Monday 13 June 2011

The Day After Yesterday

Liam Carr writes:

I am from Consett, a town famous for not very much at the minute, we have had our moments however. A few years ago Consett was famous for Phileas Fogg snacks. Some people even thought we had an airport thanks to this rather sarcastic TV ad circa 1995 which describes Consett as a cultural centre for Europe! Derwent Valley foods still make snacks but I'm not sure if the Phileas Fogg line is still going. I think its more cheesy puffs and onion rings these days.

Before the 'crisp factory' there was a larger employer in the area; one which left its imprint on the landscape and the psyche of the local area: Consett Iron Company known as the Steelworks or just as 'The Company' started around 1840. It was an ideal location for making steel; there were and still are large coal seams in the area and some of the local rock is rich in iron ore. As the Steelworks developed however steel was being produced on such a huge scale much of the resources came from outside the region. What Consett had was a quality product, an experienced workforce and a huge facility. Steel from Consett was the stuff of the late industrial revolution. It was used to build the High level Bridge in Newcastle, the Blackpool tower and even sections of the Syndey Harbour Bridge.

I have very little personal experience of the Steelworks; it closed in 1980 when I was 2 years old My Dad and around 4500 other steel workers were made redundant. There was now a steel town that had been making steel since 1840 with its heart ripped out. I have always assumed that when people talked about how good life was at 'The Company' that it was a standard case of looking back through rose tinted spectacles at a bygone golden age. There were objections to some dubious working practices. My Dad's Dad was a strong and hardworking man: Family say I am like him if I work hard or if I am being stubborn and unmoving in my views; he like many others, left the mines to work at the steel works and bemoaned the lack of solidarity between workers when compared to the pit. This lack of solidarity originated in a system of rules laid down by management that you would think would be objectionable to a unionised workforce. For example if one man was off sick, his pay was docked and shared out between the workers who were shorthanded on that shift. It was also a dangerous place to work, men died, one fell into a smelting pot, or more often sustained horrific injury. Some of the work like filling the hoppers with coke and ore was repetitive back breaking labour. but the Steelworks offered a living wage and job security for several generations.

If I had been born 20 years earlier I would have worked at the Steelworks. I have some aptitude for science so if I had shown that at school then it is possible that I could have worked in the labs, the steel works had its own R&D department. I like to think I would have been grafting with the lads but a career in metallurgy may have been more likely. I have now come round to the idea that despite the pollution and the famed red dust, life was better in the Consett area before the steel works closed. I am a child of the 80s not the 60s and as life turns out I am now a lecturer at Newcastle College. I had taken my own job security for granted but now that my own post is at risk of redundancy I understand how job security being taken away impacts on your life, uncertainty for me at least, leads to a negative state of mind.

The steel works has left an indelible mark on the area both on the land and on the people. The perimeter is 9 miles around and the land is a now wide open space. There has been little investment into the site in my lifetime save for a McDonalds, and planning permission, which has been granted for a large Tescos - scant progress for 31 long years. Project Genesis was often discussed in council meetings between the years when I was 8 and 11 - there was talk of theme parks, ski slopes and all sorts of exciting things. I know this, not because of any extensive research I have done but because I was there. Not in the meetings with my Mam; who was a Chair of Planning at Derwentside District Council, but because I was hiding and seeking in the corridors of power, mucking about on the staircase with my twin brother and, if we got exceptionally bored, we would listen in to what was being said in the chamber like a pair of secret agents. We were never neglected; Mam assumed we were colouring in, in the members room: Good Times.

People of Consett of all ages feel something about the steelworks, for some it is a vast empty space to walk your dog, for some it is a topic they are sick of hearing about in the workingmens club, for some it is a symbol of a bygone industrial age but for some it is a memory; of a time when hard work paid well,when earnings were enough to keep a family, and when plans could be made for the future because employment was not fixed term, it was permanent.

This blog post is long enough but there is so much I have not written about here. The dispute leading to the closure of the steelworks will have to wait for another time - Consett: In the black, faced with the sack.

2 comments:

  1. I come from Corby, which went through much the same trama as Consett, from the sound of it, but am a little older so can remember the vast towering gas containers and pipeworks behind my granny's, then our, house.

    Corby was a bit different in that it kept a bit of steelworks (I spent a summer working there after my first year in Oxford) and it was populated by Irish, Serbs and (predominantly) Scots. Corby also had a geographical 'advantage' and became a warehouse town, staffed by agencies, again for which I worked a lot. It was and is an odd regeneration. I wouldn't wish the change from proper mens' work to minimum wage electric trucks on steelmen, but at least there are jobs there now and it's not a complete husk. It's awful to remember what the Tories did, though.

    In a final indignity, Corby has had its boundaries diddled and is currently being represented by Louise Bagshawe, a celebrity (D-list) pornographer and Oxford Union person. Sometimes, I wonder what historians will think, in some future library, when or if they read the history of this and, throwing down their pen or pad, ask 'how did they let north sea oil be used to pay for this social and spiritual devastation? How did they, in the face of this, allow such contemptuous,unrepresentative rule to become the norm? Did something break those proud, strong, steelmen and women?'

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  2. As stated there has been little or no development on the steelworks site itself but Consett is a wonderful place to live; there are many commuters here (myself included) and the countryside is majestic.

    However unemployment particularly youth unemployment is still a problem, and is set to worsen. Many workers found jobs at the council (the grandad I refer to became a council gardener after the steelworks shut) The public sector employs a larger proportion of the working population, than in more affluent areas - the Cuts have more bite here. That said the people of Consett are resilient, it was a stuggle but we recovered the last time a Tory government tried to destroy our town and we will recover again.

    [Bagshawe?? unlucky mate]

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