From Dan Debenham

Thursday, 30 October 2025

How many in Hebden have heard about the council planning to demolish The White Lion?

Not just the Lion… Crown Street, Market Street, Old Gate, Bridge Gate, St George's Bridge, Bridge Mill, and St George's Square. 
Gospel truth.  And the reasoning? To build flat roofed, standardised box-buildings to attract flat-packed standardised national chains.

HebWeb vets will no doubt be in the loop, but for those who aren't: 

In the mid-sixties, with full council backing, this was the plan. A plan kept secret to avoid public resistance - even as demolition work began - until the Calder Civic Trust discovered it and intervened to prevent it. 

If it had succeeded, the town's independent core would have been entirely lost, replaced by chain stores universally extracting local value to distant shareholders. Without local businesses circulating wealth through the community, the town would have lost its character, visitors, and residents - until even the chains departed. 

Hebden Bridge as we know it wouldn't have survived the transformation. Everything you know, grew up with, or moved here to discover, would never have existed.

This is why a near-unanimous majority of businesses (the people most qualified to predict local business outcomes) in Hebden Bridge are so alarmed about the Flood Alleviation Scheme. It's not just knee-jerk self preservation, it's born of the awareness that the end of our independent business culture means the end of the town. 

I won't fill any more space on community pages arguing that case, other than to say that, for anyone interested, we have now produced a comprehensive economic and cultural report, which we would like to invite the community, whether in favour of, or opposed to the present application, to offer critique, edits, or corrections based on better evidence or more effective approaches that may exist out of our view.

We're also inviting all community members to contribute to a series of short recorded interviews aimed at breaking down some of the polarisation that's defined the issue.

We want to engage in this in the spirit of community and we have no ideological or political agenda of any kind. We are just members of the community who don't define that community by whether you are a hippy or a farmer, or a local or an offcumden, but by respect for the defining spirit of the town which has been very consistent since the last of the Britons dug in here rather than run off to Wales.

It's that local spirit I want to comment on. In recent weeks, we've seen a worrying shift. That being a growing acceptance of a collectivist mindset in which a vulnerable minority can be sacrificed for institutional or majority interests. This way of thinking has authoritarian roots, undermines the values of civil society, and represents a sharp break from Hebden's 1,500-year tradition of mutual aid, resistance, and local autonomy. 

This isn't a town defined by quiet obedience to authority. Its character was forged over generations by people who didn't come here because it was easy, but because it was hard, and therefore remote, overlooked, and free from the reach of tyrants and taxmen - from natives fleeing Saxon rule, to Saxons and Danes resisting Norman genocide, to working-class dissenters, marginalised groups, hippies, artists and all kinds of misfit looking for a place to live without interference. Hebden Bridge's identity has been shaped by resilience, resistance, and a refusal to accept imposed narratives, undue force or outside control.

That spirit doesn't only survive in the artists, alternative viewpoints, independent businesses, and radical cooperatives that are often highlighted. It's built into the bricks and mortar and buried in the mentality of every farmer on the tops, the attitude of every mouthy teenager on the Wavy Steps, and in a long list of people I grew up with who didn't survive long enough to moan about flood resilience works and traffic problems. Everyday people who, by choice or lack of one, continued to make community in a place that was harsh and unforgiving. 

But over the years, it got a lot more comfortable. And comfort changes culture. 

As the town has become more desirable and easier to live in, some of the valley grit has slipped - not through anyone's fault, just as a natural shift, and it includes all of us.

There seems to be less principled action now, and more going along with the crowd or easy adoption of what is passed down by ideologies and authorities, even if it harms a minority or compromises values. It's been heading this way for a while but this is the first time I've seen many people openly prepared to put into writing their belief that it is alright for a minority to be sacrificed for a supposed majority. And not once - that we have seen - has any of the supportive elected representatives engaged in those conversations stood to call out those public comments, instead allowing them to stand, along with their grave implications for our community.

We might want to be cautious of any cultural shift which has us find it acceptable to look the other way when a minority of us is harmed for the gains of people with more visibility or influence. Surely that clearly signals the end of that community? Or at least its division into those who will do this and those who wont?

I don't want to draw lines between "us" and "them", so let's stick to critiquing actions rather than people… it must be said: there is nothing more alien to the culture of this valley than accepting the avoidable devastation of a vulnerable minority in order to deliver benefits to a more influential or politically audible majority. That isn't about locals versus new folk. It's a mentality. A mentality that Hebden doesn't have copyright on and that many new folk arrive with everyday. But some don't, and culture changes accordingly. 

That's not the Hebden Bridge that I grew up in, and certainly not the one the next generation need in this uncertain world. Forgive the daft muscular language, but we've been made of tougher stuff for 1,500 years and longer. And while no one is expected to relive the past hardships of the valley, we might invite those newer to the town - many of whom cherish its independent spirit - to help uphold the values that create independent spirit.

The most central of those values has always been the simplest: 

Don't harm others, and don't stand for being harmed by anyone else.

This isn't just local ethos. It's a core principle of civil society - as fundamental as opposition to racism or sexism.

That's all the business community is asking for - not special treatment, just the same protection and voice that any other group would rightly expect in a fair and equal society.

Not a single person supporting the scheme as it stands would maintain course if they knew the price was the almost certain destruction of their own home, livelihood and savings along with their children's future.

If anyone remains doubtful on the evidence of that proposition, please skim our report so that you have at least heard both sides. The implications are not solely for the business community. The failure of independent control of the town's economy will mark the end of the town as all of us know it.

Either way, we invite every member of the community - whether you support or oppose the Flood Alleviation Scheme - to join us in open, face-to-face dialogue. 

Share your story, your perspective, and your hopes for our town's future in a short interview and/or dialogue. Or if you would rather just chat with no recording etc, we'd always make time for that too.

We're not chasing grand unity montages; we just want to hear your take and to try show a real cross section of the community for the first time, rather than the echo chambers we all increasingly default to.

Let's talk, listen, and reserve the right to hold onto that stubborn Hebden grit that's kept us going for 1,500 years - but without anyone getting left out of the discussion unless they (bloody well) want to be. 

Thanks for reading.

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