Sunday 12 April 2009

1227 Industrial Heritage Dream Girls Alice Through the Looking Glass Solomon's Choice

Wintry weather was not ideal to go out to take some pictures required for the industrial section of the chapter on past times of the Northern Rivera and the feeling of negative omens about the day continued as I listened to the pre-match building of Newcastle playing Liverpool at home, waking that the game being shown live on Sky but having the feeling that all was not going to go well. The 50000 crowd could be heard to boo Stephen Gerrard the disgraced English team, a response of away fans to any English team players wherever they were playing. For decades I have berated fellow home fans for booing away players because it only winds them up and true to experience Gerrard unleashed an unstoppable free kick.

I switched on the TV back home but felt in the need for warm comfort food and made an omelette with prawns and olives and then settled to enjoy the rest of the game and I have not seen Newcastle play as woefully as this since the dark days of last year. Worse was to come and although the loss was 3.0 it should have been five or six. Well Sunderland would cheer me up, wouldn't they but this proved just as bad, perhaps more so giving away sloppy goals and showing no indication of changing the 3.0 disaster by half time, and then wow we score so it is 3.1

Yesterday was not a good working day, in part because I was affected by reviewing previous research about the number of those who had lost their lives in four of the five mines on or close to the coast between the rivers Tyne and the Wear, where information has been collated, over 100, of the 600 recorded deaths, about one fifth, were aged sixteen years or younger as low as 9, 10, 11 and 12. We are losing 6.1 at this point and the game is not over. My reaction yesterday was to watch films. I saw Dreamgirls in theatre and enjoyed the performance of Jennifer Hudson of American Idol, so added it to my mail order Internet list and although the musical has serious themes it brightened the evening. I also enjoyed the quirkiness of Alice Through the looking glass, a Daily Mail provided DVD which has an excellent cast going through the four main sequences of Jabberwocky. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Walrus and the Carpenter, and Humpty Dumpty. Before this I watched a made for TV movie with a title something like Solomon’s choice about an adolescent who needed bone marrow transplant which could be provided by her younger brother who has just recovered from life threatening illness himself and where his mother does not want to risk his life bring about marital disharmony and separation. Both children survive and there is the suggestion that the relationship of their parents revives, making a good example of well motivated risk taking producing a good outcome, so why did I forget to buy my Euro Lottery ticket, and I have yet checked to find out if I would have won or saved a couple of pounds.

Industrial Realities
I have spoken with coal miners, about their lives, since being a young man, and in 1961 I visited the headquarters of the Scottish Miner's Union to replay the fines, met from union funds, because Direct Action Committee Marchers from London to Holy Loch had insisted on walking along Princess Street in Edinburgh (8). I have never met a miner who wanted his children to have to go down a pit. I lived and studied alongside former miners during my two years at Ruskin College and worked for a year in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and leant something of the mining communities within the local authority areas responsible for Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham, so I had some preparation for coming to the North East in 1974 and where coal mining and shipbuilding were still the core industries which formed community and civic culture. One of my earliest long play folk records, the Industrial Muse, has one side of songs about Miners, including the Durham Lockout

In 1984 I attended an international residential four week senior management course during the Miner's strike and in the concluding exercise, the teams in which we had separately worked, were asked to represent the fuel interests, electricity, gas, oil, nuclear, coal, and alternative sources, in determining a national policy, and I was a member of the group allocated coal. For the first part of the week we researched the industry, the demand, manpower, output and costs and we could not avoid the reality that because a number of countries were able to supply the majority of domestic requirements at significantly less cost, the contraction of the industry was inevitable, although not as drastic as subsequently happened in practice. This is where my experience of working in a political environment came to the fore and I arranged with the college for a special delivery letter to be delivered to the chairman of the advisory group, formed to present an agreed energy strategy to the responsible Minister. The communication explained that it the national interest to limit and avoid further industrial conflict and bring to an end social hardship, the output from coal had to be kept at a level significantly higher than commercial considerations indicated. It was the style of the college that the letter was delivered by a special messenger on motorcycle and this persuaded the advisory chairman that it was official, in the sense, an intervention by the college, rather than a self interest manoeuvre by coal and the miners. Alas while this could have happened in reality and the demise of the British Industry taken place at a slower rate, there was the clash of incompatible ideologies between Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. The consequence for South Tyneside and Sunderland is clear to see two decades later at the sites of Whitburn, Westoe and Wearmouth collieries.

At Whitburn, located between Westoe and Wearmouth, the end came in 1968 after 111 years with 3000 men working under the North Sea in 1914 2000 in 1950 and 1000 at closure. 139 men and boys died in the mine (138 before the creation of the National Coal Board) of which nineteen were aged sixteen years or younger (twelve)(10). As the photographs reveal, with the closure of the Northern offices of the coalboard, the site was cleared to create a coastal park to one side of the Souter Point Lighthouse. On the other side there is now no trace of Marsden Village built to house the miners, 135 houses population 700, Church, Methodist Chapel, Coop store, post office, school and Miners Recreational Institute (11).

At Westoe, overlooking one of three parks and an a large area of playing fields, before the beaches of South Shields, the end did not come until 1993, and in 1914 only 108 men were employed rising to 1000 in 1940 and 2500 in the 1980's, doubling in manpower following the closure of Whitburn. Two men were killed after 1948, in 1966 and 1983. Today there is a development of contemporary terraced housing with the last phase underway.

The most impressive new development is at the former Wearmouth Colliery. The pit opened in 1824 and reached its peak in manpower in 1914 with over 2500, and there were still over 2000 employed at closure in 1991. Considerable local controversy surrounded the future use of the site with understandably many residents seeking low cost housing and job creation projects. However the majority are more than content with one of the great football stadiums of Europe with a capacity of 49000, and adjacent, an Olympic size swimming pool, is now in the last stages of construction. The Stadium of Light(12) is marked by a large Miner's lamp which is kept lit. 281 men and boys are known to have died in this mine with some forty aged sixteen and younger, including a ten year old and several aged twelve. One man died in 1947 and none after.

Not far inland from the coast at South Shields was the Harton Colliery which employed over 3400 men in 1921 and closed in 1960 with 1400. 92 men and boys are known to have died here of which 20 were boys sixteen and younger (91 before creation of NCB), and the St Hilda's Colliery 2000 men in 1914 and 1000 when it closed in 1930 with 116 dead of which over a quarter were aged sixteen and younger including two aged nine years. I will leave information on other pits close to the rivers of the Tyne and the Wear for future walks.

Although the ship yards at South Shields, Hebburn and Wallsend on the Tyne and Monkwearmouth Sunderland continued to build and repair ships throughout the twentieth century, it was the closure of Palmers at Jarrow in the 1930's which had become part of industrial and Labour heritage and folklore. This was because Jarrow was created as a shipbuilding town and when the yard failed as did many others throughout Europe, the people were promised a steel making plant which was then denied despite available funding, and in desperation the men decided on a peaceful protest Crusade for work. As has been chronicled by Matt Perry, The Jarrow Crusade Protest and Legend, University of Sunderland Press, the march ended in failure as it was World War II which brought and end to a decade of mass unemployment. Nor did the Trade Union Congress and the British Labour Party support the primary objective. As the marchers and media record reveals the reception given to them varied, with sometimes more help provided by middle class interests. Nor was support from religious interests wholehearted. The Jarrow Crusade was of great interest to me because together with the salt marches of Gandhi it was the inspiration for a protest idea taken up by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, a march which commenced at the end of an Aldermaston March in Trafalgar Square in 1961 to Holy Loch on the Clyde where the Polaris Submarine was being based. As chief Marshall at the beginning of the March I met with Home Office and Scotland Yard officials and later received a warning letter from the Commander, Flag Ship Scotland, following discussions with various local police chiefs along both banks of the Clyde and at Dunoon, about our intentions for non violent protest. The march received a mixed reception from political, trade union and religious interests. In the later 1960's I was introduced to a former Jarrow Crusade marcher and his wife who were honoured members of a local Labour Party in outer West London where they had settled and made good lives for themselves and family.

Final Score Everton 7 Sunderland 1
Newcastle 0 Liverpool 3
Middlesbrough 0 Aston Villa 3
North East 1 others 13.

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