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Listed Status Row as Dorman Long Tower Falls & 'Detecting for Veterans' Collapses - WB 24th Sept 2021
68 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/archaeosoup
0:00 Introduction
01:53 Three Things to Keep an Eye on…
09:00 The Dorman Long Tower
***
Link of the Week:
Former HE Listing for Dorman Long Tower:
https://tinyurl.com/3erbp934
***
Links:
3,500 Year Old Clay Tablet Purchased by Hobby Lobby Returning to Iraq After 30 Years:
Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to be formally handed back to Iraq:
Stonehenge campaigners welcome decision not to appeal court ruling:
***
Dorman Long Tower: Council ‘Cannot Consider Heritage’ Over Demolition:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-58485323
Brutalist Teesside Tower Handed Lifeline by Historic England Listing:
Former Historic England Listing for Dorman Long Tower:
MP Jacob Young’s former ‘Save Dorman Long Tower’ Page:
MP Jacob Young’s statement on Dorman Long Tower Demolition:
https://twitter.com/JacobYoungMP/status/1438913195750662145?s=19
Dorman Long Tower to be Destroyed after Listed Status Revoked:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-58593615
Green Light Given to Demolish Dorman Long Tower After Successful Appeal:
Dorman Long Tower to be Demolished as Nadine Dorries Axes Listed Status:
Report Reveals Cost of Repairing Dorman Long Tower:
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19593244.report-reveals-cost-repairing-dorman-long-tower/
Dorman Long: Exp
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Soupcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
Weekly Archaeological News Update
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Watching Brief for the week of the 20th of September 2021. I am joined as ever by the excellent Andy Brockman, my co-host and collaborator extraordinaire. Good afternoon Mark, you're being far too kind as you always are. Oh it's a pleasure, it's so easy when I'm working with such a magnificent, magnificent colleague, you know.
00:01:07
Speaker
OK, saboteur then. Let's go with saboteur. Anything regardless. That's right.
UK Culture Minister's Appointment: Implications
00:01:15
Speaker
Regardless of whether Andy is a collaborator or a saboteur, our watching brief does in fact continue our ongoing mission to examine the archaeological news of the week and bring it to you here in the form of a video to add to the conversation and the discussion below. And this week we have a fairly
00:01:37
Speaker
a fairly dominant story actually, a story that's been present in the minds of archaeologists, historians and heritage professionals and frankly the interested public throughout the whole week.
00:01:50
Speaker
because it's really a pointer to the culture surrounding culture actually in the UK, particularly with the appointments of a new culture minister. So it's a real milestone and a bit of a, I suppose, a mark of intent potentially. So it's something that we think and we hope people will be interested in outside the UK as well. But before we dive into that, we have a couple of new slides that you want to highlight, do we not, Andy?
Artifact Trafficking and Hobby Lobby Case
00:02:19
Speaker
That's right. Unfortunately, we haven't got time to mention the fact that the Hobby Lobby has been forced to return the Gilgamesh dream tablet to the government in Iraq from whence it was looted. Normally, obviously, something like that is the culmination of the story we've been covering for some time. So mentioning again that the Hobby Lobby and its unfortunate habit of buying trafficked artifacts, we just haven't got time to mention that. No, no, no, no time.
00:02:49
Speaker
And the thing is, so the thing is, it's I mean, you know, it's just it's just because they keep on cementing their position at the pinnacle of of of our poetry scale with that Lifetime Achievement Award. It's just embarrassing to have to mention it again, isn't it? We don't have to mention it. It's fine. We can move on. We can put it in a drawer. Absolutely. Yes, until I was forced to take it out again because it had been looted.
00:03:14
Speaker
Um, no, we just haven't got time to any of that. And the fact that, you know, an important artifact from HMS Potemu is now heading back to the Middle East and the government of Iraq and Iraq's museums where it belongs. So, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll park that one. Okay. What's the second story?
Community Interest Company Fraud Scandal
00:03:37
Speaker
The second story is actually equally serious in its way, and it comes from the world of UK metal detecting, and it's the collapse of a community interest company called Detecting for Veterans, which was set up three or four years ago now to
00:03:56
Speaker
facilitate veterans and people who wanted to support veteran causes, veterans from the armed services and the blue light services to go metal detecting. It was quite high profile, it attracted a fair amount of coverage. It was very successful in obtaining permissions, which is the key to metal detecting these days. And all appeared to be proceeding quite smoothly under the directorship of a man called Jason Massey.
00:04:25
Speaker
Then, just over a week ago, accusations appeared in social media that Mr Massey had effectively been committing fraud by diverting money that had been donated to Detecting for Veterans by people taking part in Detecting for Veterans rallies.
00:04:46
Speaker
Now there appears to be an ongoing police investigation, nothing is proven yet and obviously Mr Massey is innocent until proven guilty, although it is also alleged that he
00:05:02
Speaker
It was announced that he was in hospital with a stroke and was very ill when in fact he was observed by people who were watching his house connected with the company literally almost taking out the bins. It was one of those tabloid style stings where you take out somebody's house and watch their comings and goings. As I say, there is nothing proven yet. The investigation is ongoing.
00:05:30
Speaker
But the company effectively has collapsed in its website. Its Facebook page has been closed down and there are appeals to contact the police if people feel they've lost money.
00:05:46
Speaker
So it's a story to watch. And I think, obviously, as I said before, Mr. Mass is innocent until proven guilty of anything. At the moment, there aren't even any charges. But whatever happens in the case of detecting for veterans, it highlights concerns that many people have had in the archaeological world for a long time about metal detecting.
00:06:07
Speaker
rally companies and the lack of accountability and the lack of transparency in their operations. So I think regardless of what happens with D4V, the issues that are highlighted by what appears to have happened won't go away. No. And it's always, I hate to say it, but it's always veterans, isn't it? It's always, unfortunately, it's a very attractive way of
00:06:37
Speaker
of gaining attention and raising money, and in this case it's potentially those sorts of
00:06:47
Speaker
people who are vulnerable or people who are simply served who are also at risk of losing out here. It's a real shame. It is. And I'll just say very quickly, actually, a lot of the response on social media has been saying exactly that. But this is an extremely sensitive area. We're dealing with people's health and mental health and well being at the same time. One of the things that was said about detecting for veterans was it was very successful in land banking.
00:07:17
Speaker
metal detecting permissions on the basis that it was a veteran, it wasn't a charity, it's a community interest company, it's a different thing, as much as there's a regulation about it. And but people were treating it as though it was a veteran's charity, and it was gaining support on those grounds, understandably, because, you know, quite understandably, people want to support good causes and supporting, you know, veterans of the armed services, particularly those with
00:07:46
Speaker
health or mental health issues and so on. It's a popular and needed avenue. So the fact that D4V appears to have collapsed in this way is before it's anything else, it's upsetting to anyone who's particularly veterans and those who are raising money for veterans.
Stonehenge Tunnel Project and Dorman Long Tower Controversy
00:08:10
Speaker
Okay, and finally we have something from Stonehenge, do we not? That's right, it's a news line and it's quite a significant news line, I think. Lido, the legal firm that was representing the campaign to prevent the Stonehenge dual-carriageway and tunnel going ahead, announced, put out a press release a couple of days ago, that the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps
00:08:37
Speaker
has decided not to appeal the legal decision that granting permission to build the Stonehenge Tunnel and deal courage away across the World Heritage Site was unlawful on two grounds. The government has stepped back from that so as things stand the position is that if they wish to carry on with the project it has to be reassessed, it has to go to consultation again from interested parties. There is a break on
00:09:06
Speaker
It's unclear at the moment whether enabling work is going to continue or whether it remains frozen. But initially the government was saying, regardless of the decision, enabling works continue, weren't they? But now it's unclear. Okay. Yes. And I'm sure we'll return to this in due course.
00:09:27
Speaker
Well, let us begin our main course, I suppose you could say, by introducing people to the Dorman Long Tower. This is a coal bunker structure built in a brutalist style in the 1950s, I do believe.
00:09:47
Speaker
in a place called Redcar. It's part of the Tees Valley Combined Authority and it is here in the northeast of England on the coast and it was built as part of Redcar's very proud tradition of steel production, smelting and export, which is important to note
00:10:13
Speaker
in recent years has seen a decline and an eventual shutdown of that industry in that area.
00:10:22
Speaker
The last time I was in Redcar, I was buying a PC, oddly enough, but I remember as we were driving through, we were driving past some of these sites, and that was in the balance. The question was whether or not these sites would continue, because once you shut them down, once you stop the furnaces burning,
00:10:44
Speaker
Essentially, the molten slag and metal and other parts of the plant become unusable. They sort of fuse. They cut there. It's no longer alive. In a very real sense, the industry has died, and it's been allowed to die under what we should also point out as an extension of the current government. We've had a decade now of conservative administration in this country, and this happened under their watch.
00:11:13
Speaker
In recent years there was a proposal, was there not, to demolish this structure and it is quite an interesting structure. It's got a very specific design, it's quite pleasingly symmetrical, it's also quite functional, a la brutalism, and it has the words dormant long written on the outside of the structure. It's very, well dare I say, even iconic. It could have been something akin to the Angel of the North or
00:11:43
Speaker
any number of structures that you see across the country, but that's no longer going to be the case because unfortunately it was demolished early in the morning on Sunday morning. How did this happen, Andy? What happened? Because you can see why some people wanted to keep it, can't you?
00:12:06
Speaker
This is a story of high heritage politics and I think it can be argued low cunning. Basically, the area where the Dormund Long Tower is situated, the former T's work site, still work site, of which really the towers, the last upstanding marker
00:12:36
Speaker
has been slated to become a wind farm production facility. T's value mayor Ben Hoochen, who is a conservative and is fully aligned with the government's leveling up and development agenda, argued that the tower needed to go because it was in the way and it will be expensive to maintain. Local campaigners
00:13:03
Speaker
So you were in shock intake of breath there as though you were going to answer. Well, I was about to say, but it sounds like you were about to say something similar to it. But it's interesting, though, that during the last election, it appears that the MP was standing on the grounds that the tower should probably be kept subject to a spending review and it being shown to be viable. And presumably there were local campaigners who agreed with that stance.
00:13:27
Speaker
That's right. A local politician wouldn't stand with that as part of their platform if there wasn't a local interest in that policy, I think is fair to say. So up until really 10 days ago, roughly, the situation was that there was a campaign to save the tower. And there was also a campaign on an intent on the part of Mayor Hoochen and the Development Authority to demolish it.
00:13:56
Speaker
what appears to have precipitated events is that the local authority confirmed a date of demolition. And then almost immediately, Historic England gave the structure a grade two emergency listing, which halted the demolition. Historic England announced the emergency listing on the 10th of September.
00:14:26
Speaker
the following Sunday the 12th, according to Mayor Hoochin's press release.
00:14:32
Speaker
the, he and the, the Development Authority lodged an appeal with the Secretary of State for Culture, Digital Culture, Media and Sport, who at that stage was the Oliver Dowden. So basically, what happened was, historically granted the listing, it was then immediately appealed by another party and the whole thing legally is refereed by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport down in Whitehall. Yes.
00:15:00
Speaker
An apartment for digital, digital culture. Digital culture, media and sport, down in Whitehall. And here we need to point out and remind our viewer that the ruling party is the Conservatives and Mayor Huchen is also a Conservative. Yes. As is the local MP. As is the local MP. Yeah. So anyway, to cut to the chase, there appears to be a certain amount of swimming throwing an argument and then on the following Friday,
00:15:29
Speaker
It was announced by the new Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries.
00:15:34
Speaker
that she had taken the decision to rescind the listing, claiming that, contrary to what historic England had said in its justification, that the building was of limited interest and was physically damaged and would be difficult to conserve, and therefore the listing was voided.
00:16:01
Speaker
Well, she's also quoted as saying that it's clear that the building is essentially a functional structure with that being a justification for it not to be kept. But as I was pointing out to you, that's a very
00:16:14
Speaker
flip-floppy, wishy-washy language. I mean, we could describe the Queen Elizabeth, is it the second tower? The tower that houses the Big Ben bell and clock mechanism as being essentially functional. All buildings are functional in that sense. And then, well, we'll come back to her reactions to her qualifications to make these sorts of comments in a moment, I suppose, won't we? But then continue.
00:16:41
Speaker
No, you're right to raise that. It's an important point to make. It's interesting that in greeting Culture Secretary Nadine Doris' decision, Mahoutian put out a press release which contains various quotes.
00:17:02
Speaker
And he said, approving our appeal was the first decision of the new Secretary of State. This goes to show just how important the successful redevelopment of the red car former steel worksite is to everyone in government. And then he said,
00:17:18
Speaker
And this is the, this is the, essentially, it's a provocative challenge to the heritage groups that were involved. It's almost some people might see this as almost triumphalism. This is a direct quote from, from Mehichin's press release. This reverses the decision on its grade two listing made after an application by local activists.
00:17:39
Speaker
that if allowed to stand would have cost the taxpayer in excess of nine million pounds. That's money that would not be spent on the creation of jobs, the NHS, transport and other important services. Worse than that, it would have cost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of pounds of investment that we were and still are trying to bring to the site where the Dorman Long Tower currently stands. Now, that in itself, by using a loaded term like activist,
00:18:08
Speaker
trusty activists. Those people hanging themselves in trees and digging under the ground and gluing themselves the most away. Absolutely. Absolutely. And people who disagree with Mayor Hoochin would argue, for example, that he's setting up a false choice. The choice between conserving heritage and the NHS is a false binary.
00:18:31
Speaker
Well, also as well the choice between conservation and progress being a false plan. Absolutely. And the fact that, you know, pretty much any development can be designed around something that, you know, something that already exists on the site. If somebody wants to build something new in Canterbury, they can apply for planning permission so long as they respect the cathedral.
00:18:54
Speaker
Or, for example, on the banks of the River Tyne, there was the construction of the wonderful Sage Gateshead Opera House and your music performance space next to the Tyne Bridge, but also just up the bank, like within the 100 meters, well, maybe 200 meters, of a former flour mill called the Baltic that was converted into an art gallery and serves the community very well. They didn't have to demolish the Baltic to build the Sage.
00:19:23
Speaker
So, as you say, there are more often than not, there are options in these cases. Mr. Hoochin also said, I would like to send a message to those that think that trying to stop these developments is the right thing to do.
00:19:37
Speaker
Our heritage does not lie in a rotting coal bunker or our heritage lies in the people that built this great nation. It lies in structures that stand tall across the world from the Shard, Sydney Harbour Bridge and the One World Trade Centre.
00:19:56
Speaker
Which immediately struck me as being, again, a false dichotomy going on here. No one's suggesting that you keep a rotting coal pit in that sense.
00:20:11
Speaker
or a coal bunker necessarily. It's about the way in which that heritage is used and discussed and preserved. For example, I believe the MP put out a statement and we should name him, I keep on calling him the MP. Jacob Young MP put out a statement saying that he hoped with the destruction of the tower that they could keep the lettering off the side.
00:20:40
Speaker
it looks like they didn't. The video shows that the whole tower fell with the lettering on the side of the building still. We'll come to the timing in a minute. Yeah, yeah. But this notion that in order to appreciate the heritage of the area, one should only look to one's people, the flesh of the people in the northeast of England, is, I hate to say it, it's actually pseudo-fascistic. And I'm not literally calling the mayor a fascist, but it is a form of history that's built in
00:21:10
Speaker
blood and soil rhetoric. The people are our history. That's not true because the people are also subject to ongoing narratives about, for example, progress. This idea of standing in the way of progress, coming straight on the heels of having just allowed an industry to die in the region is deeply political. So this isn't about a heritage narrative or actually taking pride in something. This is about
00:21:40
Speaker
shaping what people think of themselves and their region, which is a separate issue. There's also the question of, is he implying that people need to travel to London, Sydney or New York in order to experience their heritage if they're from Redcar? It's high rhetoric, but it's also highly flawed as well. It's not actually good. And again, once again, I say I'm not suggesting that the tower had to be kept.
00:22:08
Speaker
I'm suggesting that the heritage has to be better, better threat than it has been threat. Yes, absolutely. There are always arguments around heritage and what is heritage. And for example, I think one of our colleagues tweeted out that, oh, if it had had a statue of a slave trader on top, it would have been kept.
00:22:31
Speaker
Now, that leads me to a very, it's a sort of a bit of a smart observation, but for example, what that's alluding to is the people of Bristol or a group of people in Bristol, I should say, tearing down the statues for Edward Colston and dunking it in Bristol Harbour. He's now been rescued and he's now on display again, but this time in Bristol Museum.
00:22:59
Speaker
Now, that event caused a changing government policy, there is going to be a whole new law to protect and prevent and criminalize that kind of activity in taking down statues.
00:23:15
Speaker
And Edward Colston's statue had the same level of protection in grade two as was being proposed for the Dormant Long Tower. You can see that there in two artifacts is the argument about what is heritage and whose heritage is it.
00:23:35
Speaker
But I think for me, the importance of this, and I guess it's the point I'd finish on, because I think the story has somewhere to go yet. And for me, covering these things sort of generalistically, the questions are about process.
00:23:57
Speaker
and the integrity of a process because on the face of it historic England listing something and then having it delisted barely a week later and having it blown up
00:24:10
Speaker
a couple of days later than that, it potentially I think has a chilling effect on the willingness to list particularly modern buildings that may be in the way of developments and developers regardless of who they are.
00:24:29
Speaker
Why go through the bother of preserving something, of listing something, when it's going to be overridden by the Secretary of State? And then in fact, this is really interesting in that the listing states have been granted and then it was overridden. It wasn't the case of the Secretary of State intervening before listing. It was intervening after listing.
00:24:52
Speaker
Well, but also on top of that, we have the extra interesting elements and that is that historic England has gone so far as to stand by that decision. Well, can I put that in context? Can I put that in context? Because that was in the next point. In his press release,
00:25:11
Speaker
Mayor Huynh said, quote, historic England has accepted the listing was a mistake. It was made by a junior officer who agreed to listing without ever seeing the structure itself. The application that was made was inaccurate, incomplete and misleading and would have put the progress and jobs at risk. Progress. There's the word again. You can't have progress without dynamite, remember?
00:25:35
Speaker
Well, I think there are people that would disagree with that. And certainly in this case, and it has to be said, I think relatively unusually, Historic England has stood their ground. And I think it's worth quoting what the actual listing said. Now, the listing was taken down from the Historic England website because obviously it no longer had any legal standing. But fortunately, it was kept in the web archive of what's often called the Wayback Machine.
00:26:01
Speaker
And so we can actually see what the grounds were for listing the Dormand Long Tower. And it's listed on the grounds of architectural interest as a quote, recognized example of early brutalist architecture, a fine example of austere design, a deliberately monumental architectural statement of confidence by the then newly denationalized Dormand Long Company in the mid 1950s.
00:26:25
Speaker
and a rare quote considered to be nationally unique surviving structure from the 20th century coal, iron and steel industry. A design which is above the purely function is also cleverly combines control and storage and firefighting functions to form a state-of-the-art cooking plant, nationally unique. You don't use those words in a heritage context unless you've considered them. And then it also talks about the historic interest as part of the
00:26:52
Speaker
the heavy engineering and steel industry on Teesside, which was the principal industry for most of the 20th century, giving the, and in fact, the listing references Mayor Hoochin's example of the Sydney Harbour Bridge being part, in part at least, a monument to the skills and ability of the steel workers in the northeast. So that is what
00:27:19
Speaker
Mayor Hoochen is saying is a mistake. And historic England has stood by their listing and basically said, no, it wasn't a mistake. We knew exactly what we were doing. Yeah. And that's where we stand at the moment. Both sides are disagreeing with each other. I think what the thing to watch is what comes out about the way this decision was made, the contacts between that may have taken place between Mayor Hoochen
00:27:49
Speaker
the culture sector is first of all Oliver Dowd and the men, the Dean Dorries and historic England because it's clear historic England, historic England wouldn't have taken the stance they had if they didn't feel somewhat hard done by in this. True, but also as well arguably they wouldn't have demolished the tower at 2am on Sunday the September of 19th in in circumstances that were entirely
00:28:14
Speaker
that they were entirely confident in and with. Normally these are daytime events, normally people gather around and view these collapses and they aren't rushed through like this. I suppose you could argue that the prep was ready, they were good to go and they had to do it now. But it feels as if it was rushed through. An awful lot of commentary around it was essentially saying that
00:28:42
Speaker
that this was rushing to finalize a decision, as it were.
Cultural Heritage Management Concerns
00:28:46
Speaker
I won't use language along the lines of hiding a crime, and I think that's not entirely appropriate. Other people have been using that language. But it's more a case of it was trying to put a false stop on something, rather than having a drawn-out conversation. OK. I think people need to understand how these things work legally. The only lever that campaigners have in this kind of situation is something called judicial review.
00:29:13
Speaker
And so it is possible to argue that what Mayor Huchen was doing by what appears to be rushing through the demolition
00:29:30
Speaker
was to create a full stop, as you've described it, before anybody on the conservation side could get together a judicial review, which is expensive and is difficult, and takes a little bit of organizing, unless you've got a very clear, for example, an organization which has a very clear purpose and money.
00:30:00
Speaker
So you can argue, as I say, that Huqin was trying to prevent another intervention by creating a new reality. For example, a judicial review would be refused potentially on the grounds that actually whatever a judge decided, there was no public interest because the event had already happened.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yes. There was no going back. Having said that, recently, there was a precedent in North London that a developer who demolished a great two-listed pub, without planning permission, had to go back and reconstruct it exactly. Now, here, planning permission was in place, permission to demolish was in place, the listing overrode that, the listing was cancelled. So,
00:30:53
Speaker
If you went to J.R., you have to prove another element of unlawfulness within the process. What has happened here is that whatever research might be going on into the process and the documents and FOIs and things like that, in a sense, it now is only of historic interest because the courts will almost certainly not intervene because of the
00:31:20
Speaker
because there's nothing to say because what's happened there's nothing to say anymore exactly so um i think it's probably worth while saying then that this does as we draw this to a close i suppose this this i think sets a tone
00:31:35
Speaker
I suppose first and foremost, as I always feel compelled to say in these cases, archaeologists are not anti-development. They aren't anti-progress. They don't just want to preserve things in aspect for the sake of preserving things in aspect. And in this instance, as I said at the beginning, I'm not convinced that the tower necessarily had to be kept.
00:31:54
Speaker
But it had to be probably better understood. The argument could have been more clearly made. The conversation, for example, surrounding the preservation of elements of the tower, such as the lettering on the side, could have been done with more care and due process for the sake of community and for the sake of that pride that the mayor apparently takes so much pride in. But regardless of that, regardless of the fact that, you know, I keep on having to repeat this, that archaeology is not against progress,
00:32:24
Speaker
this is a it sets a tone for the person
00:32:28
Speaker
in the new Culture Secretary, Nadine Doris, that now archaeologists and other campaigners are having to deal with when it comes to the status of archaeology, heritage and other culture in this country in terms of its funding, its value, its moral and ethical status and so on and so forth. We are living in times when some of our national leaders don't want us to use the word crisis
00:32:55
Speaker
But it does certainly for people who are losing their jobs feel like a time of crisis when university departments are being shut down, people are having their jobs put under review, we've lost in recent years the archaeology GCSE, the archaeology A level, those are two high school qualifications for people who may not know, and conversations like this effortlessly
00:33:18
Speaker
I'm quoting myself now, a tweet that I put out a few days ago, but they effortlessly hijack the national conversation. They effortlessly actually do what months of campaigning from well-meaning archaeologists and others have been trying to do, and that is
00:33:40
Speaker
complete an element of a conversation or a paragraph in a conversation on the national stage as to what we think of our physical heritage and how we deal with our physical heritage and actually what qualifies as heritage.
00:33:54
Speaker
Some people were trying to make the case that this represented true working class heritage and it's truly northern monumental stuff in its purest form. That may or may not be the case. I'd be interested to know if this was a say an Elizabethan watchtower or something like that, would it have stood more of a chance of staying up? It's hard to know to a certain extent but
00:34:22
Speaker
But the fact that we have a Secretary of State who can come out with a simple pronouncement or just confirming her predecessor's point of view by making a statement like, it's just essentially a functional building.
00:34:37
Speaker
doesn't speak to granular detail, doesn't speak to an interest in the stuff of culture, of heritage, of what makes a place actually interesting, and if nothing else, the information that can be taken from these places and these monuments and held within the community in other forms. It simply speaks of, well, I'm not interested, therefore it can go.
00:35:02
Speaker
And it sets an unfortunate tone. I can't help but wonder what this means for this ongoing conversation that we're having at the moment in this country in the context of, as we've been covering recently on Watching Brief, interviews with members of staff at Worcester, for example, at Sheffield and other places. Chester have just come out of a review process. Hull hasn't escaped unscathed. And there are others. But what do you think? Do you think that this was a
00:35:31
Speaker
as I've seen described this was a bit of a swift sort of slap on the wrist if not a slight punishment beating in fact essentially saying no we're in charge shut up kind of thing
00:35:42
Speaker
Okay, a bit of historical perspective. I mean, first of all, yes, it is absolutely an argument, as we said earlier in this conversation. It's an argument about what is heritage, whose heritage, and who makes the decisions about heritage. You can argue, and some people have argued that, for example, the dormant long tower
00:36:07
Speaker
was a memorial effectively to generations of TSI steelworkers, northeast steelworkers. And so, and incidentally, so I don't mean to interrupt your train of thought there, but incidentally, just across the river in South Shields, the F Pit Museum as a pit head that's been saved as a local museum,
00:36:28
Speaker
Further north, in Northumberland, there is a museum and county, if not regional archive, that is also a pithead. They've kept the machine houses and other buildings. And there's the Bimish Living History Centre. Bimish Living History Centre, where they actually move these buildings to and reconstruct them. Woodhorn, that's it, the Woodhorn Museum in Northumberland. These buildings can have lives after their industrial selves.
00:36:55
Speaker
and they can be relevant structures, but sorry I don't mean to break your train of thought, continue.
Balancing Conservation with Modern Progress
00:37:01
Speaker
No, no, you're quite right to raise those examples, you know, you can create a scenario whereby in spite of, and again to be fair to Mayor Huqin and the people who follow his side of the argument, a report by the consultants at Kins has been released which
00:37:19
Speaker
suggested there were structural issues with the building and applying various costs to conserving it. Now, what that doesn't go into, of course, is the fact that, as people have pointed out, there are things like the Heritage Lottery Fund, which exist to fund projects with built to turn buildings like that into buildings with a sustainable future that maybe contribute to the local economy as terrorist attractions, for example.
00:37:46
Speaker
You can build a scenario whereby that could have been a viewpoint looking out over the coast, but also this wonderful new wind farm factory production facility that is going to be built on the site. It could have been the icon of the factory in that sense.
00:38:04
Speaker
Absolutely. It could have been an iconic marker for past and present and future, with a bit of imagination. Another example here on Tynemouth, the Low Lights Museum, that was a structure that was originally used as one or two structures to line up
00:38:20
Speaker
boats as they come into the river so they know they're not going to beach themselves. But that building is no longer really in use for that purpose, but it was repurposed. And it's just up the coast from, well, not quite a stone's throw, but within some sort of mechanised launch, like a tennis ball, maybe a gun, of a medieval monastery structure. So these things can, again, they can live in harmony with an ongoing community.
00:38:49
Speaker
But at the same time, there's an argument ongoing, I think about the transporter bridge over the time, which has broken down. And the question is, is it feasible to fix it at a reasonable cost? Yeah. Well, that that so that should also be said, I don't I don't know if we're getting off topic here. But I think it just, again, for people outside the region, it should also be said that people in the Northeast, I said, I was saying this to you yesterday, have I've always had a very
00:39:15
Speaker
pragmatic relationship with their physical heritage. So in Newcastle, for example, the dockside, the River Tyne Keyside has been constantly changing over the past, especially the past 200 years. It's unrecognizable from what it was 50 years ago and in turn 50 years before that and so on and so forth. If a structure exists that is, for example, Elizabeth, and there are a couple that have survived, they are
00:39:41
Speaker
they are prized because they somehow did survive, because people had a sense of the need for progress, the need for industry bottle making, for example, what was happening on the south bank of the tine. Coal and other materials were coming to the tine through the town on the north side of the tine. And that's tine side as opposed to Tees Valley, but it's a very similar attitude.
00:40:08
Speaker
I know and it should be said one more thing just just another case for the another bit of evidence for them for the mayor's side of this case it should be said that some people as well see these structures as monuments to
00:40:20
Speaker
Almost economic exploitation, actually. There are people who, and I'm thinking now of the Welsh perspective, Welsh mite coal mining, where you hear stories of people who don't like pit heads, because pit heads remind them of their family members who died of horrible lung complications, coal dust, etc., getting into the body.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, a similar thing I've heard. I was involved in a planning issue where a local councillor opposed the retention of a possibly unique World War Two air raid shelter within the development site. Because, as he said, my mum hated them and was pleased to almost applaud it when she saw them being torn down at the end of the war.
00:41:02
Speaker
But isn't that the point? You see, what we've just both pointed to touch that there, and this is exactly my point about Nadine Doris, that is a personal anecdote. That's a personal perspective, a personal valuation of something as opposed to actually what does it mean objectively for a community? Okay, let me finish with a bit of perspective here because we're historians, we're archaeologists, we go with data and we look at historical perspectives. We've been here before.
00:41:31
Speaker
In the early years of the Cameron Coalition in 2010, 2011, 2012, there was a proposed development called Broadgate next to Liverpool Street Station in the City of London. The 1980s Broadgate development was by an internationally famous British architect called Peter Foggough, late Peter Foggough, working for again a world famous international consultancy called Ove Arup.
00:41:57
Speaker
It won awards. It was seen as state of the art for Xperia, which is mid 80s. In 2010, a company called British Land proposed redeveloping the site for, I think it was Swiss Ray was the company they were working for and had as a client. And that involved removing
00:42:23
Speaker
part of the FOGO design. Historic England recommended it be listed grade two star, I think if I remember correctly, because of its association with Peter FOGO and because it was, you know, although it was a relatively recent building, it was seen as absolutely emblematic of the best of architecture of that period.
00:42:44
Speaker
The then Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt very deliberately and publicly refused the listing. That was before the listing was granted.
00:42:57
Speaker
Now, the other piece of information that is important to this is the British land, which is the company that was involved in developing the site, and in fact has developed the site, was closely associated with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, he in fact appeared
00:43:14
Speaker
at the breaking ground ceremony in Full High V on the Broadgate site. And in fact, one of the senior officers of British land was appointed by the government, the Venn government, the Cameron government, to look at ways of liberalizing planning laws and particularly regarding heritage laws.
00:43:42
Speaker
So there is a, and given the government, the current government's rhetoric about build back better and leveling up and so on and build, build, build, the, there is no argument that yes, what we have seen here, the timing is accidental. The timing between the fact that it happened, it was the first thing that Nadine Dorries did.
00:44:06
Speaker
is accidental. I suspect Oliver Dowden would have done exactly the same thing had he remained in post. And what this is, is at least in part, if not a punishing beating, a reminder to historic England that we know where your office is and we and you know by the way who provides you with your budget, don't you? Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
And the question is, where do we go from there? How do we deal with those people? But I don't suppose that's something that you and I can answer in the next 30 seconds or so. No, all I would say, all I would say is that the push to preserve the dormant long tower came from civil society. And some politicians went along with it at least for a while. And then they became activists.
00:44:53
Speaker
But the language, that kind of language is deliberately provocative. It's designed to create a deliberate image of, you know, it's one step from wanting to preserve a dormant long tower to the city on the M25 stock in the traffic. That's the kind of image that they're trying to build in PR terms. But I think what that shows is that one of the enemies of this kind of development at all costs and
00:45:20
Speaker
and the past gets in the way is civil society.
00:45:24
Speaker
And if civil society objects, it can be very powerful and can chuck a very large spanner in the works if it knows how the works work. And that means particularly, it's why the current government is trying to quote reform judicial review to make it more difficult. It's one of the few levers that's left that civil society has that can bring government, local government entities to account.
Conclusion and Call for Public Involvement
00:45:51
Speaker
And that's what's going on here, I think.
00:45:54
Speaker
OK, that's what they're afraid of. OK, well, it's been an interesting week. I'm sure the story isn't fully fully finished. We're likely to see more come from it. But.
00:46:08
Speaker
Hopefully this sort of bumper episode has covered what happened and some of the issues surrounding it for you. So please do feel free to comment below if you want to add to this conversation. Also actually if you're from Redcar, from the area, feel free to comment on what you think of the tower falling down. In that sense, falling down, being brought down, it wasn't a passive accident.
00:46:29
Speaker
But, as I say, there is undoubtedly a spectrum of responses to this happening in the way that it happens, so feel free to comment below.
00:46:40
Speaker
Thank you guys for watching. Thank you for your time, Andy, this week. And if you like what we do here in the watching brief, please do consider supporting us on Patreon. You can support us for as little as a pound per month or a dollar per month on the Patreon website, link below. Your support is very welcome and it allows us to at least, you know, to have the old penny sweet while we're putting our agenda together. We can, you know, have some chewing gum or a nice cough cop. What's your favourite sweet, Andy, actually?
00:47:11
Speaker
I'm not a sweets person. I do have a real soft spot for donuts. Oh, donuts. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Well, Mrs. Soup is a big fan of Clove Rock. Have you ever had Clove Rock before?
00:47:26
Speaker
No, is that some kind of Northeastern delicacy? Well, actually, no, no, yeah. Well, I don't know if it is Northeastern. Definitely, I was in York when I lived there, but in particular, she obviously grew up in Northern Ireland, so it was there. And it tastes kind of, she describes it as tasting like dental mouthwash. Oh my goodness. But it's actually quite pleasant, so I'll leave you with that image anyway. Clove, rock, try it out if you can. Thank you guys for watching. Until next time, do take care. Bye bye.
00:48:00
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeo Super Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:48:16
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.