THE following is an open letter to Mark Harper MP.

'I was one of the 'violent mob' waiting outside the Main Place, Coleford on Friday night, unable to put my questions to my MP.  I was rather annoyed that the room booked was too small for everyone who turned up to be able to get in.

I was incensed when I saw video footage of you speaking to the audience inside the room, referring to the mob outside – in fact we were a good-hum­oured crowd of 150 plus of your constituents.  Our average age was over 60, and many of the crowd would have voted for you in the past.  We repeatedly asked police officers to ask you to come downstairs to speak to us, even just to apologise in person for us being excluded due to the size of the room.  

We waited in the cold wind and rain, waiting in vain for over two hours to speak to you, some of the crowd were elderly, some were children with their parents.  Judging by appearance, all of us were respectable citizens who wanted to be allowed to have our say,  not an angry, violent mob, as you referred to us both inside your meeting and on BBC Radio Gloucestershire the next morning.  Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. I hope we will get a public apology from you soon about these remarks.

Moreover, you told the meeting that you had already spoken, or given a message to the people outside, that you had promised us another meeting within the consultation period – this is not true and you know it. The message was only passed out to us much later on.

Finally, how are the people who truly love the Forest able to make their views felt  – ie to maintain the status quo – when there is no sixth option in the consultation document?

I have written to you before, and this time I hope you will reply to me. You are my MP but you are supposed to listen to your constituents – yet deep down I think you are just another hard-nosed career politician, who knows nothing about real country people who have mined, worked and fought for King, Queen, country and Forest of Dean over many generations. I am a Forester, my father was a Freeminer, and I have many generations of ancestors buried in Littledean churchyard.  They must be turning in their graves now.

I met you when you first took office, and I was working to support young homeless people in the Forest of Dean, based in Acorn House, Cinderford. You asked for my assistance, which I gave gladly, in how best to support young people in the area. I thought you would be a man who genuinely cares about the Forest, and the people who live in it.

I am not so sure  now.' 

– Sue Skinner, Sedbury.