Essay by Andy Abbott
AN ESSAY IN PROGRESS BY ANDY ABBOTT ABOUT PRE AND POST INDUSTRIAL UTOPIAS IN RELATION TO BIELLA AND YORKSHIRE
Introduction
Plato (Republic 1.643b-c) 'to make a good farmer [a man] must play'
The purpose of writing this text is as a primer to an essay, or an elaboration of an art project. I believe it will sit somewhere in between the two; not developed enough to be considered exhaustive or researched to an academic level, but pretentious enough to elevate it above a purely anecdotal recital of the experiences I have enjoyed over the last few months and the knowledge that accompanied it.
My interest in art is focused on notions of work and play. It has been my intention over the past year to develop a definition of 'productive play' and research it's forms more closely. In this same year I have become increasingly interested in the nature of work, particularly that responsible for the dominant Victorian architecture of Leeds. A key element to the action of work (as opposed to play) is that it is characterised by its desire to immortalise the worker. Leeds, like most cities in the North of England, is a city that expanded rapidly around the time of the industrial revolution, meaning most of the buildings are of this period, and the workers who's daily actions are immortalised in its architecture are also from this period.
Did that mean that work was better in those days? The 'good old days' when you could see how much you made everyday, when what you produced had a tangible quality, when others could see the fruits of your labour? You maybe even knew that your work would not only have some real effect in the here and now, but had the potential to still be around in the lives of distant future generations. A time before the domination of the service sector, the invention of call centres, the franchise and chain store take-over, maybe even before bureaucracy for the sake of creating jobs? Was there a time when work was good?
I further became fascinated with the idea of agriculture and self-sustenance, as therein lay a form of meaningful work or 'productive play', an action with consequence but without physical reification, a form of work that satisfied man's desire to create without the harmful after-effect of adding to the human artifice. Was working with the land an action that fell between labour, work and play - a holy trinity that is all three and yet none?
These questions remain unanswered, possibly because they are unanswerable, but if there was one certainty it is that the most pertinent period in history to examine those issues that surround work and play, it would be at the onset of the industrial revolution.
Industrial Revolution and Mechanisation
Historians argue over the exact start of the industrial revolution, but it is generally accepted that it was at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries when the process of industrialisation, beginning in the UK, changed the majority of lives forever. The mechanisation of processes that had once taken generations to master were transformed into 'unskilled labour'. One advantage of the substitution of crafts and trades with 'unskilled labour' is that it opened the job market wide open and in so doing created a welcome escape route from the previous forced reality of master-led feudalism. However, aside from the fact that many of these unskilled job opportunities were filled by children and offered the lowest wages possible, mechanisation abolished a great deal of thriving trades, particularly within the textiles industry.
Prior to the introduction of mechanised mills it was common that the processes in the textiles industry were carried out from home. Families would work together spinning with simple wheels or weaving using handlooms. The pieces of cloth were produced in this home environment were then collected by a master who paid the family for what they had produced, what we now know as 'piecework'.
Factories where workers were needed simply to oversee the machines (and each other) transformed this piecework into a common method of production we understand best now through the term 'time is money'. Rather than survival being dependent on what you were able to produce, the workingman, woman or child's only obligation necessary to survive was to hand their day over to the mill or factory owner. Work was reduced to a simple sacrifice of time, and the fate and responsibility for the workers survival was in the Mill owners' hands.
This process of transformation from specifically rewarded work, to generically rewarded labour didn't pass without opposition. In the north of England the violent and bloody Luddite uprising is documented as having begun in 1811. The Luddites were a secret society of machine breakers who met on moors to destroy the machines and mills that threatened their livelihoods. Even the earliest machines including the Spinning Jenny were met with suspicion and at times physical resentment. In Biella it is noted that the people’s scepticism towards the mechanisation of processes that had been passed down as hand skills through generations meant Italy lost out to competition from UK and French textiles production on more than one occasion. Eventually though, it was British spinning-machines bought from Belgium that began the industrialisation of the wool industry in Northern Italy. Industrialisation spread and affected everything.
Industrialisation is now my generation's reality. We can't imagine a life before or after it any more than we can imagine a life before or after the cycle of day and night. Even with the decline in the manufacturing sector, the processes that were once put in place to ensure the efficient manufacture of goods are now being transferred to the service sector, as it has become increasingly apparent that division of labour and production line techniques are equally as effective at ensuring an efficient and compliant workforce in restaurants, call centres, help desks, schools and so forth.
As many have predicted though, industrialisation has become its own undoing. Technology has advanced to such a stage that the efficiency of machinery means that the number of jobs in direct manufacturing has peaked and declined within 100 years. Unrestricted international trade has aided the production industry in centralising in areas where labour and material costs are least expensive, meaning regions and countries that once thrived on productive industries are unable to compete with overseas imports.
We are at the dawn of a new Era. Economist Jeremy Rifkin describes this new phase of technological capabilities as a third industrial revolution, and addresses the economic implications in his book 'The End of Work'. At this juncture it could be suggested that we take a retrospective look at the original plans and dreams that spurned the rapid growth of industrialisation, and see what we can salvage from the wreckage. Similarly we can identify the seeds of our own undoing by examining the intentions of utopianists in the pre and post-industrial period, as we will find that best intentions don't always result in the best actions.
Utopias
'Utopia' refers to the fictional island recounted in Thomas Mores novel of 1516 of the same name. In it, More describes a little known land in the New World that operates on a harmonious and successful level to the benefit of all its inhabitants. A few characteristics that contribute to this success are a rejection of false pleasures (including fine clothes and money), the more or less equal distribution (and consequent reduction) of work and a devout faith to a single god with a tolerance to other beliefs.
More’s book was incredibly successful and has had a huge influence on literature, politics and economics since its publication until the present day. Utopia is now a byword for a perfect place or a paradise on earth. Similarly efforts to create a better, or perhaps a perfect society are called utopianism and ideas that could be or are considered able to radically change our world are often called utopian ideas. It has also been used to describe actual communities founded in attempts to create such a society.
At first it would appear senseless to study Utopias or Utopian ideas in reference to actual social change, as we are entering the realm of fantasy. The term "utopia" is combined from two Greek words - "no" (ou) and "place/land" (topos), thus meaning "nowhere" or more literally, "no-place/no-land". Utopias are places that by definition can't exist or are unable to exist. Although some authors have described their utopias in detail, and with an effort to show a level of practicality, the term "utopia" has come to be applied to notions that are (supposedly) too optimistic and idealistic for practical application. "Utopian" in a negative meaning is used to discredit ideas as too advanced, too optimistic or unrealistic, and impossible to realise.
However, a resignation to the absence of attainability of perfection does not mean we should not strive for it. Toby Green outlines in the beginning of his novel, 'Thomas More’s Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico' the overall apathy of present government in the UK and asks what ever happened to idealism? For although our visions for Utopia may be unattainable, it is these visions that motivate progress and throw up otherwise unimaginable solutions to real problems.
Additionally, More's Utopia has been criticised for being impossible to initiate (the only way it can ever exist is if it had always existed) but there do exist instances where Utopian communities have been attempted. It is no small coincidence that these often occur in the wake of great social change (for example Fouriers' Phalanx-style communities around the time of the 1848 French Revolution or Vasco de Quiroga's commune on the Mexico City outskirts in 1532). Indeed Toby Green commented that the environment that led to Quiroga's practical attempt (and no doubt the first based on More's book) at initiating a utopian commune was present because 'The Americas came to represent a place in which the slate had been wiped clean and people could begin again'.
So, as we now find ourselves at a point where jobs are disappearing and the old methods of production and resultant organisation of labour are being altered forever, we are presented with a clean slate so to speak. At the dawn of the aforementioned third industrial revolution, just as at the first, there is no better time to reignite our idealism.
The role of work
It is obvious that when inventing or describing a Utopia one of the first points of interest to the modern man will be how (or if) the citizens of that Utopia work, as it is the mark by which we have measured our lives for centuries. In More's Utopia the citizens have designed a system by which they work as little as is required and yet produce is plentiful. Each person in Utopia was required to work for six hours a day, with a portion of this work being farming work in addition to their own trade. 'The commonwealth is primarily designed to relieve all citizens from as much bodily labour as possible, so that they can devote their time to the freedom and cultivation of the mind. For that, they think, constitutes a happy life.' At the turn of the industrial revolution work was to play an even more prominent role in Utopian designs.
Charles Fourier, a French utopian writer who’s first book was published in 1808, imagined workers would be recompensed for their labors according to their contribution and saw such cooperation occurring in communities he called "phalanxes." Phalanxes were based around structures called "grand hotels". These buildings were four level apartment complexes where the richest had the uppermost apartments and the poorest enjoyed a ground floor residence. Wealth was determined by one's job; jobs were assigned based on the interests and desires of the individual. There were incentives, jobs people might not enjoy doing would receive higher pay.
It would appear that for industrial Utopianists like Fourier a form of hierarchy was not problematic, in fact it was desirable. Even in More's Utopia patriarchy and hierarchy reign supreme, where the eldest male in each household exerts authority over the rest of the family and a handful of elected priests impart wisdom to the entire society. Throughout the industrialisation of textiles and other manufacturers this phenomenon manifested itself as
'paternalism', best exemplified in the worker's or 'model' village.
The model village was the industrial equivalent of a Utopia achievable on Earth, and for millworkers that had lived and worked in the factories in Bradford in the early 19th Century it may well have felt like one. The overcrowded living conditions, poor quality housing and dreadful pollution of Bradford in the early to mid 19th Century is described as 'like having entered hell itself' and was of course famed for its 'dark satanic mills'. This in turn had an adverse affect on the morality and pastimes of the working classes who were reportedly indulging in all manner of drinking, sexual deviation and violence. This was of much concern to the emerging middle classes who were attempting to make or retain their fortunes off the back of this labour force.
An attempted solution to the adverse effects of industrialisation on the morality of Yorkshire workers came in the form of Titus Salt's model village 'Saltaire'. Here appropriate sized housing and cultural amenities were provided to all workers in the revolutionary 'Salts Mill' that housed all stages of manufacture for producing worsted cloth. Equivalents exist all over Britain and the rest of the world, in Scotland with New Lanarkshire, in Italy with the cotton producing Crespi d'Adda and also later in Olivetti's projects in Ivrea and in Spain to name but a few. Although the product and the form of these villages may have varied, one aspect remained constant - the presence of the job and therefore the employer in all aspects of the resident's life.
There is no doubt that these workers villages offered a vastly improved alternative to the worker’s previous life in the earlier unregulated urbanity that rapidly sprung up around newly built factories at the turn of the century in the UK. However, humanitarian philanthropists such as Titus Salt also benefited greatly from a healthy and obedient workforce, who was quoted as having questioned 'why he should be bothered to build anything [in the village] which worked against his business.' Yorkshire entrepreneurs like Titus Salt and Samuel Lister became the richest men in the city thanks to their giant mills and the number and productivity of the workforce they kept.
Similarly in Italy the industrial revolution gave the opportunity for the 'upper orders' to amass great wealth, exemplified up in to the last century when in 1963 Biella was the second city in Italy in the 'personal plane league'. Huge fortunes were won thanks to industrialisation with areas in Yorkshire and Italy becoming known as 'wool capital of the world' at various times, and single trades offering employment to nearly the entire population of those towns and cities.
Some would have considered the opportunity for free movement up the social order through indiscriminating (unskilled) work, the introduction of state schooling and the expansion of previously insular towns into multicultural business hotbeds as Utopian ideals, however the long term effects tell a different story.
Aside from a number of public parks, civic buildings and elaborate chimneys it would be hard to say that the industrialisation of areas has done more good than harm. The industrialists' vision has shaped land across countries and continents without discrimination. In Leeds and Bradford the surrounding villages and hamlets were transformed into workers' suburbs linked by roads, in Biella 'the whole landscape speaks of industrial labour'. In both Bradford and Biella the rivers that once made the areas so suitable for the manufacture of textiles have been described as changing colour with the seasons' fashion, thanks to the dumping of industrial dyes. The canal in Bradford at one point was so full of raw sewage that it could be set alight with a match. Nowadays the landscape of the city is dotted regularly with redundant mills, those of which that aren’t derelict or neglected are being transformed into flats or consumer oriented art spaces.
Compounding this irreparable transformation of the landscape is the fall-out suffered after relying solely on one type of work. The 'unstoppable' textiles trade (which on closer inspection has seen few periods that couldn’t be described as turbulent) fooled people into believing they had a job for not only their life, but for the lives of generations that followed. The national recession of Thatcherite Britain in the early Eighties paints a depressing and stark picture, with workers who have only known one trade and one facet of life so well, now out of work and lost. Similarly an imported labour force from South Pakistan who had moved to mill areas on the promise of a richer and more fulfilling living were left with little options to integrate into the textiles-less economy other than to work in the 'transport industry'.
More importantly what was left and will be left by the inevitable shift of the textiles industry is a population that judge each other's worth by their job title, with few jobs to go round. As with most of the world, but particularly in industrial areas, there exists a kind of social hierarch based on wealth and work. Those with the greatest wealth and the most sophisticated jobs are most revered and their position aspired to, whereas those that at one time contributed with the greatest effort endured the lowliest conditions and social standing. Far from being a utopianist environment, this characteristic of industrialisation is actually in direct contrast to the ideals of the Utopia outlined by More.
'For what sort of justice is it for some nobleman or goldsmith or moneylender or, in short, any of the others who either do nothing at all or something that is not very necessary for the commonwealth, to live luxuriously and splendidly in complete idleness or doing some superfluous task? And at the same time a laborer, a teamster, a blacksmith or farmer works so long and hard that a beast of burden could hardly sustain it, performing tasks so necessary that without them no commonwealth could survive at all for even a single year, and yet they earn such a meagre living and lead such miserable lives that the beasts of burden seem better off.'
Introduction
Plato (Republic 1.643b-c) 'to make a good farmer [a man] must play'
The purpose of writing this text is as a primer to an essay, or an elaboration of an art project. I believe it will sit somewhere in between the two; not developed enough to be considered exhaustive or researched to an academic level, but pretentious enough to elevate it above a purely anecdotal recital of the experiences I have enjoyed over the last few months and the knowledge that accompanied it.
My interest in art is focused on notions of work and play. It has been my intention over the past year to develop a definition of 'productive play' and research it's forms more closely. In this same year I have become increasingly interested in the nature of work, particularly that responsible for the dominant Victorian architecture of Leeds. A key element to the action of work (as opposed to play) is that it is characterised by its desire to immortalise the worker. Leeds, like most cities in the North of England, is a city that expanded rapidly around the time of the industrial revolution, meaning most of the buildings are of this period, and the workers who's daily actions are immortalised in its architecture are also from this period.
Did that mean that work was better in those days? The 'good old days' when you could see how much you made everyday, when what you produced had a tangible quality, when others could see the fruits of your labour? You maybe even knew that your work would not only have some real effect in the here and now, but had the potential to still be around in the lives of distant future generations. A time before the domination of the service sector, the invention of call centres, the franchise and chain store take-over, maybe even before bureaucracy for the sake of creating jobs? Was there a time when work was good?
I further became fascinated with the idea of agriculture and self-sustenance, as therein lay a form of meaningful work or 'productive play', an action with consequence but without physical reification, a form of work that satisfied man's desire to create without the harmful after-effect of adding to the human artifice. Was working with the land an action that fell between labour, work and play - a holy trinity that is all three and yet none?
These questions remain unanswered, possibly because they are unanswerable, but if there was one certainty it is that the most pertinent period in history to examine those issues that surround work and play, it would be at the onset of the industrial revolution.
Industrial Revolution and Mechanisation
Historians argue over the exact start of the industrial revolution, but it is generally accepted that it was at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries when the process of industrialisation, beginning in the UK, changed the majority of lives forever. The mechanisation of processes that had once taken generations to master were transformed into 'unskilled labour'. One advantage of the substitution of crafts and trades with 'unskilled labour' is that it opened the job market wide open and in so doing created a welcome escape route from the previous forced reality of master-led feudalism. However, aside from the fact that many of these unskilled job opportunities were filled by children and offered the lowest wages possible, mechanisation abolished a great deal of thriving trades, particularly within the textiles industry.
Prior to the introduction of mechanised mills it was common that the processes in the textiles industry were carried out from home. Families would work together spinning with simple wheels or weaving using handlooms. The pieces of cloth were produced in this home environment were then collected by a master who paid the family for what they had produced, what we now know as 'piecework'.
Factories where workers were needed simply to oversee the machines (and each other) transformed this piecework into a common method of production we understand best now through the term 'time is money'. Rather than survival being dependent on what you were able to produce, the workingman, woman or child's only obligation necessary to survive was to hand their day over to the mill or factory owner. Work was reduced to a simple sacrifice of time, and the fate and responsibility for the workers survival was in the Mill owners' hands.
This process of transformation from specifically rewarded work, to generically rewarded labour didn't pass without opposition. In the north of England the violent and bloody Luddite uprising is documented as having begun in 1811. The Luddites were a secret society of machine breakers who met on moors to destroy the machines and mills that threatened their livelihoods. Even the earliest machines including the Spinning Jenny were met with suspicion and at times physical resentment. In Biella it is noted that the people’s scepticism towards the mechanisation of processes that had been passed down as hand skills through generations meant Italy lost out to competition from UK and French textiles production on more than one occasion. Eventually though, it was British spinning-machines bought from Belgium that began the industrialisation of the wool industry in Northern Italy. Industrialisation spread and affected everything.
Industrialisation is now my generation's reality. We can't imagine a life before or after it any more than we can imagine a life before or after the cycle of day and night. Even with the decline in the manufacturing sector, the processes that were once put in place to ensure the efficient manufacture of goods are now being transferred to the service sector, as it has become increasingly apparent that division of labour and production line techniques are equally as effective at ensuring an efficient and compliant workforce in restaurants, call centres, help desks, schools and so forth.
As many have predicted though, industrialisation has become its own undoing. Technology has advanced to such a stage that the efficiency of machinery means that the number of jobs in direct manufacturing has peaked and declined within 100 years. Unrestricted international trade has aided the production industry in centralising in areas where labour and material costs are least expensive, meaning regions and countries that once thrived on productive industries are unable to compete with overseas imports.
We are at the dawn of a new Era. Economist Jeremy Rifkin describes this new phase of technological capabilities as a third industrial revolution, and addresses the economic implications in his book 'The End of Work'. At this juncture it could be suggested that we take a retrospective look at the original plans and dreams that spurned the rapid growth of industrialisation, and see what we can salvage from the wreckage. Similarly we can identify the seeds of our own undoing by examining the intentions of utopianists in the pre and post-industrial period, as we will find that best intentions don't always result in the best actions.
Utopias
'Utopia' refers to the fictional island recounted in Thomas Mores novel of 1516 of the same name. In it, More describes a little known land in the New World that operates on a harmonious and successful level to the benefit of all its inhabitants. A few characteristics that contribute to this success are a rejection of false pleasures (including fine clothes and money), the more or less equal distribution (and consequent reduction) of work and a devout faith to a single god with a tolerance to other beliefs.
More’s book was incredibly successful and has had a huge influence on literature, politics and economics since its publication until the present day. Utopia is now a byword for a perfect place or a paradise on earth. Similarly efforts to create a better, or perhaps a perfect society are called utopianism and ideas that could be or are considered able to radically change our world are often called utopian ideas. It has also been used to describe actual communities founded in attempts to create such a society.
At first it would appear senseless to study Utopias or Utopian ideas in reference to actual social change, as we are entering the realm of fantasy. The term "utopia" is combined from two Greek words - "no" (ou) and "place/land" (topos), thus meaning "nowhere" or more literally, "no-place/no-land". Utopias are places that by definition can't exist or are unable to exist. Although some authors have described their utopias in detail, and with an effort to show a level of practicality, the term "utopia" has come to be applied to notions that are (supposedly) too optimistic and idealistic for practical application. "Utopian" in a negative meaning is used to discredit ideas as too advanced, too optimistic or unrealistic, and impossible to realise.
However, a resignation to the absence of attainability of perfection does not mean we should not strive for it. Toby Green outlines in the beginning of his novel, 'Thomas More’s Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico' the overall apathy of present government in the UK and asks what ever happened to idealism? For although our visions for Utopia may be unattainable, it is these visions that motivate progress and throw up otherwise unimaginable solutions to real problems.
Additionally, More's Utopia has been criticised for being impossible to initiate (the only way it can ever exist is if it had always existed) but there do exist instances where Utopian communities have been attempted. It is no small coincidence that these often occur in the wake of great social change (for example Fouriers' Phalanx-style communities around the time of the 1848 French Revolution or Vasco de Quiroga's commune on the Mexico City outskirts in 1532). Indeed Toby Green commented that the environment that led to Quiroga's practical attempt (and no doubt the first based on More's book) at initiating a utopian commune was present because 'The Americas came to represent a place in which the slate had been wiped clean and people could begin again'.
So, as we now find ourselves at a point where jobs are disappearing and the old methods of production and resultant organisation of labour are being altered forever, we are presented with a clean slate so to speak. At the dawn of the aforementioned third industrial revolution, just as at the first, there is no better time to reignite our idealism.
The role of work
It is obvious that when inventing or describing a Utopia one of the first points of interest to the modern man will be how (or if) the citizens of that Utopia work, as it is the mark by which we have measured our lives for centuries. In More's Utopia the citizens have designed a system by which they work as little as is required and yet produce is plentiful. Each person in Utopia was required to work for six hours a day, with a portion of this work being farming work in addition to their own trade. 'The commonwealth is primarily designed to relieve all citizens from as much bodily labour as possible, so that they can devote their time to the freedom and cultivation of the mind. For that, they think, constitutes a happy life.' At the turn of the industrial revolution work was to play an even more prominent role in Utopian designs.
Charles Fourier, a French utopian writer who’s first book was published in 1808, imagined workers would be recompensed for their labors according to their contribution and saw such cooperation occurring in communities he called "phalanxes." Phalanxes were based around structures called "grand hotels". These buildings were four level apartment complexes where the richest had the uppermost apartments and the poorest enjoyed a ground floor residence. Wealth was determined by one's job; jobs were assigned based on the interests and desires of the individual. There were incentives, jobs people might not enjoy doing would receive higher pay.
It would appear that for industrial Utopianists like Fourier a form of hierarchy was not problematic, in fact it was desirable. Even in More's Utopia patriarchy and hierarchy reign supreme, where the eldest male in each household exerts authority over the rest of the family and a handful of elected priests impart wisdom to the entire society. Throughout the industrialisation of textiles and other manufacturers this phenomenon manifested itself as
'paternalism', best exemplified in the worker's or 'model' village.
The model village was the industrial equivalent of a Utopia achievable on Earth, and for millworkers that had lived and worked in the factories in Bradford in the early 19th Century it may well have felt like one. The overcrowded living conditions, poor quality housing and dreadful pollution of Bradford in the early to mid 19th Century is described as 'like having entered hell itself' and was of course famed for its 'dark satanic mills'. This in turn had an adverse affect on the morality and pastimes of the working classes who were reportedly indulging in all manner of drinking, sexual deviation and violence. This was of much concern to the emerging middle classes who were attempting to make or retain their fortunes off the back of this labour force.
An attempted solution to the adverse effects of industrialisation on the morality of Yorkshire workers came in the form of Titus Salt's model village 'Saltaire'. Here appropriate sized housing and cultural amenities were provided to all workers in the revolutionary 'Salts Mill' that housed all stages of manufacture for producing worsted cloth. Equivalents exist all over Britain and the rest of the world, in Scotland with New Lanarkshire, in Italy with the cotton producing Crespi d'Adda and also later in Olivetti's projects in Ivrea and in Spain to name but a few. Although the product and the form of these villages may have varied, one aspect remained constant - the presence of the job and therefore the employer in all aspects of the resident's life.
There is no doubt that these workers villages offered a vastly improved alternative to the worker’s previous life in the earlier unregulated urbanity that rapidly sprung up around newly built factories at the turn of the century in the UK. However, humanitarian philanthropists such as Titus Salt also benefited greatly from a healthy and obedient workforce, who was quoted as having questioned 'why he should be bothered to build anything [in the village] which worked against his business.' Yorkshire entrepreneurs like Titus Salt and Samuel Lister became the richest men in the city thanks to their giant mills and the number and productivity of the workforce they kept.
Similarly in Italy the industrial revolution gave the opportunity for the 'upper orders' to amass great wealth, exemplified up in to the last century when in 1963 Biella was the second city in Italy in the 'personal plane league'. Huge fortunes were won thanks to industrialisation with areas in Yorkshire and Italy becoming known as 'wool capital of the world' at various times, and single trades offering employment to nearly the entire population of those towns and cities.
Some would have considered the opportunity for free movement up the social order through indiscriminating (unskilled) work, the introduction of state schooling and the expansion of previously insular towns into multicultural business hotbeds as Utopian ideals, however the long term effects tell a different story.
Aside from a number of public parks, civic buildings and elaborate chimneys it would be hard to say that the industrialisation of areas has done more good than harm. The industrialists' vision has shaped land across countries and continents without discrimination. In Leeds and Bradford the surrounding villages and hamlets were transformed into workers' suburbs linked by roads, in Biella 'the whole landscape speaks of industrial labour'. In both Bradford and Biella the rivers that once made the areas so suitable for the manufacture of textiles have been described as changing colour with the seasons' fashion, thanks to the dumping of industrial dyes. The canal in Bradford at one point was so full of raw sewage that it could be set alight with a match. Nowadays the landscape of the city is dotted regularly with redundant mills, those of which that aren’t derelict or neglected are being transformed into flats or consumer oriented art spaces.
Compounding this irreparable transformation of the landscape is the fall-out suffered after relying solely on one type of work. The 'unstoppable' textiles trade (which on closer inspection has seen few periods that couldn’t be described as turbulent) fooled people into believing they had a job for not only their life, but for the lives of generations that followed. The national recession of Thatcherite Britain in the early Eighties paints a depressing and stark picture, with workers who have only known one trade and one facet of life so well, now out of work and lost. Similarly an imported labour force from South Pakistan who had moved to mill areas on the promise of a richer and more fulfilling living were left with little options to integrate into the textiles-less economy other than to work in the 'transport industry'.
More importantly what was left and will be left by the inevitable shift of the textiles industry is a population that judge each other's worth by their job title, with few jobs to go round. As with most of the world, but particularly in industrial areas, there exists a kind of social hierarch based on wealth and work. Those with the greatest wealth and the most sophisticated jobs are most revered and their position aspired to, whereas those that at one time contributed with the greatest effort endured the lowliest conditions and social standing. Far from being a utopianist environment, this characteristic of industrialisation is actually in direct contrast to the ideals of the Utopia outlined by More.
'For what sort of justice is it for some nobleman or goldsmith or moneylender or, in short, any of the others who either do nothing at all or something that is not very necessary for the commonwealth, to live luxuriously and splendidly in complete idleness or doing some superfluous task? And at the same time a laborer, a teamster, a blacksmith or farmer works so long and hard that a beast of burden could hardly sustain it, performing tasks so necessary that without them no commonwealth could survive at all for even a single year, and yet they earn such a meagre living and lead such miserable lives that the beasts of burden seem better off.'
posted by Abbott and Carmichael at 31.10.06
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