1914-1980
A Dystopian Interlude
The Russian writer and naval architect Yevgeny Zamyatin is on Tyneside in 1917 supervising the building of icebreakers. He writes a novella, Islanders, later adapting it for the stage. The Reverend Dewley of Jesmond’s system of compulsory salvation prefigures the dystopian state of Zamyatin’s later novel, We, the characters of which were given the part numbers of his Tyneside icebreakers. Although it didn’t go down well with Stalin, We went on to influence Brave New World and 1984: Newcastle upon Tyne the original of all C20th dystopias.
Reinvention No 3: The Brasilia of the North
In spite of its growing working class identity, the Labour Party does not achieve a majority administration in Newcastle until the late 1950s. The suspicion with which the city is viewed by Labour administrations elsewhere in the region is not allayed by the emergence of Trotskyist/entryist/libertarian socialist T Dan Smith as Leader of the City Council. Chair of the Housing Committee from 1957, his commitment to integrated city planning is a response to the perceived failings of his predecessors’ piecemeal approach and draw on the Utopian integration of planning, architecture, art and design in the early years of the Russian Revolution.
The Eldon Square shopping precinct, for which most of John Dobson’s Eldon Square is demolished, is a legacy of the planned ‘vertical separation’ of traffic and pedestrians. Smith leaves the City Council in 1964. Had he remained as Leader Eldon Square would probably, as planned, have been designed by Arne Jacobsen, the celebrated Danish architect. He tries to persuade Le Corbusier to work in the city and succeeds in attracting Basil Spence, whose Central Library has recently been demolished. ‘I wanted to see the creation of a 20th century equivalent of Dobson's masterpiece,’ he writes. A media figure, he has a talent for public relations, projecting modernity and a post-industrial future for Newcastle (‘the Brasilia of the North’) and for the region. As well as ‘The Venice of the North’ referred to earlier, he also describes it as ‘The Milan of the North’. He is particularly proud of the 1962 arts festival celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Geordie Ridley’s Blaydon Races.
Making little distinction between his regionalist politics and his public relations work (for the Labour Party, the architect John Poulson, the building companies Bovis and Crudens, Peterlee Development Corporation and others) he makes a strategic alliance with Andy Cunningham, regional organiser of the GMWU and Leader of Durham County Council. It plays a major role in delivering the support through which Smith’s regional infrastructure plans are realised. In the late 1960s Smith is Chairman of Aycliffe and Peterlee Development Corporation.
Poulson was made bankrupt in 1970, his meticullous records of corrupt practices brought Smith’s career to an end. He is dismissed and then found innocent in two cases in 1970, but then, in ill health pleads guilty to corrupting Andy Cunningham with a holiday and with a notional job for Cunningham’s wife. He also pleads guilty to corruptly influencing Peterlee Development Corporation to give a building contract to Poulson, although he later plausibly argues that he was neither Chairman of Peterlee nor associated with Poulson at the time the decision was made. In 1974 he is sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. At the time of his downfall he is securing control of shares in Tyne Tees Television with a view to channelling profits into cultural development in the region.
Not entirely convinced by Smith’s public relations vision, The Animals’ We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place is one of Tyneside’s first major hits in the 1960s, but the trail for their success is blazed by Sparky the Budgie. Living in Newcastle’s Forest Hall with his owner Mrs Mattie Williams, Sparkie has a vocabulary of 553 words and can recite eight complete nursery rhymes. In 1958 he beats 3,000 rivals to win the BBC International Cage World Contest for talking budgies. Sparkie releases two LPs, one of which sells 20,000 copies. His extensive vocabulary allows the other album to cast him in the role of a gangster. A forerunner in establishing the role culture can play in the region’s economy Sparkie earns over £1,000 and he had only cost 35 shillings when he was bought from a breeder in Houghton-le-Spring. Sparkie dies in 1962, three years before the release of the Animals’ hit. Never having articulated his own wishes in regard to This Place, his stuffed remains are held in perpetuity at Newcastle’s Hancock Museum.
A Transitionary Interlude
Victor Pasmore comes to Newcastle in 1952 to lead the fine art and design course that becomes part of Newcastle University. In 1954 he is appointed as a ‘visionary’ to work alongside architects and planners in the new town of Peterlee. His Apollo Pavilion is built there in the late 60s, when T Dan Smith had become Chairman of the Development Corporation. Murray Martin comes to Newcastle in 1961, studying Fine Art oppositionally under Pasmore and then Richard Hamilton. Having formed the Amber film & photography collective in London 1968, he brings it to Newcastle the following year. Opening Side Gallery & Cinema in 1977, the documentary group successfully campaigns against the planned demolition of the city’s East Quayside and celebrates the working class terraced community of Byker which was demolished to make way for Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall – two legacies of T Dan Smith’s plan for the city.