T HE weekend saw residents of Fenton come together to show their respect for the 498 Fentonians who perished in the Great War. Known as the ‘landowners’ – front-line slang for those who fell – the Fenton 498 are commemorated by the Minton memorial that sits in Fenton Town Hall. The event also saw today’s Fentonians stake their claim as moral landowners of the town hall, and Fenton Library. Both buildings are ‘for sale’, and residents fear they could face the wrecking ball. The ‘owner’ of the town hall, the Ministry of Justice, has attempted to allay those fears by insisting that a clause will be written into any contract for sale to ensure the protection of the war memorial, while the ‘owner’ of the library – Stoke-on-Trent City Council – is taking that building to auction.

Both of these buildings form the heart of Fenton, and were built thanks to the generosity of the Meath Baker family, and their patronage of the town. They were meant to be gifts to the community.

Now it seems they are taxpayer ‘assets’ to be sold to the highest bidder, and could potentially be torn down. Some may say that this is scaremongering. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest such fears are well-founded. In 1977, the Fenton Athenaeum – also built with money from the Meath Baker family – was flattened by the NatWest bank.

The Minton factory in Stoke was destroyed in order to build a supermarket, with a statue of the great man now gazing over at a deteriorating Stoke Library, provided by Sainsbury’s to say ‘thank you’ for being allowed to pay lip service to the town’s history. And just recently we have had the awful spectre of Steelite pulling down St Paul’s Vicarage in Middleport, despite its recent renovation and its Conservation Area designation. To add insult to injury, I am informed it is to be replaced with nothing more than a grim tin shed. You can well understand the Fentonian fretting.

The neglect and seemingly wilful destruction of the city is merely an indication that we are at war. That may seem like a glib statement given all that is going on in the Middle East, Ukraine, and some of our own nation’s actions in recent times. It is also a pretty serious statement from a pacifist. But we are at war, it is a class war, and as American billionaire Warren Buffet has said, it is his side – the rich – that are winning.

Suggestion of a class war may seem like hysterical inconsequential left-wing hyperbole, but how a place’s built heritage is considered reflects attitudes towards class, and in particular the establishment’s views on working class areas and their people. Stoke-on-Trent’s heritage has a history of being disregarded, and things appear to be getting worse.

English Heritage could have helped, but it didn’t. It could have recommended that the town hall be listed, but decided that it was not worthy, which is farcical. Tunstall Town Hall is listed. Burslem has two listed town halls. Hanley Town Hall is listed. Stoke Town Hall is covered. Longton Town Hall was listed in the 1980s when the council sought to level it. So why not Fenton Town Hall?

Stoke-on-Trent is known as the Six Towns, and therefore it makes perfect sense for each of its town halls to be recognised in this way. And this isn’t a Fenton v Hanley or Stoke or Burslem thing. All of this calls into question English Heritage’s judgement and decision-making process; it reeks of inconsistency.

Would something like this happen in London, for example? Back in 2007, I vented my spleen regarding the state of St John’s Church in Hanley, which is Grade II* listed, and at the time was falling down around our ears. At the time, English Heritage increased the listing grade of Battersea Power Station from Grade II to II* to make the site eligible for grant aid. This in the city with some of the highest real estate values in the world. I suggested there was more chance of Pink Floyd reforming to play a Battersea Power Station Benefit Gig than there was of English Heritage saving a piece of Potteries heritage. I stand by those words.

IT seems simply absurd that Fenton Town Hall is under threat in the very same year we remember those who gave their lives, the year of the 100th anniversary of that bloody conflict, when the Government is lavishing tens of millions of pounds on projects to commemorate the events of 1914-1918.

During the recent great storms that battered Tory heartlands, Cameron tip-toed to their aid stating that, ‘money was no object’, with Eric Pickles adding, ‘we are a wealthy country’. All in it together? Michael Franti is right, hypocrisy is the greatest luxury.

There is a great moral aspect to the Fenton Town Hall debacle. The Ministry of Justice wants cash for it. Faceless bureaucrats hiding behind the usual ‘we are obliged to seek best value for the taxpayer’ line.

But this is where cuts and austerity have got towns and cities like Stoke-on-Trent: we have to watch as the family silver is sold off to prop up ailing Government departments in Whitehall as they stumble around, reeling from blow after blow from the likes of Osborne and Pickles.

But what is ‘best value’ anyway? Is £500,000 worth risking untold damage to a local community and disenfranchising good people seeking to improve their town? Issues like these alienate people from the democratic process. Second World War veteran Harry Leslie Smith had this to say about those who died in the Great War: “Too many of the dead from that horrendous war didn’t know real freedom because they were poor and were never truly represented by their members of parliament”.

Unfortunately, that sounds depressingly familiar.