BACK in November my arms were aching, following my efforts with squibbing in Bridgwater’s High Street. I spent Carnival night the hard, hot way, watching the sparks fly as I manned one of those explosive squibs.

Just as the event gets bigger and better year by year, so it is with the town. We have every reason to be proud of our traditions, our history and our future.

But ever since my election to Parliament in 2001, I have had to defend Bridgwater from a small band of Westminster critics.

Regrettably there is still a tendency for some to turn up their noses at us. We’re not “twee” enough.

So what, I’m delighted we’re not “twee” and I’ll tell you why.

This town survived one of the wettest winters on record and the most catastrophic flooding just two years ago. We did more than survive. People worked together, refused to be beaten by it. BridgwaterHuntspill and Dunball, showed guts and determination, as they always do.

It is surely a deep-seated skill that can get people to square up to change and tackle it head on. Bridgwater has seen so much change over the years. I don’t think it was an accident that inspired Robert Blake, a local grammar school boy, to win a place in Parliament, and go on to become the father of the Royal Navy and Admiral of the Fleet.

But the peacetime maritime traditions of the town, which were huge in medieval times, have long gone. We used to be the landing point for corn and timber. Then came industry, first a glassworks, later pottery tiles and those distinctive Bridgwater red bricks.

Even folk like me, with much shorter memories, still think of piston-making, and pumps, and British Cellophane (with its distinctive Bridgwater aroma!) and the rather more secretive things that went on underground at the old ROF near Woolavington.

These were the big employers. Bridgwater’s versatile people learned one set of skills and then relearned new ones for every subsequent change.

So it is, still today. At the end of last week, I witnessed the formal ceremony to launch EDF’s brand new training facility, in the restored 12th century Benedictine nunnery at Cannington Court. Bridgwater College is pivotal to this new and exciting facility.

Young people will come here from all over Britain, to our town, in order to learn the essential skills of nuclear power. We were in at the birth of Hinkley A and B. We have developed a whole generation of nuclear talent. Soon enough there will be Hinkley C to offer an extraordinary array of job opportunities and genuine business breaks for a whole host of companies and individuals.

The mood among the town’s business community is, rightly, upbeat. I was able to meet them at Sedgemoor’s timely Economic Development Conference a few days back.

In the last five years £400 million pounds of fresh investment has come to Bridgwater and district. It was the base of choice for Mulberry and the whole Avon and Somerset Police centre.

Bridgwater, Huntspill and Dunball, now spells real innovation. We have so much to celebrate.

IAN LIDDELL GRAINGER

MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset