Town-Twinning After Brexit

A sign sits at the side of the road, welcoming passers-by to the town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Underneath lies the phrase “twinned with Thiers and Schrobenhausen.” To most, these words appear unassuming and hollow. To Mike Proudman though, they represent fortythree years of painstaking dedication to fostering international relations.

Town twinning is a peace movement born from violence. The aftermath of the Second World War saw the world reeling from devastation. Seventy million people dead, millions more injured, homes and livelihoods destroyed, and communities broken. But the human spirit prevailed. A handful of mayors and their citizens in Europe, took the initiative to reach out across their borders and extend a hand of friendship to towns and cities in other countries.

Initially, as described by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), twinning was aimed at repairing the fragmented bond between France and Germany in particular. This proved to be a successful endeavour, and it rapidly grew in prominence in the 1950s so that by 1963, when France and Germany signed the Friendship Treaty, one hundred and twenty twinning agreements between French and German towns and cities were already in place. Twinning then gradually spread to include towns across Europe as well as the wider world. The arrangements are now overseen by the CEMR, which credits twinning with the expansion of the European Union.

However, the fate of the UK’s participation in this international relations movement has now been called into question. There is growing concern that the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent 2020 exit from the European Union will be the death knell on town
twinning in the UK. Having been a member of the Bridgnorth Twinning Association since 1980, devoted committee member Mike Proudman has witnessed the impact of Brexit on the twinning programme first hand. He believes it has had a negative effect. “For the first time, visitors from Europe need to have a passport to come to this country,” he explains. “Twinning was supposed to bring us closer together, and so Brexit has become the antithesis of twinning.”

Mike credits twinning for facilitating many of his lifelong friendships. His wife, Linda, was one of the three hundred Bridgnorth residents who first travelled to Thiers in France in 1978 to mark the start of the twinning between the two towns. The couple that she stayed with, MarieJo and George, are still close friends with Mike to this day. “I’ve got so many friends in Thiers and Schrobenhausen, more than I do in Bridgnorth,” Mike laughs. “It’s marvellous. That’s the power of twinning”.

Despite his concerns that Brexit will create tensions between British towns and their foreign counterparts, Mike remains optimistic for the future of twinning. “I think in some respects, when you get stuff like the Ukraine war, people will have more thoughts about
friendships” he shares. “Twinning is a facilitator of making friends, visiting people, and gaining cultural knowledge, which I suppose is what life’s all about: understanding people, to be able to live on the same planet”.

As an important yet severely understated aspect of British international relations, Mike thinks that “it would be helpful” if the British Parliament adopted an active role in promoting twinning so that hopefully, for many years to come, the sign sitting at the side of the road will continue to read “twinned with Thiers and Schrobenhausen.”