A good local paper is an essential part of the local life of any community.

So essential that it’s hard to think what things would be like without one. Let’s have a go just to show how important a good newspaper, like our Grimsby Telegraph, is to all of us.We’d know each other less well. We wouldn’t understand each other’s business or know what’s going on at the council.

We would not know how interdependent we all are: how fishing, food production, chemicals and all the other industries around North East Lincolnshire are doing or what their job prospects are.

News would become gossip, travelling slowly over one garden fence to another. We’d probably have to take time off work to get and exchange it.

We wouldn’t know about weddings, deaths, births and birthdays. We’d perhaps put postcards in post office windows to announce events but they’d be so numerous no light would penetrate the shops.

We’d lose out on community pride and know a lot less about our history, the rise and fall of fishing, the development of Europe’s food town and the Humber Bank. We’d be less able to understand the world we live in.

How would we find out what’s going on and where?Think how you’d buy or sell a house, a washing machine or even a second-hand coffin (slightly used), short of tramping round from one estate agent’s window to another or running around the town with a bell and loud hailer – which might be a bit noisy because so many others would be doing the same thing.

As for knowing which supermarket is offering what bargains, how would we know that unless we migrate like lemmings from one to the other, crashing into each other as we rush to follow the rumours of crash cuts at Ron’s or bargain booze elsewhere?

We politicians might be happier. We’re a bit paranoid because all politicians feel that local papers persecute us. Yet that’s their job. They’re the watchmen on behalf of the people, criticising us when we do wrong, praising us when things go right (though to be honest I haven’t noticed too much of that).

We, for our part, would find it impossible to do our job at all. We’d not be able to reach our constituents. We couldn’t tell them what we’re trying to do for them. There’d be no one to jolt our complacency by newspaper campaigns against violence, neglect, muddle-headed schemes, delays in hospital treatment or government cuts. Nor would they fight for better services and a better deal for Grimsby and Cleethorpes. I’ve used the Telegraph many times to warn ministers that all is not well. It’s right to keep us on our toes. Tell the people what’s being done in their name. Tell us what the people think of it and us.

Then there’s photography. Local radio can give facts but it takes a picture to bring them alive and the Telegraph’s photographers are a brilliant team. As a happy snapper myself I envy their ability, their equipment, and the quality of their pictures. They’re maintaining a long tradition of good photographers who make life more interesting and colourful. They can make the old look young and they have to do that for me more than they used to.

The message is clear. Life would be dull. We’d be ignorant. The politicians would be idle and untested. Without the Grimsby Telegraph.

A good community needs a good newspaper. Which we have. Looking at other areas the two go together.

We’re a bit isolated on South Humberside. The reverse of that coin is that we have a greater sense of community and identity than bigger, more anonymous places which are slices of somewhere, not communities in their own right.

So we need a good newspaper plugged into that community which reflects its views and values. The quality of the paper hasn’t been reduced by isolation. Indeed, it’s greater than most of the other local papers I see as I travel round the country.

Elsewhere I find that in many places the local paper has slumped into complacency and blandness with all the bite of an advertising hand-out. That hasn’t happened here. The Telegraph’s long tradition of high standards, enquiring journalism, problem exposure, dirty deal dissection, are what every town needs. It keeps us and the newspaper on our toes. A good local newspaper? Every town should have one and we do.

• Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell was putting forward his views as part of Local Newspaper Week (May 1-7), organised by the Newspaper Society. This article published by courtesy of the Grimsby Telegraph

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