NORTHFIELD MN AND BARLICK, LANCASHIRE

[Stanley]

NORTHFIELD MN AND BARLICK, LANCASHIRE

28 June 2004

It’s a pleasure to see my friend Rollie Jacobsen joining Shar his wife and contributing to Oneguy. It reinforces the concept that the site is not parochial but has global links. Rollie’s comparison of Northfield in Minnesota with Barlick is valuable and there is much to learn from it.
I wrote an article a couple of years ago for the BET that questioned why there was so much difference between the way the two towns were run when they have so much in common. Northfield has its own hospital, police service, fire brigade and a magnificent community centre. It also controls the sale of liquor in the town and runs the only out-sales shop as a municipal enterprise. The key thing about this is that the finances of all these elements of the towns infrastructure are controlled by the town council.
What Rollie describes, the decline of the owner-operated retail store in his town is a direct parallel to what is happening to town centre shopping in Barlick. Out of town shopping and the incursion of national and multi-national retail outlets have reduced profit levels to the extent that many shops have ceased trading because it is uneconomical.
There is a further penalty to both Northfield and Barlick in this process, any profit made by the local owner-retailers and service providers stayed at home but profits made by the new outlets fly straight out of the town. Until the Second World War the profits from industry did the same in Barlick, they stayed in the town. Northfield has an advantage over Barlick in that local government has stayed in the town. In 1974 Barlick Urban District Council ceased to exist and power moved to Nelson. If the recently proposed administrative changes take place it will move again, who knows where, Blackburn?
There are lessons to be learned from looking at history. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the profits of commerce and industry stayed in the town and local government was just that, local and autonomous. Barnoldswick financed a doubling of its industrial capacity and housing stock entirely from local money. As the power and the cash flow has ebbed, Barnoldswick’s progress has slowed, some would even say it has stopped. So, the message for Northfield from the Barnoldswick experience is quite clear, fight to retain local municipal control, it is the only counterweight you have to the outflow of capital and profits.
28 June 2004