Site Title

Tag: economy

  • When Plans for the North East Region were actually done well compared with the inane drivel we get today

    I am currently writing a chapter entitled: The North East of England – Post-industrial Carboniferous Capitalism in a Birthplace of the Capitalocene for a book dealing with Mediating Industrial Change: Construction and Perception of Discourses about (De-) Industrialisation. My abstract indicates what I propose to deal with:

    This chapter will examine the trajectory of the North East (NE) of England towards a postindustrial character in terms of all of economic base, employment structure, cultural character, and political systems. The NE was a birthplace of industrial capitalism globally. It was where railway systems were first developed and was a major producer of coal, ships, iron and steel, and chemicals over about 250 years. It was also the location of major technological innovation. From the 1930s there were introduced a range of department two industries including clothing, textiles, and light electrical engineering so the region for the first time had a large industrial female labour force. In the 1960s over half of all employed adults were employed in production industries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the region was one of the great industrial zones of the world and seen as such with. After the first world war there was a massive slump in  consequence first of UK economic policies and then of the global depression. During this  period national government began to intervene to resolve unemployment by diversifying the industrial base. These policies continued until the election of the Neo-Liberal Thatcher government in 1979. Since then, the region has lost the great bulk of its mining and  manufacturing base with profound implications for culture and identity. An important aspect in how the region was seen in the UK beyond itself was the development of a regionally based popular culture, particularly in television series, which documented lived experience. Although these presented a realist but positive version of place, at the same time national political culture began to frame the future of the regthe ion in terms of managed decline.

    As part of the background research for this I have been reading a range of public body documents produced during the 20th Century. Of particular value have been the Barlow Report  of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population with the work done before WWII but published in 1940, the Hailsham report of 1963 on The North East a Progamme for Regional Devlopment and Growth, and two indigenous documents.   These are the the Northern Economic Planning Council’s Challenge of the Changing North (1966) and the Northern Regional Strategy Team’s Strategic Plan for the Northern Region(1977).  Reading these well researched and written documents is a pleasure. I had criticisms of the latter in the 1970s but the plan was entirely accurate in its description of the origins of the issues it was confronting. This is in marked contrast to the inane boosterism of  The Interim North East Local Growth Plan of March 2025 produced by nitwit Kim and her team. The abolition of the Government Office for the North East in 2011, apparently at the behest of the idiot LibDems in the coalition in favour of localism, eliminated the expertise and professionalism necessary for getting even a proper timeline of the past together as a basis for planning the future. It is worth noting that the Barlow report proposed elected regional governments but we lost our chance at that in 2004 when a poorly run campaign in favour of a North East Assembly (for too reliant on nobs and not on civil society) was done in by Dominic Cummins with the support of the UK branch of the wretched US Heritage Foundation and the refusal of Labour MPs and councillors, scared of losing their own power to a regional level, to campaign at all in support of it. So we have an apolitical body  which has to accommodate the idiots who thinks Farage has the answer to our ills and the good Tory friend of his business associates on Teesside (for a good summary of  Private Eye’s excellent coverage of this see https://northeastbylines.co.uk/region/teesside/teesworks-scandal-a-dark-tale-of-public-wealth-lost-and-private-gain/ ).  Consensus means no politics. Any decent Labour politician should be calling these bums out, not giving the portfolio responsibilities, but the system does not work that way.

    To be fair to nitwit Kim there was no evidence in Driscoll’s period as Mayor of “North of the Tyne” of any coherent informed planning and no sense of any political direction. His application for a Tyneside Freeport which would have involved suspension of trade union rights and environmental regulation over a wide stretch of his area was particularly inane but there was no political machinery for holding him accountable for this action.

  • Now we have a plan from the Mayoral authority

    Interim North East Local Growth Plan

    ‘https://www.northeast-ca.gov.uk/local-growth-plan

    The North East Combined Authority under the “leadership” of Kim McGuiness (whose face now adorns what seems to be a sort of logo for the authority – see above) – has published its Interim North East Local Growth Plan – Interim because a final version will be published after the Labour government’s spending review. Well, we now know what that has done. McGuiness is big on opposing child poverty, a domain of policy over which she has no powers whatsoever. The spending review has just added another quarter of a million children to relative poverty to join the nearly 2.5 million already there.  Reeves’ economic policies will have Keynes spinning in his grave. Cutting benefits and public sector employment will reduce aggregate demand in a recession! All this by a government of “Labour”, a party to which McGuiness owes her position by an unblemished record of servile adherence. It is interesting to note who were the “partners” involved in the preparation of the plan – business (OK), education (if VCs and College Principals pretty useless), the Voluntary Sector (largely dependent on grant income and guaranteed not to rock the boat), and the Community Sector – what is this and who selected its representatives? The very notable absence is Trade Unions – not even the regional TUC. What do they donate to the Labour Party for – to be treated with contempt by a nitwit like McGuiness and her allies?  The Voluntary and Community Sectors do not speak for Civil Society but who does?

    There are elements of good sense in parts of this Plan in relation to the support and development of industrial sectors in green energy, biosciences and pharmaceuticals, general advanced manufacturing, defence and space (although there has been an imperialist seizure of RAF Spadeadam – the UK’s Electronic Warfare Centre – it is in Cumbria, not the North East), and creative industries (although we no longer have a regional TV programme producing company now Tyne Tees does not do that). There is the usual guff about digital industries – games yes and Teesside University – not in the NE Mayoral area – is one of the best places to learn that kind of programming, but AI ???? What we seem to be promised is a massive energy-hungry data-processing centre which is ecologically disastrous. The more you know about so called “artificial intelligence” (I have been engaged with thinking about neural nets for a long time), the less you expect of them and the more questions they raise. The new Chinese AI agents have already changed the game. Of course, Starmer and Reeves have been seduced by the Tech Bros into thinking that AI is the solution to the delivery of public services. The record of government procurement of even basic digital services is dire and AI will be worse.

    One sector I am deeply suspicious of is “Knowledge Intensive Professional Services”. Marine engineering and ship management services – very good indeed. Legal and Financial Services – the tax dodgers’ pals, not good for much of what they do. Real Estate – bad – dominates urban systems and planning to the detriment of most people and the whole of the environment. Good to see the Leamside line in the plan as a metro extension and bringing back redundancy to the East Coast line but that plan way proceeds the establishment of the Mayoral authority.

    There are occasional signs of intelligence and forward thinking – although perhaps only one. Somebody seems to have realized that with the UK out of the EU and protectionism being the new game in world trade there will be a necessary shortening of supply lines. Given that the NE has retained more of an industrial base than the UK in general, (although much of it is on Teesside outwith the NE Combined authority area), this point is well made and there could be benefits for manufacturing in general in the UK and across the whole NE region.

    Of course there is no real democratic basis or real public engagement for any of this. Compare this really rather trivial exercise with the Structure Plans and North East Regional Strategy of the 1970s – they were much better informed and well constructed.

    The BIG FAULT – the NE region as a whole includes some of the poorest areas not just in the UK but in the whole of Western Europe. One is shared with Teesside but even Northumberland and Tyneside are way below the UK and Western Europe EU levels for Gross Value Added (GVA) although since a lot of GVE includes the imputed net rents of owner occupiers (10% for the UK as a whole) GVA is not the best measure for poverty. There is some passing mention of this in the report but the whole tone is relentlessly upbeat – all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, and all things will be well. Fat chance.