A Declaration of Civic Restoration
Reclaiming Bedford: Paper No. 1
Bedford is in decline. As are many towns across the U.K.
Empty shops, rising crime, and a tough economic environment highlight a decline that many of us see and feel.
Families, workers, and businesses are caught in systems that no longer serve them. Local politicians lack the power to act decisively and central government policies often prioritise self-preservation over lasting change.
So why is this happening, and how can we fix it?
Historic Perspective
In trying to understand the problems we face, I’ve been drawn to the parallels with the founding of the United States. Faced with distant and unresponsive governance, the American colonists returned to first principles regarding core ideas about liberty, self-determination, and the proper role of government.
In 1776, the American colonists described a government that taxed without consent and deployed bureaucracies to harass and control. The people were treated not as citizens, but as subjects.
Does this sound familiar?
Thomas Jefferson wrote that when a government becomes “destructive of these ends”—the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. The American patriots did not wait for permission. They did not ask politely. They did not accept decline as destiny.
Thankfully, the United Kingdom is not on the verge of violent revolution, nor should it be. Instead, we have the opportunity to drive a different type of revolution: a peaceful one driven by community. No muskets. No militias. Only resolve. Resolve to act, to organise, to reject decline and build something better. Because when government no longer works, we must act.
Government is the Problem
At the national level, government has grown into a stagnant blob, a creature of its own appetites. It taxes endlessly, spends blindly, and regulates obsessively. It talks endlessly of fairness while presiding over a rigged and decaying system. It offers benefits in place of opportunity and surveillance in place of safety.
Locally, councils are trapped. Shackled by statutory duties that leave no room for bold action. Their budgets are consumed by social care mandates while local entrepreneurs are held back by a business rates system hostile to growth. Even those with good intentions are rendered impotent by the machinery of government.
The consequences are there for us all to see. Bedford’s town centre has become a place where drug addicts and alcoholics roam the high street, openly taking drugs and contributing to the plague of shoplifting which the police refuse to deal with. Shops sit vacant, and families, especially women, come to the town less and less as they feel unsafe. Coupled with a neglect for the aesthetics of the town, it is unsurprising that so many refer to the town centre as a “shit hole”.
Bedford is not unique with these problems but it can be unique with its refusal to accept decline as inevitable. It can show the country that when government cannot fix a town, the people can.
A Call to Action
What is needed now is an army—not of soldiers, but of locals. Locals who are proud, angry, and determined. Locals who believe Bedford can be more than it has become. If united, this town can be rebuilt from the ground up. Not in theory. In practice: specific, implementable, unapologetic plans.
Those who believe this must do more than agree—they must act. Show up. Sign up. Speak up. Join the working groups.
This article was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers.
More articles will be written to highlight why we must take action to reclaim our town.
