and where I had my first communion, among other things, and what used to be a sporting-gun store, a Scottish bakers and an Army recruiter, but that was very very long ago.

Corby's motto, as you'll see from the crest I placed at the top of this post, was 'Deeds Not Words', just as my school's motto was 'Integrity'. It's ironic that I end up recalling that on a blog whilst earning my living by gabbing when I'm not hanging around lawyers....