THE LOCAL ECONOMY

[Stanley]

THE LOCAL ECONOMY

4 November 2004

One of the techniques that Daniel Meadows taught me many years ago when he was helping me with my photography was ‘Shooting up to the point’. This entailed shooting a series of pictures in rapid succession of an event or person, trusting to instinct and the subconscious processing going on in your brain. It works and so many times you will find that one of the last frames you shoot is the picture you have been chasing.
It struck me this morning that exactly the same process goes on when I am writing on various topics. It’s as though my brain is making comparisons and connections between disparate subjects and quite suddenly an idea pops up that is fully formed, a synthesis of what I have been looking at recently. This came to me this morning when I was thinking about the fifteenth and last part of a series of articles I have been writing for the local paper on Harold Duxbury, a noted local citizen. I remembered another article I wrote for the local paper called ‘BOGOF’ which examined the sales techniques used in the local supermarket and the consequences for the customer. (You can find all these articles in my ‘Stanley’s View’ books or on line at www.oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk) It might be time for a synthesis. I am not a trained economist but many years of research into local history have given me some clues how the local economy of Barnoldswick has functioned over the years. Here’s the state of my thinking at the moment.
Even in the earliest days of habitation there would have been some interchange of goods between neighbours, the barter of surplus food or animals. The limitations on this trade were the availability of a surplus and transportation. Mind you, the surprising thing is that there was a thriving international and even inter-continental trade as early as 2,500BC. We have enough evidence to be sure that apart from flints being traded to the continent by Stone-Age man gold was moving from Ireland across the North of England en route for the Baltic states and the Phoenicians were certainly trading with the South West of England at the same time.
The coming of the Romans to Britannia was a stimulus to trade particularly in the south where Roman Civil Rule was established. We began to see the growth of towns as market centres. In the North under Military Rule apart from the great regional centres such as Chester, York and Carlisle, trade was mainly between the military and the civilian population and was very local, again, consisting largely of surplus food.
The rise of Feudalism after the Norman invasion strangled trade to a large extent because the system relied on the complete ownership of the peasants and anything they produced. It wasn’t until the Black Death reduced the population by almost 50% and put labour at a premium that these shackles started to break. The ‘market’ asserted itself and for a short time labour had the upper hand and could demand better terms and conditions. True, legislation attempted to crush this change in the economy but it was too late, the old certainties had been destroyed by the sight of God striking down rich and poor alike. It is my belief that the origins of true entrepreneurial activity by the mass of the peasants can be traced back to this event.
The rise of the wool trade at about the same time gave an opportunity for individuals to augment their agricultural income and many deserted the land altogether. This freedom from the ties of land ownership as the route to independence enabled earlier marriage and an increase in population because couples were more fertile. In the 16th century it is notable that the population in the north of England was rising and this seems to coincide with increased textile income. Half way through the 16th century we have evidence of new enclosures on the waste and the establishment of new corn mills to service the growing population. The Dissolution of the Monasteries freed up land, access to riparian rights and skilled labour and removed some of the largest textile traders, the monasteries, from the economy. Entrepreneurs filled this vacuum and it is from this period that the domestic textile industry entered its most rapid growth and many minor gentry and yeoman did very well out of the trade.
By the beginning of the 19th century a new staple had become established, cotton. The lack of guild structures and associated restrictive practices in the North of England made it easier for the new trade to take root. New skills were learned, technical innovation driven by demand improved production and profitability and by the middle of the century improved machines driven by rotative steam engines dominated and the cotton industry became the biggest exporter the world had ever seen. By 1870 there were the first signs that this world dominance in the textile trade was beginning to crumble but it took the discontinuity of the First World War to bring this home fully to the Lancashire cotton masters. However, international trade, whilst important to the local economy, is not the subject I am chasing here.
My interest in this story is the local economy, what was happening inside the town. The really striking thing about the textile industry in the North of England is that even though it was dealing internationally, the trade itself was purely local. It was the province of local, often family, partnerships. By 1880 these masters had learned the value of specialisation. Anything not directly concerned with weaving cloth was contracted out. SE Lancashire became the centre for spinning and improved transport linkages by canal and then rail enabled raw materials and finished goods to be easily moved. A whole network of small masters sprang up to service the industry making healds, reeds, machinery and providing services. These were purely local, apart from the yarn and some very specialised raw materials, everything needed by the Barnoldswick mills was produced in the town.
This also applied to servicing the population. Corn-milling, meat and vegetable production and services were provided by local trades. Even municipal government was purely local from the late 19th century onwards when Barnoldswick ceased to be an outlier of the Skipton Rural District Council and became a Local Board in its own right.
The crucial point about this way of organising the local economy was that apart from banking and mortgages all profits generated in the town were re-invested locally. It is no accident that this ethos applied during the period of massive growth from 1885 when the Bracewell Hegemony broke until 1914 when the First World War shook the foundations not only of Barnoldswick but much of the known world.
As I have said, I am no economist but if I were and was asked to invent a phrase for this I would call it a ‘closed cycle economy’. It was not managed in this way for any ideological reason, it was simply that this was the best and most sensible way to expand and improve the town and its profitability. It is quite noticeable when you look at family finances during this period that the workers were sharing in the wealth. Anyone with two or three children in the mill could afford not only to buy their own house but to build others for income and perhaps run a small shop. It is quite astonishing to note the number of investors in new mills after 1900 who had made their money either as workers in the industry or as grocers, butchers and other retailers servicing the rising population. I was once asked to write about the provision of new housing in Barnoldswick between the wars and had to enter a nil report because enough housing had been built prior to 1914 to satisfy demand until after WW2.
So what has changed? How does today’s local economy differ from the model that fuelled the growth of the town? Quite simply it is the fact that the vast majority of the profit generated in the town nowadays is immediately exported. Even the workers have had their capacity to retain money reduced by the attractions of out of town shopping, foreign holidays and national systems of credit and money management. It would be very instructive to see what the proportion of value added by the town and retained in the local economy is now compared with the period from 1885 to 1914. Even local government and taxation has been exported, first to Pendle and the County and perhaps to a larger authority based in Blackburn in the future. Even car-parking has become a milch cow with the recent introduction of disc parking administered by a national company.
What effect is this having on the town? On the face of it we still have a thriving town but look more carefully. The small shops are in decline, we have closed a school, the churches are beginning to look neglected. We have no cinema or concert hall. We’ve even lost our NHS dentist. Standards of road maintenance, particularly the back streets, have declined. We rely on a few major firms to provide employment, all of them at the mercy of global trading conditions. It is not an encouraging picture.
I have said many a time that if this town put up one statue of a notable local benefactor it should be Adolph Hitler. If it hadn’t been for him the local mills would not have been refurbished and re-used as shadow factories for the aero industry in WW2 and I hate to think what our position would be now if we had been relying on government help to restart the local economy after the demise of the textile industry. My contention is that we can't rely on these new industries for ever and if one of them goes the town will bleed to death quicker than it is doing at the present. I really do believe that is what is happening. If we go on as we are now Barnoldswick will become a dormitory town serving one of the regional centres.
What can be done about it? I fear very little. Barnoldswick, like many other small towns will have to readjust to changing circumstances. Increasingly any money in the town will be generated by work elsewhere and be subject to re-export as soon as it is spent. Changes in the basis of retail and other services will be made on the assumption that everyone either owns a car or is prepared to put up with inadequate public transport. The hardest hit will be the poorest or the disadvantaged. Our current elderly population is surviving largely on the basis of savings made during the hey-day of the towns industry. With reducing pensions and savings many people are going to have a rough ride in future. The bottom line is that in terms of its built environment, services and personal stocks of capital we are riding on the back of the early 20th century prosperity. This is a wasting resource.
One of the most noticeable features of centralised economic management is that the great proportion of policy generated is short or mid term. Our political systems do not encourage long term thinking about the major problems. These are neglected until circumstances force action which is always too little and too late. Look at railways, the National Health Service, manufacturing industry and pensions. All were nettles that needed grasping thirty years ago. It may well be that the economic condition of small towns like Barnoldswick all over the country will become a major issue in twenty years time. Let’s hope that when the penny drops it isn’t too late.

4 November 2004