ABSTRACT
Is ‘the game up’ for Teesside today? And what do the ‘rules’ of this ‘game’ mean for the ways in which people can and do live their lives? Such questions inform this chapter. It explores how international currents of production and trade (not just in shipbuilding, but in other industries like coal, steel, and chemicals, and more recently even in some service sector activities) have flowed into and out of Teesside. These processes have both shaped and been shaped by the changing social, economic and political character of a changing locality. Changing times in Teesside Adventurous, almost intrepid, as Priestley was in his journey through an England ravaged by depression, he did not have it in him to visit Middlesbrough. His comments on this place were short and to the point. It was, he said, ‘a product of the new Iron Age’. Its growth was fuelled at first by coal, as the town’s harbour despatched the output of the Durham coalfield. Later, the discovery of iron ore in the adjacent Cleveland hills, together with supplies of coking coal from Durham, left Teesside ideally placed to meet the growing demands for iron and steel o f a country experiencing industrial revolution. W. E. Gladstone, visiting Middlesbrough in 1862, referred to it as a ‘remarkable place, the youngest child of England’s enterprise . . . . It is an infant, gentlemen, but it is an infant Hercules’ (quoted in Briggs, 1963, p. 241). Sustained growth between the middle and the end of the nineteenth century saw its population rise to over one hundred thousand, where previously there had been only hundreds. And the area came of age, so to speak, with developments in another, newer industry. Across the river at Billingham, Brunner-Mond from 1918, and ICI from 1926 developed a vast chemicals complex, and another company new town sprang up. By 1939 ICI had built 2300 houses as
labour migrated into the town. Whereas the steel companies had sought coking coal from the adjoining Durham coalfield, ICI wanted labour power. One ICI manager recalled how:
‘There was a lot of very good labour in the Durham coalfields which flocked down to Teesside. They were a very good workforce. We didn’t have any union trouble. They were thankful they’d got a job on the surface with fairly reasonable conditions.’ (Quoted in Pettigrew, 1985,p. 126) After 1945 ICI developed a second major chemicals complex at Wilton on the south bank of the river. This expanded under very different conditions of economic development and labour supply. In a national environment of postwar growth, and relatively full employment, the first concern of planning authorities was to ensure at Wilton an adequate supply, not just of raw materials, but most especially of labour. The concerns of the 1930s expressed by Priestley or the flood of immigrants to Billingham must have seemed a million miles away. Certainly this was how it appeared to consultants Pepler and Macfar-lane, who reported in 1949 in their Interim Outline plan for the North-east Development Area prepared for the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. ‘The development of such a large unit as Wilton on Teesside,’ they argued, ‘the one area where male labour is in short supply, must entail some influx of population if its labour requirements are to be fully met’ (p. 100). Given the high national priority accorded to the expanding chemical industry, ‘it would be unwise to prejudice the redeployment of Cleveland labour in heavy chemicals . . . by offering it alternative male employment’ (p. 76).Alongside the heightened importance of securing now relatively scarce labour (even if it mean discouraging the introduction of industries which might compete with ICI in its phases of expansion during the 1950s), another feature of the post-1945 period was the increasing attention paid to planning for growth. Most significant of such plans was the response to what then seemed a cyclical decline in 1963, typified in Lord Hailsham’s report on regional development in the North East (HMSO, 1963). In this, Teesside was to act as a vital part of a regional growth zone capable of generating and attracting new employment to compensate for continuing job losses in the surrounding area, especially the Durham coalfield, reproducing the links established in previous years. Teesside was earmarked for industrial expansion supported by infrastructural investment. In 1965, a land use and transportation strategy was commissioned to provide a framework for this planned expansion. Its optimistic rhetoric captures the spirit of the times:
Plate 8.1 General view of transporter bridge, Offshore Fabricators, Billingham. Teesside, born in the Industrial Revolution, offers to the second half of the twentieth century both a tremendous challenge and an almost unique opportunity. The challenge lies in the legacy of nineteenth century obsolescence; the opportunity is to make it one of the most productive, efficient and beautiful regions in Britain; a region in which future generations will be able to work in clean and healthy conditions, live in dignity and content and enjoy their leisure in invigorating surroundings. For Teesside already possesses in abundant measure those fundamental characteristics which provide the foundations for a full life. In few places does one find such modern industries, providing for man’s economic prosperity, in such close proximity to a beautiful and spacious countryside, which can be the means of satisfying his recreational and spiritual needs. (HMSO, 1969, p. 3) Teesplan exemplifies a reappraisal of the region’s potential which took place in the mid-1960s. It represented a clear expression of contemporary optimism over the prospect o f managed expansion in new light industry to compensate for (and indeed far exceed) gentle decline in the traditional industries. The structure of the statutory planning framework meant that in practice, though, there was little opportunity to safeguard the environment. There was no shortage of problems in this direction:
The air along the Tees, full of smoke from its belching factories, forced downwards by cold tidal breezes, must be as badly polluted an anywhere in Britain. It is said that on foggy days, and there are a large number of them, the lightermen steer their barges down the twisting river by the colour of the chemical discharges from the various plants. (Gladstone, 1976, p. 44)
But there was little protest on these matters in Teesside. One housewife had fought a number of environmental battles: She had resisted a public relations onslaught from ICI, which included exotic alcoholic lunches, and had managed to prove them and other chemical companies in the wrong . . . . When the pollution in the air over Teesside was particularly bad, she would ring up and disturb the Alkali Inspector who lived up in the Cleveland Hills. ‘Hullo,’ she would say, ‘what’s the air like up there? It is pretty polluted down here on Teesside.’ (Gladstone, 1976, p. 54). For a period during the late 1960s and early 1970s questions to do with the objectives of planning and planners could be pushed quietly into the background. It looked as if, for once, things were going according to plan on Teesside. The area boomed with new investment, substantially underwriten by the British state. An almost breathless article from the Sunday Times in 1976 enthused over this new growth:
If only the spectators could see this. So said Henri Simonet, Vice-President of the European Commission, when he visited Teesside ten days ago. More than a billion pounds is being invested there in steel and chemical plant, nuclear power and oil installations, and the area can fairly claim to be Europe’s most dynamic industrial site. But, as Simonet said: ‘Nobody in Europe knows about this.’ . . . Even now, at a dark moment for the British economy, more than £1,200m is being invested in Teesside, in a series of projects of great boldness, advanced technology and crucial significance for our balance of trade. Here then was a new prospect for this part o f the north-east: high fixed capital investment and outward looking capital meant that the area seemed to have conquered the ‘British disease’ and turned the corner towards economic prosperity. But even in 1976, at the high point of this ‘boom’, problems were visible. The clearest was the above average level of unemployment, especially amongst school-leavers.By 1981 these difficulties had become very apparent, as the Financial Times explained:
A new beginning with new industries was thought to be the answer. Teesside eventually got that new industry but today it looks back and realises that capital intensive companies are not necessarily the answer. Cleveland has become a model of the new industrial Britain and it still has unemployment problems as serious as almost anywhere in the country.
