People will blame Brexit, Boris and austerity, but this country’s demise goes back decades – and shows no signs of stopping, says the Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty
People will blame Brexit, Boris and austerity, but this country’s demise goes back decades – and shows no signs of stopping. The older, smaller coalmines were approaching exhaustion, which meant, officials said, “many of the rows of houses which grew up around the pitheads have outlived their usefulness”. These “rows of houses” were homes to 100,000 adults and children. Now they were designated Category D.
As the UK has gone from the world’s first industrial nation to its first post-industrial state, that question has grown ever-more insistent. Today, it covers more than a few extinct coalmines; it takes in steelworks and trading estates across the country. Tony Blair and David Cameron tried to drown it out with culture and finance and tech startups; newspaper columnists ignored it for Westminster trivia. But just like those communities in County Durham, it has refused to fade.
Everywhere in Shildon reminds you of what was there 40 years ago. Roundabouts are decorated with tall white rail signals, the remaining pubs bear names such as the Locomotive, and a coal wagon sits at the entrance to the tatty shopping street. But for today’s twentysomethings, the battle in the early 80s to save the works is as far back in time as Dunkirk was when the “Shildon shops” closed: it was their father’s war, and only a memory to them.
There is the impressive Locomotion museum outside the rail station, but it is too far from the centre of the town to boost its economy. And round the outskirts are new housing estates and the big shopping chains, for those who commute on the A1 and spend their money elsewhere. It’s a reminder that the simplistic slogan of “just build more houses” will do little to repair homes or house those people on low incomes. It can kill communities even while building others.
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