What we've lost

[Pete W]

AA Gill of the Sunday Times is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think he hit it out of the park today with this small polemic:

George Orwell pointed out that Sheffield could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the old world... But that was all right, that didn't matter. In fact, that missed the great city point, because Sheffield wasn't competing for city-in-bloom awards, didn't have coordinated hanging baskets, didn't yearn to be known as the Positano of the north. Sheffield was never a pouting model; it was a pugilist, a tough guy dressed in a couture of sweat, smoke and muck. It sounded like Vulcan's forge and smelt of brown-bitter breath. Sheffield arm-wrestled Pittsburgh, Cracow and Malmo; it was a city of steel.
This is where industrial steel was born, in the crucible of boiling heat and pyrotechnics; these are the original dark satantic mills you sing about. Sheffield was ugly because it did something magnificent... And then they took away the thing that Sheffield made and made Sheffield, that gave it its dirty, sexy power, and it was left just ugly and scarred and old and pointless... The mills were murdered, the furnaces smothered by Valley Centertainment, multiplexes and bowling alleys, with "several exciting restaurants".
The guilty gifts the southern governments gave to the deindustrialised cities of the north in place of work and self-respect never cease to astonish. There was the patronising childishness of sculpture parks and funfairs, the boating lakes and discount villages, and, most galling and humiliating, the museums of labour where grandchildren of craftsmen could pay to see the tools of pride and self-determination.

 

[Jacob]

If you have a look at "Back to the Grindstone" you get some idea of why it was lost, though it isn't simple by any means, nor was it just a Sheffield phenomenon.
AA Gill has an appallingly patronising Londoner's view of the north. What's that nonsense about southern governments?
Sheffield was known as the biggest village in the world because of the lack of sprawling suburbs and surrounded by hills. It was and is highly rated as a place to live by all who know it. Steel is still big, but gone high tec, away from the tiny workshops and appalling conditions.
Unfortunately workers want proper wages nowadays but you can still buy top class Sheffield cutlery but only at realistic prices e.g. David Mellor.
Sorry they aren't all staggering around in clogs or bare feet, permanently p**sed and very poor. It must be so disappointing for southern tourists!

 

[studders]

AA Gill has an appallingly patronising Londoner's view of the north.

Sorry they aren't all staggering around in clogs or bare feet, permanently p**sed and very poor. It must be so disappointing for southern tourists!

:roll:

 

[nanscombe]

Sorry they aren't all staggering around in clogs or bare feet, permanently p**sed and very poor. It must be so disappointing for southern tourists!

... speaking of patronising.

 

[Pete W]

You know Jacob, your ability to miss every point in order to grind your own small set of axes is nothing short of astonishing. I had written a point-by-point refutation of your drivel-filled post, but in the end can't be bothered.

I will only point out that AA Gill is a Scot; I was born and grew up 80 miles north of Sheffield, which makes you a southerner to both of us.

 

[Sawyer]

Actually, I think Jacob's got a point. What was the point by point refutation please?

Cutlery apart of course, lets' not forget that there are some quite nice woodworking tools still being made in Sheffield: also at realistic prices.

 

[Jacob]

...
I will only point out that AA Gill is a Scot;

Until he was 1 year old or something. A definite Londoner, Sunday Times restaurant reviewer and Telegraph journalist. Say no more. He is not likely to have anything interesting to say about anything! :roll:

I was born and grew up 80 miles north of Sheffield, which makes you a southerner to both of us.

Well I was born and grew up much closer to Sheffield than that! (if that means anything at all)

...your ability to miss every point...

Yes I missed it. What was your point?

PS just had another look at AA Gill's rubbish - "..the mills were murdered..patronising childishness..." what utter nonsense.

 

[Doug B]

AA Gill of the Sunday Times is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think he hit it out of the park today with this small polemic:

and, most galling and humiliating, the museums of labour where grandchildren of craftsmen could pay to see the tools of pride and self-determination.

Aren`t these type of museums all over the country & not just limited to the north, I seem to remember going to the Weald & Downland museum & seeing plenty of tools which i`m sure would have been used with pride & self determination.

It`s about remembering & learning about the past, lest we forget, & all that.

 

[Jacob]

...
Aren`t these type of museums all over the country & not just limited to the north, I seem to remember going to the Weald & Downland museum & seeing plenty of tools which i`m sure would have been used with pride & self determination.

It`s about remembering & learning about the past, lest we forget, & all that.

They are all over the f****g place, in every country. Times they are a changing, and generally for the better.

Just a detail but "dark satanic mills" were a London thing, it says here.
Gill was just burbling on ignorantly.

 

[Pete W]

Just a detail but "dark satanic mills" were a London thing, it says here.
Gill was just burbling on ignorantly.

That's one interpretation (you'll also find the notion that Blake meant the universities, or the Church of England) but I doubt you'll find much support for the idea that London was a "green and pleasant land" before the building of Albion Mills (which as the Wikipedia article makes clear was destroyed 15 years before Blake wrote the poem). On the other hand, you'll find widespread acceptance that the dark satanic mills were to be found in the newly-industrialised towns and cities north of London, largely in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and elsewhere.

A definite Londoner, Sunday Times restaurant reviewer and Telegraph journalist. Say no more. He is not likely to have anything interesting to say about anything!

Priceless! If I want someone to "burble on ignorantly", you're the man for me Jacob.

 

[Jacob]

Not sure why my first post seems to have generated this round of insults (don't tell me, I don't care, up yours' too!).

What I found annoying about Gill is not only his factual inaccuracies and obvious ignorance about Sheffield, but also the blame attached to the ubiquitous "they" who "took away..etc" from Sheffield.
It's a Daily Mail, Telegraph, golf club bar, right-wing sort of thing to blame something , someone, anyone, for whatever is seen to be wrong.
"Blame culture" - nearly always an irrelevant, lazy and stupid response to complex issues. But then he is only a restaurant reviewer and a tory.

PS "Back to the Grindstone" is well worth reading though he has little to say about woodwork tools, except he comments on one of the Marples firms (making marking gauges and bevels) - basically two decrepit old chaps in a filthy dark and dangerous small workshop. I've lent it to Brian but I'll quote it in full when I get it back.

 

[studders]

Not sure why my first post seems to have generated this round of insults

Yeah, complete mystery innit?

 

[condeesteso]

Woah!! I really like this piece... for several reasons. Very well written, about a city I grew up near, and touching on an issue that saddens me (I choose that word with care) - the steady demise of the traditional toolmaking industry that was a part of what made Sheffield World-famous.
I would not question the fortunes of Sheffield for one moment, but there are cities that may have helped put the Great into Britain and Sheffield is one of them. I recall the smoke plume over Sheffield and Rotherham, the dead and foaming River Don. It's a far better place to live now but..."It sounded like Vulcan's forge and smelt of brown-bitter breath". Well yes, to me as a small boy it did. I don't think there is anything personal here, and I think his articulation of the steel city is actually a real compliment to the place and it's people.
I don't agree with "ugly and scarred and old and pointless" but pride? Absolutely. The fact I might not agree with one point doesn't trouble me in the least.
And as for the old North / South nonsense - how very boring.

 

[Pete W]

It's a Daily Mail, Telegraph, golf club bar, right-wing sort of thing to blame something , someone, anyone, for whatever is seen to be wrong."

What planet are you on? The person "everyone blames" for what happened to Britain's manufacturing industries is Margaret Thatcher, which is why 30 years after the event the Tories can't buy a seat in Sheffield.

Your fixation on old chaps grinding away in unsafe old workshops is a distraction. What we're talking about here is an industry that indirectly employed hundreds of thousands, fully half of the working population of Sheffield and district. Thatcher's government took power in 1979 - by 1981 unemployment in Sheffield rose above the national average for the first time ever. It went from 4% in 1978 to 11.3% in 1981. By 1984 it was up to 15.5%. Manufacturing industry in Sheffield went from providing 50% of the jobs in 1971 to less than 25% in 1984.

Last year, manufacturing jobs accounted for just 10% of total employment in Sheffield - "services" account for 85%. "What we've lost" is the skills, the crafts, and the jobs and replaced them with call centres (which is why those well-known right-wingers The Guardian and the TUC have dubbed them the new dark, satanic mills.

 

[Jacob]

Quite happy to accept Thatcher as responsible but I'm sure that's not what AA Gill had in mind. She sold off British Steel to the Indians after all.
But the cutlery and tool trade was passing away long before, after a brief post war revival, but Sheffield now is doing a lot better than Pittsburgh and Cracow, but perhaps not Malmo.

 

[Pete W]

Woah!! I really like this piece... for several reasons. Very well written, about a city I grew up near, and touching on an issue that saddens me (I choose that word with care) - the steady demise of the traditional toolmaking industry that was a part of what made Sheffield World-famous.

Well I'm glad that at least one person shared my sense of the piece. As for the "ugly and scarred and old and pointless", ugly is in the eye of the beholder, scarred and old are inarguable [I think] and 'pointless' would be, um... the point. There was a time when towns and cities were identified with what they did - steel, coal, ships, trains, cars. When all of those things are gone, and everywhere is the same (economically) as everywhere else, dependent on call centres and the same high street shops - any of which could, in fact, be anywhere else at the whim of the directors - that's part of what we've lost.

 

[Jacob]

OK crossed wires!
If there is any Thatcher kicking involved then please count me in! And Meadowhall is ghastly.
I have been under the influence of "Back to the Grindstone" which portrays grim, inefficient, low paid, unsafe working conditions under a medieval set-up of small rented workshops, ("wheels" as many of them were known - i.e. shops with belt driven shafts from one water-wheel or steam/gas engine), self employed out-work with no security when times were bad and desperate competition when good - all quite recently faded away, within living memory.
The author himself doesn't see it entirely like that - it's all jolly japes and booze, and he was more successful than many.

 

[bugbear]

I have been under the influence of "Back to the Grindstone"

Indeed. You've spoken of little else.

BugBear

 

[Sawyer]

'Back to the Grindstone' sounds a very interesting read, perhaps I'll take a look.

The fact is that there never were any 'Good Old Days'. Workers in the Sheffield cutlery trade, whilst producing some of the world's finest steel products were rewarded with a life of grinding poverty (excuse the pun). Occupational illnesses were endemic and included muscular-skeletal disorders (bad posture over excessive working hours), eye complaints and injuries (from grinding wheels) and chronic lung disease (grinding dust) causing frequent early death.

Gill makes it sound so rosy, doesn't he? Mind you, he also mentions Orwell, who is as good a starting point as any; worth following up with EP Thompson, or Friederich Engels; none of which would be the the Sunday Times' liking. Or try Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: not about Sheffield, but extremely thought provoking and explains the problem with excessive competition.

 

[Digit]

I'm about to upset jacob, again.
Jacob, for some years I lived in the village of St Georges in Shropshire. I owned the old coaching inn there. It was built in 1792 to supply accommodation for people buying or selling in the village. The village was built to house labour that worked in the surrounding 'mills.'
A lady visiting described the place as the 'gates of Hell!'
The whole area was one economic unit. The pits supplied coal, the coal was converted into Coke to supply iron foundries and steel converters. The surplace heat was used to fire kilns for clay products, including sanitary ware, bricks and tiles.
The iron and steel was used to produce locomotives and rails.
All this in one community.
Thatcher didn't destroy one bit of it, not that I had any time for the lady, the do gooders who nationalised the coal industry did that by taking over the coal production and raising the prices to 'market levels,' thus removing the cheap fuel that all the others relied upon.
Nationlisation was good for the miners in general, but in St Georges it destroyed the local commuity, and the mines!

Roy.