How One Fatal Decision Destroyed Every British City (Except London)

Read the first chapter of How Britain Stopped Making Things free: https://mettlehistory.co.uk ___________________________________________ Somewhere in Britain right now, two men are arguing about why the North of England is poorer than the South. Not a single English region north of London earns more than the United Kingdom average. Transport spending in London runs at more than twice the level per head as in the North. London is home to two hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollar millionaires. No other British city comes close. There are simple answers. Globalisation. The unions. Decades of underinvestment in British manufacturing that predated the nineteen-seventies. All three are true. None of them is the complete answer. Because what all three miss is one morning. June the twelfth, nineteen seventy-nine. Six weeks ago, Britain elected its first female Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher. Her Chancellor — Sir Geoffrey Howe — stands up in the House of Commons to deliver what will become the most consequential economic decision in modern British history. That same morning, two hundred and sixty miles to the north, in County Durham, the day shift at Consett Steel Works is already at the furnaces. At its peak this works employed six thousand men. Pat Carr is one of them. Red oxide dust on every windowsill in town. He has no idea what is being announced in London. What happened to Consett and men like Pat Carr over the next fifteen months would tell you everything you need to know about what happened to every British city. Everything except one.