Waiting For Work – Hartlepool 1963

Politically passionate and one of the first working class reporters at the BBC, Jack Ashley wanted to show the suffering caused by high unemployment in Hartlepool. With no work, no prospects, and little money, Ashley asked how the unemployed reacted to their situation in an increasingly affluent society. 

The documentary caused a storm when it was first shown in 1963, bringing Hartlepool’s problems to the attention of a national audience. After the programme aired parcels were sent to the contributors containing food, clothing, presents for the children and even an abundance of Christmas turkeys from people all over the UK. (1963)

BBC iPlayer

The documentary can be viewed here

Jack Ashely

Jack Ashley was an honourable and thoroughly decent human being who spent his life fighting injustice, he is a hero in our house. Read his obituary here

Moscowdeen

Last night I was watching the 2023 film Tetris. The granite-faced Moscow tower blocks and the headquarters of the Russian Electronics company Elorg looked very familiar. The film’s director Jon S. Baird was born in Aberdeen, the film was shot at various location across Scotland.

I enjoyed the film.

Wandering Newcastle

Tynesiders are remorselessly cheerful. The average Geordie is so upbeat and optimistic that if you put him in a pot and boil him down to his very essence, the substance left would be Prozac…
I’m from Teesside. Teessiders are by nature pessimists. If you put a Teessider in a pot and boiled him down to his very essence, he wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
Harry Pearson
North Country Fair
1996

Diving for Pearls – Women in Shipbuilding

In 2021 I posted this image for International Women’s Day. I didn’t really have much information about the image other than this page on the Tesside Archives website.

Last week I saw an article about an exhibition called Women in Shipbuilding being held at the Common Room in Newcastle. The exhibition is part of a Historic England project to reveal the largely untold story of how, during the First World War, women worked in the shipbuilding industries in the North East of England.

The exhibition uses images from the Imperial War Museum’s collection and is being shown at various venues around Tyneside. The organisers hope to encourage people to come forward and share any information they have on this hidden history with a goal of building a publically accessible archive.

Looking through the Historic England material, all of the project partners are on Tyneside, I cannot see any plans to bring this exhibition to Teesside. Considering that a number of the images are of women involved in the construction of the Furness Shipyard at Haverton Hill, this is potentially a lost opportunity to involve people from beyond the banks of the Tyne in this important project.

Website including image galleries Historic England: Women in Shipbuilding

Postscript

After visiting the exhibition, I took a walk up the Laing Gallery to have a look at their exhibition of Chris Killip’s photographs documenting the building of the last ships on the Tyne. These images are permanently housed within their own space in the gallery. It would be nice if some of the wonderful images from Imperial War Museum’s collection could find a similar home in the North East of England.

An Exhibition

I took a trip over to Middlesbrough to have a look at a joint exhibition by Mary Lou Springstead and P.A. Morbid called “the light beyond the dark”. I had the good fortune to meet Morbid who walked me around the exhibition and discussed some of the themes that the paintings explored such as magic, loss, family and the state of everything. I’d definitely recommend that you go and take a look Mary Lou Springstead’s and PA Morbid’s strange and wondrous art.

When I got home I started reflecting on my day.

As I get older I find that I’ve become quite insular, I definitely don’t interact with as many people as I used to. I suspect that my experiences during the pandemic and the nature of my job have left me a little more detached from people than I used to be, I’m guessing I’m not alone in this.

My view of the world has been increasingly governed by what I read and see online, my contact with the ‘real world’ has diminished. So I’ve decided that this year I’m going to start making a little more effort to change that balance.

It’s odd but rather beautiful how something as simple as visiting an exhibition or having a conversation can cause you to reflect on the circumstances of your own life. I guess Alan Moore is probably right..

Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness.