Paul Mason the BBC economics reporter did an item tonight in which Stoke received prominence. In the weeks before a General Election Mason has been touring Britain looking at the economic state of the country before we go to the polls.
The section on Stoke looked at the negatives and featured an interview with a woman Wendy Johnson who had lost jobs at Cartwright and Edwards’s potbank, Wedgwood, Creda and eventually Remploy. As Mason remarked her employment history covered the old industry like Pottery and the newer industries that were an attempt to diversify the economy after the war where she made spin dryers. But ultimately all had failed.
Mason then was in a boxing club in Bentilee talking to local youths who certainly had hope and energy and spoke of the good people who lived in the City. He produced a baleful list of statistics on teenage pregnancy, ill health and mortality statistics that illustrated the difficulties the area had in adjusting to a post-industrial world. The camera panned over aerial shots of derelict land and abandoned factories. He looked at the old site of the Staffordshire Pottery at Meir lamenting that the future must surely include “something more than supermarkets and retail warehouses”.
Mason was then on a canal barge in Middleport. He remarked how Stoke was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the role of canals were the Internet of their day, offering communication channels and the means to transport goods quickly to the ports. He conversed with the Tory Social commentator Philip Blond how the 18th century had in place factors that lead to places like Stoke being a success. Such factors such as the de-centralisation of capital, the free flow of labour, greater mobility and the penetration of ideas through the growth of journals
Blond believed that we now had a sclerotic system with capital and power centralised although he conceded that access to information was far greater than the 18th century. The helicopter flew over moorland with Mason offering the view that the future must include developing a low carbon economy although in a landscape of wind farms its sobering to realise that there is no British manufacturer of wind turbines. He also believed that the future economy must be better geared to making things rather than the financial industry.
I believe that Mason is right. We should be looking at developing local entrepreneurs, or at least making it an attractive prospect for people with ideas to move to the area. Places like Stoke should not turn their back on manufacturing but instead embrace it and seek to build a future where industry and “making things” still played a key role. But this would be an industrial city based on smaller scale speciality and craft manufacturing,
Tomorrow Mason looks at signs of hope in the Stoke economy and the role that women are playing in the revival of the pottery industry.