The political power of Deano
Shotton Colliery
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Imagine a village consisting of a few shops, a public-house, and a cluster of dirty little houses, all at the base of what looked at first like an active volcano, wrote JB Priestley after visiting Shotton Colliery in 1933. The volcano was the notorious Shotton Tip, a giant slag heap that towered over the Durham pit village, smoke billowing from its peak, children tobogganing down its slopes. Priestley had never seen anything like it. It was like Pompeii
before the explosion, he wrote, evidently appalled.
Shotton is barely half an hour from where I grew up, but it is a world apart. Today it is not just a place of literary interest, but real
political significance. In 2019, it was one of the last solid bricks in Labours Red Wall. Under Boris Johnson, the Tories managed to win over other mining towns in the area, but failed in Easington home to Shotton. Many psephologists believed that the demographic trends which had swept the Tories into the area had not yet run their course and more parts of the Red Wall could still fall, including places such as Easington. Now though, according to the polls, Labour is on the brink of rebuilding the Red Wall all over again, throwing the Tories back not only in Easington but across the north east.
I returned to Shotton to find
The Most Important Man In Britain.
Apparently he holds the key to the next election. His name is Deano.
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Deano, I should stress, is not a real person. He is an avatar, an internet meme, a representation the personification of a certain type who can be found almost anywhere in the country. He is an everyday man; a middle manager with a new-build home and a car on finance, a large TV and a PS4. According to one of the more popular memes online he is, more specifically, deputy assistant head of sales targeting who arrives home every day to a wife already home from her work as a Team Leader in a call centre. You can almost see the disdain dripping from the page.
To many, Deano is a figure of fun: a low-brow, low-status provincial man with bad taste and too much sway over the nations cultural life. But the more I read about him online, whether on
YouTube
, the more I realise his was not a life to be mocked but cheered and even envied. Deano owns his home, gets back from work early, and has enough disposable income for new furniture and nice food. He is doing well and is a responsible, decent citizen. He isnt rich enough to dodge his taxes and is more likely to be found in the gym than in the pub or the bookies.
In some senses, Deano is a lifestyle choice as much as an identity, which might even be boiled down to
not moving to London
. For many London graduates, earning 40,000 but spending all their money on a shared rented flat, Deano is the road less travelled. Deano decided not to move somewhere else; he is happy to earn slightly less while enjoying more disposable income and more space.
Ninety years after Priestleys famous journey, I thought I would find this lifestyle in Shotton. Where there were once miners and children tobogganing down slag heaps, there would now be Deanos; not folk to feel sorry for or to romanticise just ordinary people living ordinary lives. The problem was, after a few hours in Shotton, it was quickly evident that I was only half right.
Today, the colliery has disappeared and so too has the tip. Where Priestleys volcano stood, there is now a monument to all the miners killed. A small industrial estate has been built next-door as well as a sky-diving centre. Call centres are now one of the main sources of employment in the area. At first glance, then, it should be a perfect home for Deano.
And yet, if the old Shotton tip was a symbol of economic iniquity, a real-life metaphor used by Priestley to highlight the exploitation of ordinary workers, its disappearance seems to signify something just as bad: a loss of economic purpose which seems necessary for any community to thrive. The unfortunate truth is that Shotton is now a soul-sapping place. Pubs are boarded up, hotels turned into halfway houses, poverty high and drugs rife. Kids no longer toboggan down slag heaps but compete to torch cars. With no real industry in the area, or even an economy to speak of, old miners watch helplessly as their community withers.
This was not the story Id come looking for. In fact, if you were seeking the kind of lasting Northern stereotype that Priestley helped create, then Shotton was it
.
Judi, who I met in the community centre, had actually met Priestley when he visited in the Seventies. He was a strange character, she told me. Very dry, very droll But while she didnt like what hed said about the village something about urchins wasnt it? she liked him. He was very English, you know.
Very
English. You dont see much of that anymore. You have to hide it under a rock.
This is exactly the kind of place that tickles Westminsters imagination, a place about which well-meaning seminars might be held to discuss why it no longer feels represented by Labour and its liberal, metropolitan leaders, much to the frustration of those who live there. And yet, unlike other parts of the Red Wall, the surrounding constituency of Easington stuck with Labour in 2019 and will almost certainly do so again next year. In many ways, it is simply too poor for the Tories to touch. There simply arent enough Deanos. For the residents of Shotton, their primary need is plain and obvious: a big and redistributive state willing to spend more money on the area. And you dont get this from the Tories.
Continuing my searching for Deano, I headed south to Stockton-on-Tees, another town Priestley had visited and disliked. The real town is finished, he wrote. It is like a theatre that is kept open merely for the sale of drinks in the bars and chocolates in the corridors. The problem was that even by 1933, the industry had gone and wasnt coming back. Stockton just did not have the geography to sustain its industrial base. And so it declined. Today, the town feels as old and tired as it did then. Deano was nowhere.
Cross the River Tees, though, and a different picture emerges. Stockton South went Tory at the last election, part of an unbroken Tory band of blue that runs from Redcar on the east coast to Copeland on the west. If Sunak is to have any chance of remaining Prime Minister, hell need to retain some of these seats.
Stockton South might be one of his best shots. On this side of the river, traditionally speaking, you are in North Yorkshire, just a few miles from Sunaks own constituency of Richmond. On this side of the river lie the prosperous suburbs of Middlesbrough and Stockton, as well as pretty little market towns such as Yarm, Eaglescliffe and Guisborough. But what really makes Stockton South interesting is an odd little place that didnt exist when Priestley came touring, Ingleby Barwick.
It is not a pretty market town or poor pit village. It does not fit the usual Red Wall iconograp
Friday, April 21, 2023 at 12:03 am