Stockport: a sad History

 

Stockport Covered Market, built 1860 by Stockport Corporation

You would think an officially commissioned history of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport to be a fairly dry affair. Nothing of the kind: this book (Stockport, A History, by Peter Arrowsmith, published 1997 by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council) is compelling, describing in well-researched detail the stunning rise and equally stunning fall of one of Britain’s major industrial centres. First textiles, specifically silk, then cotton, then hats, all of which industries have now disappeared, apart from a few insignificant traces: a hat museum that never seems to open, and some sad-looking enormous mill buildings that loom over the city centre. The most visible image of Stockport is the viaduct  (1839-40) carrying the railway over the River Mersey, more than a mile long.

But for me the real tragedy that is exemplified by the history of Stockport is not unique to one town. It is the story of the growth and decline of local government during the last 200 years or so. Reading a historical work makes it clear what we might not even notice, locked as we are in the present day: how much has changed in the past 50 or so years. It sounds melodramatic, but there has been a fundamental shift in the relationship between individuals and capitalism. An entire infrastructure, which was slowly built up to act on behalf of the local residents, has been dismantled, in favour of financial exploitation; there is no other way to describe it.

Take the supply of water, for example. As Stockport grew, its need for water inevitably became greater. Peter Marsland, owner of Park Mills, sank an artesian well on his land and obtained the legal right to supply Stockport with water. His (private) water works dated from 1827. “Customers who wanted to bring water into their homes or business premises were expected to lay their own pipes from Marsland’s mains.” The Stockport Waterworks typically provided water for around two hours a day, “and even then the service was liable to be intermittent … in the 1840s many still depended on public pumps and water carriers. By the end of 1852 as many as 40,000 of the town’s 56,000 inhabitants were receiving the company’s supply.”

Various improvements took place in subsequent years, but “in 1867, dissatisfied with the quality, quantity and high price of the new company’s supply, [Stockport Corporation] applied to Parliament for powers to establish its own waterworks.” Eventually, they gained those powers, and in 1912, the Corporation built a new reservoir in the Kinder Valley. For the next hundred or so years, the residents of Stockport could take the supply of water for granted; then privatization took place. How a monopoly utility could be privatized has never been satisfactorily explained to me: the goals of a private corporation and a public utility are fundamentally at odds. As we all know, in the last 20 years, the water companies have invested inadequately in improvements to the water supply, while at the same time paying themselves enormous dividends.

To emphasise the change in attitude, just this week, the council in Warrington was reported to be at risk of losing a £52m investment – in an energy company, Together Energy:

Taxpayers in a northern England town are facing a financial hit of up to £52m should energy supplier Together Energy collapse, after the local Labour-controlled council bought a 50 per cent stake in the troubled company. (FT, 7 Jan 2022)

The article continues to explain that Warrington only made this investment “to offset cuts in their grants by central government during the austerity years” – in other words, not by choice. The idea of local government acting in the interests of local people disappeared years ago. Andy Carter, Tory MP for Warrington, commented: “The story about how Warrington council’s investment in Together Energy is one of the best examples of what councils should not be doing.”

The Stockport story is not just about water, not just about utilities (the Corporation at one time owned electricity and gas production facilities), not just about public parks, libraries, museums and swimming pools, but reveals a whole mindset that we have lost. Stockport Covered Market (shown above), and the area around it, was built by Stockport Corporation. It could never have been built today. And nobody would contemplate publishing Stockport: A History today. That's very sad.