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Coke to Coke

Peter Fryer (Photographer), Graeme Rigby (Writer)

Text drawn from Side Gallery archive sources, 2003:

In the aftermath of the Miners’ Strike of 1984, the closure of Derwenthaugh Cokeworks was announced as one of early casualties. As part of its approach to the encouragement of an entrepreneurial culture, the Conservative government was establishing a series of Enterprise Zones, where, for an initial period, new businesses would be allowed to operate rate-free and with fewer local authority/planning controls. One of these zones ran along the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, not far from the cokeworks site. The building of the Metro Centre, the UK’s first, American-style, out-of-town shopping mall, was the key development in the Gateshead Enterprise Zone. A major investment by the Church Commissioners, it made the name of local property developer John Hall, who promoted a vision of Thatcherism with northern roots.

Peter Fryer and Graeme Rigby worked together over a three year period documenting both the closure of the cokeworks and the opening of the shopping mall. Coke to Coke was shown at Side Gallery in 1989. As well as the texts and prints, the exhibition featured a tape/slide presentation of colour Metro Centre images, set to a musically scored performance of the poem, Glass Oceans.

Full Text for the Side Gallery exhibition by Graeme Rigby, 1989:

We started the Industrial Revolution and now we start the Retail Revolution in Gateshead. It's a proud day for me. John Hall, Property Developer

This is how people want to shop in future and this is how they’re going to shop in future. Sir Douglas Lovelock, Church Commissioners

PART ONE: The Derwenthaugh Photographs

Derwenthaugh

I

Cokeworks
in the mouth;
the dry choking
taste of it,
bitter
in the mouth of the valley.

I'm not sorry to see her go.

The pillar of cloud by day,
the pillar of fire by night,
lighting a path to a promised land
that moved.

And I’ll not shift to Monkton, neither.
Get yourself a look at that.
Grab yourself a lungful of that.
I’m up to here with it.

II

Derwenthaugh; a coalfield has closed
behind that pouring mass of steam and smoke,
grey blossoming in the grey air;
has closed behind those savage burnings,
bright as the hawthorn, as the dog rose
flaring up in this cold November
along the mineral lines,
the embankments and the cuts
that once ran down
to the teamers and trimmers,
to the working staithes that now stand broken
in the grey, pile-deep mud of the Tyne:
they left you stranded...

Fierce, now, in the closing skies,
your shift labour in the rough nightmare,
on the batteries, loading the ovens,
lifting the doors and pushing out
a vision of hell, etched and sulphurous,
coking up the night black as the coal
that rolls in,
rolls in on the dull wagons,
this last of Sacriston,
Rank 301, Victoria Seam,
products of exhaustion blend with the opencast;
and now they load these fires of closure
with coals from Kent.

III

These are the last days at the cokeworks,
the Carnival of Goodbyes on top or the batteries;
the free laughter or redundant men
in a redundant plant in a dying coalfield,
waiting for the last push.

It'll be 61 or 43.

Christ, it’s like Hollywood down there.
I’ve never seen so many bloody cameras.

Lift your feet in this dancing twist of a building,
keep your boots from melting in this improvisation of a works,
dance in this Bossa Nova of steel and bricks;
tapping out the rhythms of the last push-through;
this black festival.

Have you seen them down there?

First time I bloody have.

The orange boiler suits and the hard hats
on this Day of the Dead.

I've brought me little hankie.

You great soft get.

Waiting for the last oven.

They’re saying it’ll be 61.

They know nothing down there.

In the heat of the gangway, by the oven doors,
waiting for No.43 to be lifted, lifted and swung back;
watching the engine waiting to shunt,
shunt the last of the red hot coke
down to the quencher.

The first factory... the first factory
where they ever hired a man for his labour,
a wage for a man’s labour... it was in
this valley.

Waiting for it all to be over.

Vince, I’ll give you a fiver if you drop the last load.

More than me job’s worth.

IV

In this valley:

where trees open up
the decaying brickwork;
where yellow broom
spreads on the old sidings;
where ivy twists and hangs
through the lost gantries
and wild garlic sprouts
from the fingers of all
the dead engineers.
Wild garlic
and celandine.

And this earth:

is inherited
by the magpie
and the jay,
by the jackdaw,
rook and crow.

And:

Christ,
you can feel the cold
coming already.

And the hips
on the dog rose
are already
turning black.

Cokeworks Voices

I used to sit in the fields looking down on that place. I used to say, “There's no way they’ll ever get me working there. It’s my vision of Hell, that.” I say that. And yet I loved working at Derwenthaugh.

I remember years ago, when I started, thirteen year ago, my father’s dead now, but he said: “Why, that place is closing.” I mean it’s been closing and it’s been closing. But when it actually happens, it's a hell of a shock. Some people were jumping for joy. I was nearly bubbling.

I’m a plater by trade. I’ve been in the factories all my life. And all the factories have been closed down. This was me last haven. Me last resort. When I got here I thought, “Well, this is my last job.” I thought I’d last out here till I was sixty five. But I’m on the scrap heap now.

When I started there I was asked: ARE YOU PREPARED TO WORK AMONGST HEAT, GAS & DUST? That was on the form. So if you wanted the job, you said: YES.

A couple of times to my knowledge, members of the Royal Family were going past on the road: they stopped production and you’d spend all morning stemming doors. I mean, why? If it wasn’t good enough for them...

Then they had on these lectures. They were saying about the chances of getting cancer on the ram were about four times as great as the man in the street. On the guide, possibly eight times as great. The lid men were on a hiding to nowt, like...

It was a sad day, that, the last oven. I got a bit lump in me throat when I seen it gan out: “That’s the last oven. That's away out, like.” It’s hard, ye knaa. I mean, thirteen year: I’ve put most of me time on there. It’s hard to sink in: “That's the last oven gone out.”

I’d be happy with a little job at the Metro Centre, like. Filling shelves till I’m 65. I’d be happy with owt.

I used to smoke between 60 and 80 a day. Senior Service, like. I was in the Merchant Navy. I was at Christmas Island for the atomic tests. I was ten years on the batteries at Derwenthaugh. Now I’ve got this tumour on me lung. What I want to know is: who am I going to blame?

When they started building those houses on the top, I went up to have a look. I was standing there with the salesman chappie, looking down at this place. I said, “That’s a terrible eyesore, that, like.” He said: “The cokeworks? Oh, it’s coming down.” I thought, “Does he know something I don't know?”

If it's earmarked to close, it doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll close it. You can fight the closure all year long, but at the end of the day, they’ll close it. They just want one excuse and they’ll close it. I think they had it earmarked to close, strike or no strike.

They announced it half past twelve on a Tuesday, that this place was closing on February 15th and Lambton was closing in April. There was a vote on: whether to fight the closure, like. But there were strong rumours that in 1987 the redundancies will stop. A lot of the lads were thinking, “I'll get me money first then get out.” I voted to fight the closure, but then a lot of lads didn’t. They voted for the plant to go down. When it came to the vote, it was 102 to accept closure, 101 to fight it.

You could go to Monkton or nowhere. There’s no other place been mentioned. We’re plater/welders. There’s nine of us here. There were only vacancies for two down there and they had to keep some vacancies open for Lambton. But the papers tell you there are going to be no compulsory redundancies.

PART TWO: The Metro Centre Photographs:

A Piece of Land I

I remember, remembered the minister,
This site..., he stretched his hand,
A waterlogged, derelict
Piece of land.

The minister, Mr Ridley, said:
Today it has become
A shopping and entertainment centre
For everyone.

It demonstrates, he demonstrated,
His eyes filled with light,
Private enterprise is alive and well
Here upon the Tyne.

It’s the best thing, he felt
His hand upon his wallet,
To happen to the North East
Since George Stevenson’s Rocket.

John Hall Said

I stood alone with Ron Chipchase
of Chipchase and Associates,
architects Russell Jones, Norman Turnbull.
The four of us looked at the site from the Western Bypass
and they thought I was mad:
it was a muggy day, you know,
one of those terrible November days,

but anyway we persevered.
We started the format:
designed by people in the North East
for people in the North East,
because we were all North Easterners.
And I’ve travelled the world
and you see warm places, prettier places,
but a man needs roots,
because the essence of family life
is the family;

and this, the Cameron Hall,
is a very, very strong family;
and the theme was so much to do,
in shopping too,
for the whole family.
We wanted to bring everyone here:
keep them here, not just for an hour or two,
but three, four, five hours...

I think we’re going to succeed,
he threatened.

A Piece of Land II

Fifteen years ago, there was swamps, marshes and everything,
the wildlife down there was nobody’s business.
Now what is it?

I listened to the words
of a man on a scheme,
who hadn’t been invited
to the opening ceremony.

We've got the biggest shopkeeper in the country
running the country
and that’s what she wants the country to be:
a shop;
one big shop;
but nobody’s got the money to buy owt.

Looking at a piece of land, a zone of enterprise, we saw the minister smile through dead eyes.

The John Hall Variations

1. It was a bloodless revolution in 1945.
2. I’m just a pit lad from Ashington.
3. I am totally committed to the profit motive.
4. I call myself a bricks and mortar man.
5. I’m from the working class. I’m still working. You see me sitting in this but...
6. I come from a socialist background. My father was a miner.
7. Have a coffee. I’ve a 50% interest in those shops.
8. I’m trying to say to people in my own way, if I can do it, there’s nothing to stop you doing it.
9. Take a piece of land out of the planning system, it’s a free for all. I can build whatever I want to build.
10. History will say...
11. An enterprise zone is a special zone.
12. I come from these mining families. I haven’t left them.
13. Are you going to join me in a Davidoff?

Glass Oceans

I

I
am wrapped in
cling film;
cling film
protect me from

glass oceans.

I
am a pinhead
in a space
on a map
that charts
the vast expanse

of glass and neon.

My head aches
in the bright light
of discovery.

I am.

I can’t
separate
lies from sound investments;
hope from the future tense.

I
am wrapped
in cling film;
cling film
protect me from
their navies.

II

I float in an architect’s imagination on the rhythms of the muzak;
drink with my eyes only, smiling:
the salvation army is a theme park exhibit,
brassy, bleak mid-winter left behind.
Here there is no weather.

And if any memory of pain was ever coded into the plastic
or half seen glimpses of outcasts beyond the electric doors,
surely we are safe now.
There are guards
and the tannoy will tell us when our children have been lost.

III

We are walking
through hyper-reality,
a reality without
the dog dirt of the city.

We have been shown
the ecology of fantasy,
economic eco-systems
designed by Disney.

We have seen
visions of palaces;
churches re-fashioned
for new masses:

In munchkin land,
we walk towards
the new Jerusalem
with an access card.

IV

Relieved of the need
for self-protection,
my eyes are free
to wander their paths:

I shall not be distracted
from a sense of my own function
reflected in the windows
sailing past.

No sound, no smell,
but ordered shopping piped aboard,
afloat these sterile seas
where no fish fry:

two coins in their fountains,
my eyes are held, unblinking,
to witness these navies
of grand design.

V

Trade was brisk:
standing on the beach with open mouths
and the confident strangers from beyond oceans
who laughed,

laughed and produced
objects in their hands,
a kind of tribal magic;

and there was nothing
we would not trade
for a handful
of coloured beads.