In the Dark

I’ve generally avoided the UK media over the last few days but couldn’t resist commenting on a phrase that has appeared again in the context of constituencies in the North and Midlands of England that voted in Tory Members of Parliament in the 2019 General Election.

The first of these to declare a result was Blyth Valley, in Northumberland, a place that I know reasonably well as I grew up in the North-East. This constituency was created in 1955 and had a Labour MP continuously from then until December 12th 2019.

(Incidentally, the winning candidate in Blyth Valley, Ian Levy, presented himself as an NHS nurse, which he has never been. I doubt anyone cares, though. Bare-faced lying seems to be completely acceptable these days.)

(Left) Bates Colliery in Blyth in 1986 when it closed; (Right) the scene in 2014. Picture Credit Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

I should state for the record that I was born in Walker, to the East of Newcastle upon Tyne, but grew up in Benwell, to the West. When I was a child all the pits in the immediate vicinity, such as the Montague Main Colliery in Denton Burn, had already closed because the inland coal seams had been exhausted. Those remaining open were deep mines in which the coal faces were out under the North Sea.

Anyway, Blyth Valley was described in the media after the election result as a `Former Mining Community’. The town of Blyth is a port and was at one time a major centre for shipbuilding as well as coal mining, but the coal industry –especially Bates colliery – was indeed an extremely important factor in the town’s economy.

But Bates Colliery closed in 1986. A bit further inland the larger, and probably more famous, Ashington Colliery closed in 1988. The last mine in the North West Durham coalfield closed in 1994. Further South, Bolsover Colliery (in the Derbyshire constituency by Dennis Skinner for 49 years, until December 12th 2019) closed in 1993. And so on. All these places, and many others. decided to return Conservative MPs in 2019.

None of these places has had a working coal pit for 25 years or more, yet they are still consistently described in the media as `former mining communities’. I find that very telling, when there hasn’t been any mining there for a generation.

Coal mining forged the identity of these places. Almost everything revolved around the pits. Many of the houses were specifically by colliery owners to house the miners and their families. In the North-East, miners even had their own dialect, Pitmatic (distinct from Geordie). It wasn’t by any means an easy life being a miner but to be a miner at least meant having a distinct and proud identity,

The foundations of these communities were taken away during the Thatcher years. It’s not just about the local economic devastation, though that was bad enough, it was that the entire raison d’être disappeared. Over the subsequent decades little effort has been made by any Government of any complexion to stimulate the towns and villages so they remain `former mining communities’. Their past is well-defined, their future not.

After a decade of particularly severe austerity it’s hardly surprising that people in such areas expressed their anger at a political system that has failed them so badly, first in the 2016 referendum and then in this year’s General Election.

What’s less comprehensible (at least to me) is why anyone would think that their situation is likely to improve under the same Tories that have ignored them so consistently for so long. All I can guess is that it’s something to do with finding a sense of identity in a mining community that’s no longer a mining community. I suppose that, for some, this entails adopting increasingly nationalistic attitudes, such as were encouraged by the Conservative Party’s consistently xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

For myself I don’t see what identity has to do with nationality at all. We can identify ourselves in all kinds of ways without having to rely on the geographical accident of our birthplace.

I have no idea what the next five years will bring for places like Blyth Valley and Bolsover. But the wider question is whether by the time of the next General Election we will will be talking about the former United Kingdom.