Good news for everyone except Mr Chu: the post-Prescott era dawns at last
ROBERT BEAUMONT IN HULL n Wednesday, when John Prescott finally steps down as Deputy Prime Minister, the city of Hull will breathe a collective sigh of relief. Just as Joseph Chamberlain defined Birmingham in the 1870s, so Prezza personified Hull for the past decade. Chamberlain built a great industrial city — but Prescott has reduced this proud, historic port, whose eastern parliamentary constituency he has held since 1970, to something approaching a national laughing stock. It seems unlikely, for example, that Hull would have been named the `crappesf of Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK, by Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran, had Prescott not lived there. And I fear that the jokes about the proximity of Hull and hell would not have gained such currency had Prescott led a blameless life of public service. So it's fitting that Prescott's legacy is a Liberal Democrat council in what had for so long been a socialist heartland.
prescott or no Prescott, Hull can be intimidating to outsiders. As a young and callow news reporter, I visited the city on two occasions. The first was to investigate the disappearance and probable murder of a glamorous housewife named Gloria Bielby. Although Gloria came from a middle-class background, she seemed to have mixed with some of the baser elements of Hull society and I found myself trawling desperate sink estates in search of clues. On one estate a policeman pointed to a boarded-up butcher's shop and told me he believed Gloria had been chopped up and put in some meat pies.
My second visit was less traumatic, but possibly more telling. A terrible row had broken out in my home city of York over the siting of a bail hostel, full of all sorts of undesirables, in a residential area. I was dispatched to a desolate area of north Hull, where a similar hostel had been open for a couple of years, to see what kind of campaign the local residents had waged to stop it opening. To my astonishment, they hadn't batted an eyelid. As one resident told me, without a trace of irony, the hostel `fits in perfectly round here'.
It would be wrong, however, to paint all of Hull with the same nightmarish, Prescottian brush. It's true that areas such as Brandesholme and Orchard Park are straight out of Shameless, but the city centre itself is embarking on a cultural and economic renaissance, driven by substantial flows of public and private cash. Whatever else Hull is, it's not poor. It even has its own sleek train service to London, Hull Trains, the only 'open access' passenger rail operator — which means it shares track with the East Coast mainline franchisee. And apart from generous handouts from Europe and the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, the new LibDem-controlled council has just sold its 30 per cent stake, worth £111 million, in the city's privatised telecoms company, Kingston Communications. A unique survivor from the early 20th-century era when municipalities were encouraged to create their own phone companies, Kingston has been Hull's very own version of North Sea oil.
Apart from its distinctive cream-coloured phone boxes — which always seem to be in use, unlike their sad, red counterparts — Kingston's lasting legacy to Hull is the £43 million KC Stadium, magnificent home to Hull City FC and the rugby league team, and a major concert venue. Leeds, with its football team in freefall, must look eastwards down the M62 and despair at the news that a further £10 million has just been invested in Hull City FC. Meanwhile the renowned Hull Truck Theatre Company, which premieres John Godber's thoughtful and humorous plays, is getting a brand-new home.
This massive investment in the city has been welcomed by private sector property developers such as Wykeland Properties, which has been based here for 35 years, since long before the money started cascading in. Director Dominic Gibbons says Hull has traditionally been regarded as 'a bit of a Cinderella . . . McDonalds, for example, came here 10 years after everywhere else. Now the city's waking up and there are a number of tremendously exciting developments underway.' It's significant that top professional firms — such as the solicitors Dickinson Dees — are turning their attention to Hull as well. They are not there, as once might have been the case, to pick up legal aid work for criminals.
While the city looks forward to a prosperous, post-Prescott future, it is also looking back. This year is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and — as any fule kno, Nigel Molesworth would have said — the driving force behind abolition was William Wilberforce, Hull's most famous son. The city is celebrating in style. Banners proclaiming the virtues of freedom and change flutter from many a street corner, while the council has launched a Fight for Freedom campaign petition, lobbying for the eradication of modern-day slavery. The Revd Jesse Jackson, guest speaker earlier this month at a KC Stadium business convention, has signed this, alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Amazing Grace film actor loan Gruffudd and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams An exhibition dedicated to the achievements of William Wilberforce is currently showing at the 14th-century Holy Trinity, one of the loveliest city-centre churches in the north of England. Half an hour of quiet contemplation inside Holy Trinity is more than enough to banish the Brandesholme blues.
The political passing of John Prescott may not be widely mourned, but it will certainly be regretted by Mr Chu, the proprietor of the eponymous Chinese eatery near Prescott's eight-bedroomed, mock-Gothiccastle constituency home, so often the scene of major 'food-ins' for spin doctors, reporters and other assorted lags. Like Prezza himself Mr Chu's won't be so busy now. Attention is already turning to the MP for the western side of Hull, Alan Johnson, named Minister to Watch in The Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year awards in 2005 and a strong candidate to succeed as deputy leader of the Labour party. Hull must be hoping, possibly even praying, that Johnson remains 'to watch' for all the right reasons, and not for the sort of reasons that the nation came to relish watching Prescott. It's time to draw a clearer distinction between Hull and hell.
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