PASSIONS were as high as the bulging spring tide on Thursday evening, when scores of people walked in darkness over the wooden-decked pier connecting Jersey with Havre des Pas swimming pool to attend a public meeting about the site’s future.
With the black sea just a few inches below the walkway, and the near-full moon shining, it was an inspiring yet brooding reminder of just how unusual this 130-year-old publicly owned facility is.
Like St Catherine’s breakwater or St Aubin, this is Jersey’s front-line: where the rolling force of nature meets human endeavour face to face.
The elemental forces at play might be a reason why people care so passionately about the place, together with its long history, with associated memories, and the fact that lots of people like to swim and sunbathe there.
It is also a striking venue for parties, weddings and Bergerac-filming.
More recently, in the same way that swell is pitted against concrete, the pool has also been a scene of a government versus venue operator battle, in a long tussle to establish who pays for what to maintain the site.
Part-reclaimed by the tide twice a day, the pool and its surrounds face quite a battering each year.
And so too did the government last night, represented by a brave but seasoned St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft, who is also Assistant Infrastructure Minister.
Thursday night’s meeting was called and chaired by Deputy David Warr, who is part of a ‘Lido Steering Group’ which supports a community group called ‘Love Our Lido’, which wants to run the site as a charity and was a preferred bidder until that was withdrawn in September (or they withdrew, if you’re the Government).
Since then, the ‘second-preferred bidder’ has become ‘first-preferred bidder’, which happens to be co-owned by a sitting States Member. As one can imagine, those behind Love Our Lido – who were out in force on Thursday – were not happy at that news.
The said politician, Constable Marcus Troy, probably didn’t help his cause when asked by the BBC to describe his vision for the venue – and able to choose any global comparator from Bondi to the Cote d’Azur – he opted for Benidorm.
Neither he nor any representative of the ‘second-then-first-preferred bidder’ were present at the meeting, with Mr Troy reportedly saying that he feared it would have turned into a ‘mudslinging exercise’.
We’ll never know but he would have certainly been outnumbered.
Deputy Warr was joined on stage by Love Our Lido governors Sally Minty-Gravett, who knows a thing or two about swimming, and musician Giles Robson.
Mr Robson definitely knows how to play the harmonica but he evidently also knows how to present a cogent argument, based on last night’s explanation of purported events up to now – which prompted Mr Crowcroft to ask for a subsequent meeting to clarify exactly what had happened in the tender process.
Also on stage were Deputy Warr’s fellow St Helier South representatives Deputies Coles, Mezec and Porée, together with Mr Crowcroft.
The father of the parish certainly faced a sceptical crowd but he is not only a long-established pro but wears quite a few Havre des Pas campaign medals himself, so was the right person to front the government.
He also knows when to listen – and the promise of a meeting with Mr Robson to establish exactly how and why Love Our Lido lost their frontrunner status was a sensible way forward. It is understood that that will be held on Monday.
When the meeting was opened up to the floor for questions, the passion for the community-led proposal and existing leaseholder surged forward like one of the dark waves outside.
There was anger, exasperation, humour, emotion, incredulity, even cries of ‘corruption’ from an audience whom for some – consciously or unconsciously – may see Havre des Pas as a metaphor for wider malaise and distrust.
Of course, it all remained verbal, and the good-natured audience, having vented its collective spleen, dispersed into the night, good natured and no doubt ready to prepare their placards for a planned Royal Square demonstration next week.
Many in that circular room were dyed-in-the-wool Havre des Pas users – people who learnt to swim there in the 50s and 60s and/or congregate daily for a swim in the summer or even winter months.
Returning to the ‘mainland’ along the pier at the end of the evening, one couldn’t help but think that whatever the circumstances, whatever the details of the lease, whatever the long history, whatever you think of the characters involved, whatever is right or wrong, if you lose the support of the grassroots – the very community that calls the pool its home – then you already face a battle that will be difficult to win.
