Pete Wylie was part of the Crucial Three with Ian McCulloch (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/06/18/cause-man-must-be-his-own-saviour/ ) and Julian Cope (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/18/exploding-out-of-a-tunnel/ ) and was the last to succeed. John Peel and David Jenson fought for this to be a hit, they just kept playing in the evening until it finally made the charts and got daytime airplay.
There was a recession in the early 1980s that affected heavy industries incredibly badly and consequently those areas of the country that relied on them. The post-war consensus had involved both parties nationalising failing industries rather than modernise. The Thatcher government tore up this consensus and not only allowed industries to fail it also shut down nationalised industries that were a drain on public finances.
The net effect of this after years of being protected was industries that could not compete on the world stage, which meant that the communities built around them were devastated – either directly in work or in support services. Steel, coal, docks, car-making and so on. These industries were concentrated in the Midlands, Wales, Scotland and the North, not the Tory heartlands by any means.
There was nothing else for these people (mainly men) to do. There was no other business in those areas and a lot of these people had left school with no qualifications, expecting a lifetime’s employment in manual industry. The headlines on the news were unemployment figures as more and more people were left without work. A number of times the government way of calculating unemployment figures was changed – always resulting in a lower total.
The only reason that the UK could afford the massive unemployment benefits is that North Sea Oil revenues had come on stream. Rather than use these revenues to set up Sovereign Wealth Funds, like Norway, the UK just spent to leave this people out of work.
I am not saying that uneconomic and obsolete industries should have been supported ad infinitum. What was needed was massive training programs to give people new skills so they could get work and the money being used to invest in start-ups and attracting businesses to these areas. In the long run this would have been cheaper than paying benefits for years and years. That does not even take into account the cost of a generation of young people growing up in poverty with limited life chances.
If you want to see a drama about this Alan Bleasdale’s The Boys From the Blackstuff is a heart breaking series. Following a play about a group of Liverpudlian workers called The Blackstuff each episode focused on one of the characters. The most well remembered was Yosser Hughes who’s catchphrase, “Gissa job” became part of the fabric of the time. Chrissie (Michael Angelis, up until then better known as Our Lucien in The Liver Birds) whose family is sanctioned for him working cash in hand. He returns home hungry and toasts the last two slices of mouldy bread. His wife (played by a young Julie Walters) is furious as that was the only food for the children’s breakfast.
(The boys)
This song sums up that despair and the contempt that these people were treated with. This was Thatcher, so revered by the Tory party today – yet she abandoned millions to the scrapheap. We must not allow the same thing to happen in 2021.
The Story of the Blues
Five Miles Out 