Three years ago, when I first went freelance, I somehow ended up writing a lot about urban regeneration in the north of England – specifically some of the controversial demolition and rebuild schemes being waged on terraced housing under the auspices of the government’s Housing Market Renewal Initiative, or Pathfinder.
It came about really as a result of one story I wrote about the Anfield area of Liverpool, which ran in the Guardian. Activists from a couple more communities who found themselves in a similar situation tracked me down…then a few magazines began commissioning me to do more in the same vein, and before I knew it I was semi-pigeonholed as a regeneration and housing journalist.
Since then I’ve visited and/or written about numerous communities fighting for their houses in Liverpool, East Manchester, Salford, Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, Burnley, Nelson, Leeds, East Riding of Yorkshire, Barrow and probably some other places I haven’t mentioned.
I’ve met heaps of lovely people who have been treated badly by their local reprentatives. Some have since capitulated in the face of the inevitable, others have fought to the bitter end and lost, others have died or lost comrades and others are still fighting. All have watched their close-knit communities melt away as they live out their lives in the shadow of a bulldozer.
Some communities I’m closer to than others. The people of the Seedley area of Salford have become friends. Others I’ve barely kept up with since I covered their plight. One thing I’ve noticed is that where I used to get regualar email updates and group messages, now they’re few and far between. This makes me wonder what has happened to these people and whether their spirits have finally been broken by the shit they have had to put up with day after day.
I’m now planning to try and take another look at many of these stories, to piece together what happened next. Hopefully it won’t take another three years to do it – to me there’s a real public interest issue here, as it’s our taxpayers’ cash that’s funding all this, but that doesn’t mean that the public – or at least newspaper or magazine editors – are necessarily interested.
I started today by returning to a little corner of Clayton, in East Manchester, which I covered for the Big Issue in the North in early 2007. Precisely nothing has been achieved in that time. Homes that have been boarded up for 10 years remain boarded up and empty. The area is a state. The council still hasn’t told the remaining community whether their homes are staying or going, so no one is spending money on maintenance…cue vicious cycle of decline.
Anyway at least now I can return with my camera and a keener eye than last time I covered this story. Today I took some audio interviews as well. It’s going to be a gradual process but I really want to revisit as many of the same families as I can and put it together into something meaningful….I’m just not sure quite what yet. Please watch this space.