Whatever Happened to the Postindustrial City?
After fifty years of neoliberalism, smaller British cities have some of the worst life prospects in Western Europe. Does a case study of one of them offer any clues about how to challenge uneven development and reverse postindustrial decline?
Commerce Works pottery factory in Longton, June 2021. (Credit: Dave Proudlove.)
Stoke-on-Trent — or the Potteries as it is popularly known — is celebrating a century of city status this year. But over the years, it has not been a popular place; indeed, it has tended to have a pretty bad press. On visiting the area in the 1930s, J.B. Priestley opined that the human race had yet to arrive there. Nikolaus Pevsner famously described the Six Towns (or Five Towns, as he and Arnold Bennett christened the Potteries) ‘an urban tragedy’. In the sixties, Labour minister Richard Crossman felt that the city ought to be abandoned, and that any attempts at renewal would be a waste of time and money.
In more recent times Stoke-on-Trent has been named one of the worst places to live in the country. It has become a fixture in the Crap Towns series, the Guardian has taken the occasional pot-shot, and, though he was coming from a good place, Matthew Rice once said that ‘Stoke-on-Trent should be lovely, but it isn’t‘.
The prevailing popular image of the Potteries is one of pits, steel, pots, smoke and stench — this despite the fact that the pits and steel have long since gone, the pottery industry has changed beyond all recognition, and the city is one of the greenest in the country thanks to its Victorian parks and land reclamation programmes. Stoke-on-Trent has always been thought to have needed cleaning up, regardless of the reality.
During its first century as a city, Stoke-on-Trent has faced many economic, social, and political challenges; although more recent years have witnessed some positive developments — securing UNESCO World Craft City status, the emergence of the createch sector, and regeneration schemes such as the Goods Yard — the Potteries is still in desperate need of renewal.
Though there has been much celebration of the city’s centenary this year, culminating in a three-day jamboree this month, a lot of it has been about looking back. While this is understandable, surely the centenary celebrations are also a perfect opportunity for Stoke-on-Trent to finally start the process of revival — and begin to try to find a way of moving forward.
Revenge of the Absentee Landlords
Despite its history of innovation — local pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood was one of the most entrepreneurial and inventive industrialists in history — Stoke-on-Trent has most often been behind the curve when it comes to economic development. This has certainly been the case when it comes to urban regeneration. While cities like Manchester have reinvented themselves (even if not all of the outcomes have been palatable), Stoke-on-Trent has been genuinely left behind in a way that transcends recent clichéd uses of the term.
A revival of sorts was begun during the years of New Labour’s ‘urban renaissance’. But the election of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition in 2010 saw the plug pulled on numerous regeneration programmes, and the ensuing implementation of austerity wreaked havoc. Today, Stoke-on-Trent is the thirteenth most deprived local authority area in the country. The city is wrestling with some deep-rooted and complex social problems, and some challenging economic problems that have manifested in highly visible ways.
The city of Stoke-on-Trent is actually made up of six connected pottery towns: Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley (regarded as the city centre), Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton, and Longton. Because of this, Stoke-on-Trent has the typical problems modern high streets face multiplied by six, and the main centres of public life across the city have been slowly emptied. The rise of online shopping hasn’t helped. But then neither have misguided decisions to develop numerous out-of-town retail destinations across the conurbation; some of the city’s wounds have been self-inflicted.
The result has been a genuine heritage emergency. The six town centres are now littered with empty and derelict historic buildings, many of which are in the hands of absentee owners. Meanwhile, those that are put to use are often terribly managed by what can only be described as rogue landlords.
The case of Hanley’s Drop City Books illustrates the point perfectly. This proud independent bookshop was opened in 2023 by Ruth Wallbank, on the ground floor of a grand Edwardian building at the junction of Broad Street and Marsh Street South. The shop had a wonderfully eclectic and diverse offer, taking in fiction, culture, and left-wing politics, while hosting some great author events. It was the perfect addition to Hanley’s cultural quarter.
However, a few months after opening, Drop City Books was forced to close its doors for a short period after a flood that originated from flats occupying the upper floors of the building. After dealing with damaged stock, and coordinating a clear-up, Ruth got the show back on the road, only to be hit by a second flood in November 2024 which left her in dispute with the landlord, and forced her to close the shop permanently.
Happily, Drop City Books has survived as a pop-up shop appearing at events across North Staffordshire. But its experience in Hanley demonstrates some of the real difficulties that start-ups face when dealing with landlords across the city. Could the city council do more? Possibly. But when the local authority has been gutted by more than a decade of cuts and needs exceptional financial support from the government, they are fighting with one arm behind their back.
Away from the high street, Stoke-on-Trent’s key industry is still ceramics, despite its various convulsions, crises, and steady decline during the latter half of the twentieth century. And now it faces a new challenge. Ceramics is one of the most energy-intensive of all industries, and the energy crisis of the past few years has had a huge impact. The historic Moorcroft Pottery recently bit the dust with rising energy costs cited as a key factor. The firm has since been rescued by another member of the Moorcroft family, though the challenges still remain. Stoke-on-Trent’s MPs have raised the issue with ministers, but it remains to be seen what — if any — action they will take.
Ripe for Reform (UK)
The challenges faced by the city’s various heritage organisations and start-ups are acknowledged by the city council, and are central to its ambitious Future 100 prospectus. This seeks to attract significant investment from the government based on ‘five missions’, all of which are aimed at transforming Stoke-on-Trent’s economy while tackling the social problems that blight the city. But while the metro mayors of larger cities are showered with money, so far, the silence from Whitehall when it comes to Stoke-on-Trent has been deafening.
Perhaps they should start listening. This May, a number of county council and mayoral elections were held around the country, including some in and around the Potteries. Reform UK took Staffordshire County Council in a landslide victory, winning 49 of 62 seats, while just a few weeks later, the party took its first seat on Stoke-on-Trent City Council after winning a by-election in Northwood & Birches Head.
In fact, Stoke-on-Trent has a history of dallying with the far-right. From the mid-to-late 2000s, the BNP secured five seats on the city council, and this at a moment when they and their ilk were very much on the political fringes. This time it’s different. The binary divisiveness of Brexit — and the bad noise and bile that surrounded it — has normalised some fairly unsavoury views, to the point where the politicians that espouse them are emboldened (as are their followers, who believe that Reform offers something different). Given how Stoke-on-Trent has been demonstrably failed by the two main political parties — historically taken for granted by Labour and often completely ignored by the Tories — the city is ripe for a Reform takeover.
Ultimately though, it is all about the economy, and especially so in places like Stoke-on-Trent. People are skint. And they are sick of an economic model that patently fails so many. In places like Stoke-on-Trent, the hidden hand of the market tends to stay hidden.
And therein lies the rub. When it comes to the economy, polls have indicated that Reform voters are often left-leaning. The things they care about — jobs, gas, electricity, water, public transport, housing, good public services — are all central to the cost-of-living crisis, and this is traditional Labour territory. And so, while Stoke-on-Trent may be ripe for a Reform incursion, it is also exactly the sort of place where Labour could rediscover itself — improving the lives of working class people and their communities in the process. It really is that simple.
Stoke-on-Trent may still be suffering. But it is a place with huge potential: as an affordable, accessible, green city, which might act as a socio-economic and locational bridge between the Midlands and the North. The city’s first 100 years have been characterised by industrial decline and associated malaise. But with the right political will, its next century might be characterised by a long overdue renewal. Let this be a challenge to Whitehall.