The Fall of the Black Country

They say ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’, well in 1979 came the hour and came the lady.

She made the political weather, she made history, and - let this be her epitaph - she made our country great again.”

Prime Minister, David Cameron, speaking after the death of Margaret Thatcher

You just saw everything, whilst she was in power, crumbling around you. It was crazy.”

Sharon Izon, lifetime resident of Netherton

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“Industry went first, the shops followed suit. Then Merry Hill opened and, bit by bit, Dudley went down and we went down.”

Over the past several hundred years Netherton has been a barometer of British industry. Its industries have moved with the demands of the times.

At first it attracted people to the area because of the coal that the village sat above. Later, it became the source of the U.K.’s nail and chain making. Heavy industry has always been at the heart of the area and the people of Netherton are proud of their link to the Titanic, whose chain was forged there.

In the late 1970’s and 80’s the whole of the Black Country saw the heavy industries rapidly decline. With their strong work ethic, the people of this town had to find other types of work to survive.

Now, the main source of industry is the service industry and, in particular, the shopping centre at Merry Hill which dominates the area.

The Black Country has been largely forgotten by the rest of the Britain. Today, life there is as much a struggle as it ever was.

“There’s been quite a few businesses start up and close down.

Everytime something becomes empty you find it becomes a hair and beauty. And you just think, ‘well how many more can you possibly have on a high street’.

There’s not much else that’s opening. I mean, we’d love a shoe shop, we’d love a clothes shop but, to be honest with you, no one seems to open one.”

“We used to have everything from a fishmongers, even a woollen clothes shop at one point in Netherton. There was everything you could wish for. You hadn’t got to go anywhere.

And it was a proper village, whereas now I don’t call it a village. Basically, there’s just hair and beauty, two second hand shops and Allens; there’s not a lot unless you want the basics like bread and milk.

If you want fresh stuff you’re better off going elsewhere.

Without a car you’re stuck. There’s no end of little old ladies, you see everyday, catching the bus to get what they need and coming back.”

“A lot of people were out of work for a while. I’ve known quite a few lose their houses.

The council was okay because they sort of helped them out and put them into accomodation. There’s nothing of that left now. They’ve even got to pay for having extra bedrooms.

A lady who comes in here has had to come out of her home cos she’s on the sick, she’s not well enough to work. She’s 57 and she’s got two extra bedrooms and she’s gonna have to pay on the extra bedrooms. She’s had to come out. She’s had to go into private accomodation at the moment.

There’s quite a few having to pack up and move because of the bedroom tax.

She’s had to move a couple of bus

rides away but she still comes this way because of her doctors and things like that. And, she loves Netherton. She doesn’t want to go anywhere else.

It’s awful what’s going on and the government can’t see what they’re doing.”

“Just lately there’s more, you have to be more vigilent...it’s different to what it was. It’s got into quite a rough area.

A lot of it is young children getting in with the wrong crowd. But the worse thing is the drug situation. And, because they move in more and more people into the area, who’ve got problems, it’s getting worse.

It’s definitley worse than it’s ever been.”

“When I came to work here in ‘64,... the road used to be so busy with people, when you came down here on a Saturday morning you had to keep stepping into the road; there wasn’t enough room on the pavement.

And of course, then there was Merry Hill. That was another nail in the coffin for all the local small towns. Merry Hill killed everything”

“The money’s not going up, it’s going down, but food’s going up and so are the prices on everything else. Everybody’s trying to rob Peter to pay Paul and it’s killing some people.

We might sound horrible when we’re on about Maggie Thatcher. Everyone says she’s good but she ruined the country, really.

And we’ve never been able to recover from it.”

The rich seem to get richer and the poor seem to get poorer. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Words by the residents of Netherton

Photographs by Daniel Day

All Images Copyright © Daniel Day 2013

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