On the anniversary of the last general election on 4 July it was reported that John Mac, the local candidate for Reform UK, was quoted as saying: “We’re basically going through a deindustrialisation of the country at the moment and I think we’re losing a lot of jobs,”It was also noted that Mac had worked for years at the Billingham plant of Imperial Chemical Industries’s (ICI), before taking voluntary redundancy in the 1990s. It was argued that Nigel Farage’s pivot to court the working class is speaking Mac’s language, after Mac had witnessed decades of industrial decline on Teesside first-hand, including the dismantling of the once-mighty industrial behemoth.
It is well documented that Farage is deliberately targeting voters in post-industrial communities across Britain, with evidence showing how Farage views the “next Brexit” as reversing net zero to create a manufacturing renaissance.
Higher unemployment and poverty
It was noted that four of the Tees Valley’s constituencies would go to Reform, if an election was held tomorrow, if the current opinion polls are correct. This would include Stockton North being won by Mac. Labour meanwhile is desperate not to allow a repeat of 2019, when its so-called red wall heartlands fell to the Tories. Labour currently holds six seats on Teesside, although in 2019 many of the seats in the area turned blue for the first time.
Additionally, it was said that, “Wednesday is market day in the town on the north bank of the Tees and Mac would usually be handing out leaflets to passersby, while Mac was said to have noted that people are frustrated with the cost of living, lack of opportunities for young people, and immigration, saying that ‘they just think Labour don’t represent the working class anymore.’” It was also noted that Mac’s own uncle, Maurice Foley, had been a trade unionist and Labour MP in the 1960s who left parliament in 1973 to become the deputy director general for development at the European Commission.
It was stated that the wider Teesside area, including Stockton, has higher than national average rates of poverty, unemployment and low educational attainment. It was argued that it was being left behind the rest of Britain, to a large extent, because of the legacy of what was described as “a de-industrial revolution”.
When considering what Teesside had been, it was also reported that none other than William Gladstone, the dominant political figure in Britain in the second half of the 19th century, had once described Teesside as an “infant Hercules”, a hotbed of chemicals, shipbuilding and steel making. It was said that, “Teesside has suffered waves of job losses in the past half century amid Britain’s broader industrial decline”.
Luke Telford, an academic at York University and author of Brexit and Industrial Decline commented on Teesside:
“It was central to British industrial capitalism, as a relatively prosperous booming place. The fall from grace has been huge.
“Deindustrialisation acts as the economic backdrop to a lot of the problems, combined with the lack of an alternative. It has been an unjust transition, without really a plan in place.
“It gives rise to this sense that nobody listens to us, nobody really cares, we’re just left to languish. And politicians aren’t doing anything about it. Clearly Farage and his political strategists are learning the lessons from where that form of populism has gathered pace.”
An Unjust Transition?
It has been said many times including here on North East Bylines that not only does there need to be a transition from the carbon-based economy to a carbon neutral economy, but it must also be a just transition. Jobs which are lost in the carbon-based economy must be replaced and indeed it can be argued that even more jobs should be created here in the North East, as we have been waiting for a just transition since the it closures and the shutting down of the steel works and shipyards in the 1980s and 1990s.
It is becoming ever clearer that if Labour is going to seriously deal with Reform, then they must deal seriously with the threat of an unjust transition and help to provide many thousands of well-paid green energy jobs here in the North East and in other de-industrialised areas of Britain.
The dangers are summed up well by Paul Peacock, a former production technician and Unite union rep at Sabic, a Teesside chemical firm facing closure, who argued that losing the jobs would be “another nail in the chemical coffin” for Teesside. The area would go into further decline, you then get the sort of politics of Reform coming in promising everything – and it’s easy to see why people would listen, when they have lost good, well-paid jobs.”
Reform tactics
It was noted as long ago as April last year that Reform have wanted a backlash against the much-needed drive for Net Zero, and it seems similarly clear that Reform is using the issue of Net Zero in a very similar way to that which Farage used Brexit; by stopping the move towards Net Zero, this will somehow put everything right in the lives of those who have lost out the de-industrialisation of places like Teesside since Thatcher was in power.
Reform is gaining support by saying that it will end the drive to Net Zero and somehow turn the clock back to the 1950s and see places like Teesside booming again with industries that have been long gone.
This may seem like nonsense, but to people who are desperate to have proper, decently paid jobs, this undoubtedly can seem very attractive. The truth is that if we went down this road, it would soon turn into a dead end, and we would fall further and further behind the rest of the world as they move towards innovation and new green industrial growth.
It would also be a great insult to our real industrial heritage in the North East; that of being a place ahead of the game, a place of innovation on the cutting edge of new industrial growth. In the future that can only really mean green growth. But there must be a just transition to such an economy and those who work in the older industries must not be allowed to be left behind.
Jake Milner
I asked Jake Milner from Teesside University for his views on the issue. Jake commented:
“It is critical that the transition to a low carbon economy be fused with the economic and social benefits of stable, good quality jobs. It is also critical that we understand the role historical injustice plays in the public psyche in old industrial regions such as Teesside. Communities do not simply ‘get over’ the effects of deindustrialisation, particularly if the process is managed poorly by industrial stakeholders and policymakers. Luke is correct to highlight THE sense of neglect many feel on Teesside, as well as the potential for populist sentiment to grow if a just transition is not achieved.”
Comment
It has been said for years that there must be a transition to a low carbon economy, but it must also be a just transition. This is the only way to keep people onside as we go forward into a greener future. Yet it shouldn’t be seen as a burden, but rather an opportunity to rebuild the economy in places such as Teesside and the wider North and to give real hope to people in places such as Stockton-on-Tees.
In this way, people can feel comfortable in buying into the Net Zero agenda and see through the misinformation coming from the right.
So, it appears that the way to beat Reform isn’t through aping their policies at all, but rather through having a vision of a better, greener country, with decent jobs, especially in those regions like the North East, which have been neglected for so long. But there needs to be vision and people, not profits need to be put in the centre of economic thinking.
The writing is on the wall, in tall, broad letters. But will those with the power to enact a truly just transition on Teesside and indeed the wider North East, read it and act accordingly?
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