A Sense of Place
Well, well, well… it didn’t take long for the levelling-up mask to slip, did it? Back in April 2021 Carrie Johnson characterised the décor of the previous inhabitant of Number 10 as a ‘John Lewis nightmare’, then among the killer details to emerge from Partygate was the fact that revellers laughed at the security and cleaning staff whose job it was to maintain some sort of order in the pleasure dome.
And at the beginning of the month, Heather Wheeler, Tory MP for South Derbyshire and a Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet office, described Birmingham and Blackpool as ‘godawful’. Insulting, foolish – and so, so wrong.
That would be the Birmingham of the Ikon Gallery, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, the dazzling new library and the entrancing Christmas market, would it? And Blackpool, the town whose very name induces palpitations in Strictly fans, and whose illuminations Colonel Gaddafi once tried to buy. (I can vouch for the charm of a dusk stroll along the promenade under the lights.)
But leaving aside the chosen examples, Wheeler’s comment shows a complete lack of understanding of attachment to place, which has nothing to do with aesthetic appeal. Our attachment to place doesn’t depend on the degree to which it is well-connected, or acts as a magnet for high-net-worth individuals. It lies in the allure of habit, a sense of familiarity, and a deep knowledge of the unconsidered corners of a place.
When I moved to Australia for some years, Dame B. reflected on the risk of homesickness in the following wistful words, ‘I wouldn’t like to think that I couldn’t just, say, come up out of Notting Hill Gate tube station whenever I felt like it,’ and I knew exactly what she meant.
It’s even been shown that patients in long-term residential settings become very attached to their particular position in a ward or a day room. Their perspective on the room and their sense of how their own space fits into it provide a cushion of security and familiarity that is easily overlooked.
Anyone who has been subjected to hot-desking will understand this intimately. As a survivor (or perhaps not) of one government department’s dwindling personal space policy, I know it’s no fun. We went from permanent L-shaped desks to single ones, to a mini filing cabinet on wheels to tow to whichever desk you’d managed to bag on any given day. Then even the mini filing cabinets were deemed too luxurious and we were given a banker’s box instead. (All the better to fire you with?) Any resistance to these changes cast you as a pathetic Luddite revanchist. Desk wars broke out, because anyone with children felt doomed permanently to occupy the desk by the lifts, or even one on a different floor from their unit, since they could never get in at first light to nab a desirable one.
We saw the ludicrous but inevitable consequence of this policy when Jacob Rees Mogg pretty much ordered everyone back to the office and chaos ensued.
But back to where we started. If Wheeler considers Blackpool such a dump, we have to ask ourselves why. In the four years from 2010 her party presided over a fall of more than a quarter in Blackpool’s funding; subsequent job losses, the switch to universal credit, the bedroom tax, and then the pandemic dealt further blows. Add to that the practice of other councils sending their poorest, most vulnerable residents, including children in care, to take advantage of the cheap accommodation in once-grand hotels, and you can see why the town might be excused for showing signs of deprivation.
Let’s just hope everyone remembers not to vote for such a godawful party next time round.
As a ‘sand-grown’ boy – ie born Blackpudlian – I have no sense of place with regard to that down-at-heel town. Give me London, Sydney or, now, New York (where, after 10 years residence, you can consider yourself a New Yorker – which I have and do). Sorree – love your writing and the sentiment, just not for me. *
Fair enough – I always was one for ‘nostalgie de la boue’ and I must admit to being rather attached some quite unlovely bits of Tulse Hill!*
How perceptive Verity and so true. Blackpool of today is so far from the magical place it was in my childhood as are many seaside towns.
Levelling up?
A godawful joke.
A sense of place is a sense of identity and should not be underestimated.
Thanks! Herne Bay was the magical seaside place of my childhood, but it has not yet achieved the cool that Margate has