Rochdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development - Part 2

 

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 2)

By: Andrew Wallace

Globalisation in Rochdale has proved controversial given difficulties in respect of inter-racial strife, the disproportionate amount of asylum seekers, the widespread levels of deprivation, the grooming scandals, a notorious failure of public housing with a youngster's death as a direct result of a toxic flat, the ongoing problem of organised crime gangs and a legion of controversial local politicians. It seems Rochdale has been pressed into taking a much higher proportion of asylum seekers than the national average and this remains provocative for certain sections of the population, particularly given the huge cuts in public services that were rolled out in the 2010s. Demographics and large migration flows have arguably presented a challenge to the idea of a social contract (Goodhart, 2004) and a welfare state which was originally predicated on contributory national insurance. Goodhart talks about the ‘progressive dilemma’ which speaks to the tensional relationship between solidarity and diversity, or nativist particularities of place versus liberal universalism. With Rochdale already in sharp socio-economic declinism, race and ethnicity arguably became increasingly salient as different sections of the community wrestled over diminishing community funds. As the curiosity of the February 2024 Rochdale by-election illustrated, Middle East politics have proved a significant ingredient for the Muslim community, much to the chagrin of a large section of non-Muslims and others who stressed the priority of local issues or indeed boycotted engagement altogether (Chakelian, 2024). The community hub is but one amongst many former retail outlets that have been repurposed for a number of charities within this comparatively neglected area of the town. The picture perhaps evokes the uneasy relationship within the community as surly low-level resentment of asylum seekers is frequently evidenced by various vox pops across the town (Lyons, 2017).

It was significant that the town’s short lived MP George Galloway claimed inspiration by way of Rochdale’s historic innovative contribution to progressivism in birthing the Co-operative movement. This represents Rochdale’s distinctive contribution to the world at large with Co-ops “found in more than 100 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania” (Co-operatives UK, 2024). Co-operatives represent an alternative model to standard capitalist enterprises whereby ownership resides with workers, customers or the local community, thereby providing a collectivist social dimension which otherwise is absent in capitalist transactions. Co-operative philosophy evinces adaptability to an ideological climate which also proved accommodating to free market anti-statism and the invocation of ‘self-help’ (Da Costa Vieira and Foster, 2022, pp. 295-296). It seems Co-operatives illustrate the ongoing contested forms of globalisation, whereby challenges to a hegemonic neoliberalism have to contend with a disenfranchising counsel of despair that holds any alternative politics are illusory. Co-operatives do however bring a credible historical record of their distinctive agency of doing things differently. The consciousness-raising of fair trade and the brokering of equitable contracts that pay heed to the environment and its peoples are a salutary reminder of viable alternative forms of globalisation and these may prove foundational for broader movements of protest and change to the present problematic realities (Massey, 2004). The picture is also another visually arresting testament to a striking fusion of styles, the modernist museum bolted on to the original warehouse and can be taken as a signifier of playful retrofitting, invoking the dialectic between past and the looming future.

Chakelian, A (2024) ‘Rochdale’s by-election brings the Gaza war to Britain’, The

New Statesman, 21 February. Available at:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2024/02/rochdales-by-election-

brings-the-gaza-war-to-britain (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Co-operatives UK (2024) Understanding Co-ops. Available at:

https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/how-co-ops-began/co-ops-across-world

(Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Da Costa Vieira, T. and Foster, E. A. (2022) ‘The elimination of political demands:

Ordoliberalism, the big society and the depoliticization of co-operatives’, Competition

& Change, 26(2), pp. 289–308

Goodhart, D (2004) ‘Discomfort of strangers’, The Guardian, 24 February. Available

at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/24/race.eu

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Richdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development.

 

Unhappy Valley

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 1)

By: Andrew Wallace.

Globalisation has become an indispensable concept for contemporary understandings and exploration of our habitat and its relationship to our ideological worldviews in respect of politics, economics and culture. It seems difficult to provide a satisfactory definition whilst the term remains highly contested. Arguably some generalities have been conceded regarding the ongoing process of interdependence and connectivity of the geographical world with its consequent blurring of national boundaries and the increasingly international flows of labour, goods and services beyond the discretionary management of the nation state. Its current prescriptive form is often labelled neoliberalism whereby private enterprise is empowered to traverse the globe in search of compliant and abundant cheap labour and light regulation (Harvey, 2005).

Rochdale Town Centre has had several cycles of redevelopment over the last few decades. Just like adjoining former mill towns in the North West of England, Rochdale suffered a precipitous economic decline in its core industries, this was apparent from the 1950s onwards (Toms, 1998, pp. 35-55). A new retail centre was built in the early 1990s (The Wheatsheaf) and flourished for a time. A number of notable flagship stores went into liquidation throughout the 2010s. A new phase of globalisation was being driven courtesy of the internet and the online retail revolution. Just as a previous era of industrial globalisation allowed for the strategic offshoring of plant infrastructure, the internet provided for a dramatic restructuring of retail and services, much of this directed by the corporate behemoths and leading to a culling of traditional high street outlets. These trends were also drastically exacerbated by the Covid-19 global pandemic which made flesh the remorseless biological realities of globalisation (Blakeley, 2020). Picture 1 provides a useful map provided courtesy of the town planners and it provides a neat distillation of the current wave of ‘reinvention’ for the Town Centre by way of its new flagship Riverside retail and leisure complex. This is marked by a curious bifurcation of the town centre through a fusion of post-modern architectures and the traditional whilst attempting to circumnavigate dilapidated areas of post-industrial neglect. As all that is solid melts into PR (Fisher), Rochdale promotes itself as a historically vibrant locality with attractively revamped public spaces, historic monuments and culturally aspirational education quarters.

Arguably something of a cliché but the trolley in the River Roch (Picture 2) is a defining symbol of the omnipresent challenge of anti-social behaviour and the struggle to protect public spaces. It will likely suggest a backstory of juvenile hijinks. If Rochdale has to contend with the gales of creative destruction thrown up by the unpredictable currents of globalisation, then it also struggles to forge its sense of place within the newer complexities of liquid modernity. Public space management (Carmona and De Magalhaes, 2006) remains key for local authorities and wannabe gentrifiers who are anxious to provide an attractive profile for their domains in order to compete for funding. Public space management must face against anomic behaviours from urban malcontents whose primary motivations seem to be a nihilistic recourse to spoilage and explicit attacks on the idea of civic pride. The ironic backstory to such vandalism likely involves a performative act of some physical effort, appropriating supermarket trolley and scaling the railing barrier of the Roch bridge to deliver the coup de grace. Not so much an acte gratuit, more of a poundland anarchism statement minus the sophistry of Debord’s (1967, cited in Self, 2013) situationism. The trolley is an apposite signifier of consumerism, a proxy of the corporate behemoths, now inverted and weaponised in the war against the idea of civic harmony that offer “visitors a stunning historical attraction and an attractive place to sit and watch the world go by” (original text from picture 1 – map of Rochdale: Historic Bridge). Arguably a symbolic and psychic desecration, an explicit rebuke to ideas of communal repose, a strategically visible ‘hate’ crime of environmental spoilage although arguably rendered itself as rank amateurism as measured against the massive environmental harms of the powerful multinationals (Tombs, 2024). The latter largely remain concealed from the public domain, obfuscated by impenetrable firewalls of corporate public relations and their impressive armoury of experts, legal and otherwise who are able to wrong-foot their critics at every turn. Meanwhile the Rochdale vandals likely employ their low-tech sorties via hoodies and the cover of dark to avoid CCTV.

Spatial divisions are held to be fundamental in characterising the UK's internal geography. These divides speak to class, regional identities and ethnicities. Geographical uneven development is observed at different scales, from the macro regional (within continents, between distinctive regions, intra-regional) to the micro level e.g. city, town, district, ward (Massey, 2004). Rochdale's recent Riverside development can be seen on this micro level as an attempt to cultivate a respectable, attractive and affluent zone that will flatter the middle-class proclivities of consumers conspicuous by their absence in recent years. For all the analysis of Rochdale as a down at heel bastion of working class declinism, there remains a substantial middle-class population, albeit located on the outer periphery of the town. It seems many of these affluent residents preferred to shop out of town. Manchester, Bury and the Trafford Centre seem to have proved superior attractions, whereas Rochdale's ageing Exchange and Yorkshire Street retail concentrated on a 'no frills' plethora of pound and charity shops. The Riverside redevelopment attempted to provide a leisure complex, replete with cinema, restaurants, cafe bars as well as middle brow clothing outlets. The push for a more discerning middle-class presence is also marked by a more visible and active private security team who check potential anti-social intruders and prohibit panhandling. This picture speaks to the intermeshing of post-modernist copper plated geometries within the visage of old boarded up warehouse Rochdale, the juxtaposition of the aspirational and bourgeois alongside the conspicuous symbols of declinism. The spoilage in this instance speaks to the relative failures of urban development. 

References:

Blakeley, G (2020) The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism. London. Verso

Carmona, M. and De Magalhaes, C. (2006) ‘Public Space Management: Present and Potential’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 49(1), pp. 75–99. Available at: https://www-tandf onlinecom.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/09640560500373162?needAccess=true& (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism. Zero Books

Harvey, D (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press

Massey, D (2004) ‘The Responsibilities of Place’ Local Economy, 19(2), pp. 97–101

Self, W (2013) ‘Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle’, The Guardian, 14 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/14/guy-debord-society-spectacle-will-self (Accessed 06 March 2024)

Tombs, S. (2024) ‘1 The emergence of crimes of the powerful’. DD804-23J, Crimes of the powerful: corporate crime and harm. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2147113&section=3

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Toms, J. S. (1998) ‘Growth, Profits and Technological Choice: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton Textile Industry’, Journal of Industrial History, 1(1) (1998) pp. 35-5

The tragic death of Laura Jane Booth.

 

Laura Jane Booth

I remember the huge public controversy around the Liverpool End of Life Care Pathway. There are now similar concerns about the Assisted Dying Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The inquiry that was conducted into the Liverpool Care Pathway, by Baroness Neuberger in 2013, found that NHS hospital trusts were being given financial inducements to put some patients on palliative end of life care.

This article refers to the case of a 21-year-old woman called Laura Jane Booth, who was put on the end-of-life care pathway, after being admitted to hospital in 2016 for a routine eye operation. She died three weeks later. Laura who had the genetic disorder called Patau's syndrome, had death by natural causes, written on her death certificate. However, a coroner's inquest in 2021, found there had been a "gross failure of her care" and that "malnutrition contributed to her death."

Her parents said that Laura had been denied food for weeks while in hospital and that they had no idea that she'd been put on the end-of-life pathway. A report into Laura's death, found the hospital had failed to take her mental capacity into account in clear breach of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

An inquest into Laura’s death was only opened when a journalist contacted the coroner.

Starmer's Britain - Where Soylent Green meets Logan's run.

 

Welcome to Starmer's Britain where Soylent Green meets Logan's run. Under its Assisted Dying Bill, the Labour government are now proposing to contract out to private companies the role of death "assisters" in an assisted dying euthanasia programme that will operate for profit.

Labour now claims that welfare spending in Britain is 'unsustainable' and that welfare spending needs to be cut. Labour also says that they're not the party for people on state benefits but the party for people in work. Labour believes that cutting people's welfare payments or ending them, will act as a goad to getting people back into work. Around 38 per cent of people in receipt of Universal Credit (UC), are already in work. They claim UC to top up their low wages or have caring responsibilities.

Could Labour's Assisted Dying Bill be a way of eliminating the unproductive in society and cut welfare spending? Could it become a form of 'geri-neglicide'? Under the latest version of the Bill, any corporate killings would be exempt from investigation by a coroner; exempt from licensing requirements opening the door to a 'corporate cottage' death industry with no mandatory qualifications; exempt from regulation and any statutory duties and exempt from scrutiny by the UK's Chief Medical Officer. Death assisters will also be indemnified from being sued by the families of those killed.

We already know from the inquiry into the Liverpool End of Life Care Pathway that was carried out by Baroness Neuberger in 2013, that NHS hospital trusts were given financial inducements by the government to put some patients on end-of-life palliative care. Many were denied food and water and put under sedation to hasten death. Some believe that this is still continuing in many hospitals throughout the country. 

Labour MP released from jail after three days.

 

Mike Amesbury

Mike Amesbury, the Runcorn and Helsby MP, has had his 10-week prison sentence for assault suspended on appeal after spending just three days in prison. Judge Steven Everett, sitting with two magistrates at Chester Crown Court said that while the length of sentence had been "spot on", it should be suspended for two years. Amesbury was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and to undertake an anger management course as well as an alcohol monitoring programme. The 55-year-old MP, had pleaded guilty at an earlier court hearing to assaulting a constituent in Frodsham last October.

Last August, Judge Everett, sent a 53-year-old female carer to prison for a post that she had written on Facebook. Julie Sweeney, from Church Lawton, Cheshire, who the Judge described as a "keyboard warrior", was jailed for 15-months after she pleaded guilty to sending a communication to convey a threat of death or serious harm. Following the riots that had erupted in Southport, after the stabbings of young children, she had called for a Mosque to be burnt down with all the adults in it. Sweeney, who had "never troubled the courts before", had been a carer for her husband since 2015.