THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 12, 1937.
What Is A "Special Area"?
doctor.
They icts
to
The following simple answer to this way of saying something unplea- acetones for high explosives or nail attractive to new industr
simple question is ́· given by sant, like calling a man a "Cabinet polish, more resins for moulding new must be rebuilt, and the Ritchie Calder in the form of Minister" when he really is a quack product.
where the poor pay a letter to his schoolboy god-
keep the poor cannot afford to do To South Wales, Durham, Scot-it. New industries stebe creat But the people who live in these land and Cumberland it means new ed-in face of and in spite of yes areas have a different definition. employment. Yet we import it from ed interests and placed there in-
abroad at £15 a ton.
stead of centring round London.
Then iron and steel. Strange that Because you should know there is
-801
EAR STANLEY,
DEA
You say that you are asham- ed because you could not
need not be.
answer
which had sieved through the wagon boards on to the
If you asked me what a "special in a time of shortage of these, I a Black Belt round London, shaped the test question set at school: "What area" is, I might describe it in should go round steel work in de like the magnet it is, which attracts is a special area? And why?" You terms of a man in a threadbare suit pressed areas where the only sound new industries because right out- on a bitter frosty morning scrap is clanging metal-or roofs being side the door is a market of 9,000,000 ing up hoar-covered chips of coal dismantled and machines being people and an unlimited pool of
broken up.
unorganised labour to draw upon. And shipbuilding. Things are They can say with some truth improving in the shipyards, but not that "industry is not drifting Or of the young mothers-girls in Dalmuir or Jarrow where the South." No, but it is equally true National Shipbuildings Securities that new industries are not drift- and unnaturally bright eyes-tooth- have bought up and closed down ing North or West. That sounds silly? Well, let me less because they cannot afford to Beardmore's and Palmer's. put it this way: Last year you had replace the teeth they have lost
Lots of people do not know what
railway track a special area is Mr. Chamberlain which runs through a coalfield. and Mr. Ernest Brown, for in- stance...
some of them-with toothless gums
diphtheria and recovered because through bad feeding, bright-eyed The last time I went through Dal- you had a doctor who knew his with the smouldering fires of con- muir, where I once lived, was at
job.
sumption.
Or I might recall that incident on
Why? Because, at the "clever" the time when the whole world people tell us, Wales is "inacceg- was applauding the Queen Mary, sible." That is why the Severn launched from the neighbouring Bridge scheme, which would bring But if the doctor had come along,
Yard at Clydebank, while the child it nearer the rich markets, was taken a look at your throat, and
ren of the unemployed shipyard killed. Jarrow is vulnerable" to said, "Ah! Diphtheria!" and, with
workers watched it from Beard the attack of an unnamed enemy. the Jarrow. March when they buri- more's derelict yard-now just a That is why Billingham-on-Tees, 30 a shake of his head and a promise ed the litter after a midday meal by grandstand.. And last week-end I miles South-equally exposed to the that one of his rich, kind friends the road-side with a grimly mock- went through Palmer's. But I shall North Sea is the centre of would send you along some calf's ing funeral service, and the remark spare you that
plant for making war-time petrol foot jelly, had left you to die of "There isn't a man here who does. suffocation, it would have been fair not know the Funeral Service off
by heart."
to say, "That doctor does not know, what diphtheria is, or why."
*
*
*
the
In short, the "doctors" do not know the cause of the disease, how to treat it or—and to you of the im-
Or of a cluster of unemployed men But the depressed areas were de- younger generation; this is waiting for half-time, because they pressed before the depression, portant-how to prevent another could get in for a penny to a foot- Wherever you go, through miners' epidemic of industrial diphtheria. ball match when the full charge rows, tied to the pits and shadow- was twopence.
ed by the slag-heaps; in Mid-Scot- land, in South Wales, in Durham, But I could go on multiplying these you can see what "prosperity" did instances of what "Special Areas" in the past. mean. in terms of flesh and blood, but what do they mean in terms of
Perhaps you were too young, five years ago, to appreciate that the "National" Government was asking for a "Doctor's Mandate" to cure the Depression. Ever since, the "doctors" have been looking at the industry? disease spots and saying, sorrow. fully, "Ah, special areas!"
They have got their rich, kind friends to send along the equivalent calf's foot jelly-social centres,
of
Briefly, they mean coal, steel and shipbuilding.
If you read your newspapers, you may know that the coal industry is in "a bad way." Sales of coal make-shift industries, cast-off cloth abroad have dwindled; home con ing and, oh, no end of sympathy! And they have left the districts to die, slowly and painfully of suffoca- tion and starvation,
Because they do not know what is a special area, or why, or how to treat it
To them, this indus-
sumers are getting increasing effi- ciency out of a decreasing use of coal; mines are being mechanised so that fewer miners can produce. more coal per man.
Yet coal is still our greatest na- tional asset, not nowadays merely in terms of lumps of raw coal, but of trial diphtheria is an incurable the new industries which can come disease.
out of that coal, industries which should belong by natural right to Of course, they can give you a the depressed areas, employing the nice definition of "What is a Special men displaced at the coal-face. Area?" They call it "an area speci- ally affected by the depression.”
When you get a bit older and study the chemistry of coal, you will realise what I mean-oil rom They shuddered at the word coal, drugs, dyes, resins which can "derelict," although they had left be moulded into a thousand shapes them derelict. They shrank, fasti- for a thousand purposes, and so on. diously, from the word "distressed" New industries which reach out although they knew there was dis. into the future.
tress enough in these areas.
They did not like "depressed" be-
...
Then there is calcium
Carbide. coal and
cause, after all, they had a doctor's That means limestone, mandate to cure depression and they electricity. It means to you, car- had hot cured this.
-bide for your bicycle lamps, or, if you are what I used to he, for put-
So they called them "Special ting into in vells. To industry it "Areas" which, as your teacher tell you, is “euphemisi
means acetylene for welding, acetic nice acids for making silk stockings,
Your affectionate godfather,
RITCHIE CALDER
P.S. might have mentioned Socialism, both as a cure, and as a who
To take the depression out of the prevention, but your fath depressed areas they must be made votes National,
Cook
by
Gas
would not like it.