As Labour takes power for the first time in 14 years, the Guardian asked three writers to describe how their home towns had changed under Conservative rule – and the challenges now facing Keir Starmer. Here, Benjamin Myers describes what has happened to Durham.
Durham is an ancient city. It wears its stories for all to see – in the medieval market place, the world-renowned Norman cathedral (est 1093), the monstrous municipal buildings that have been and gone in just six decades, two notorious prisons, and the swish new university properties built to accommodate a boom that has made this Russell Group seat of learning the sixth highest-ranked university in Britain.
Growing up here, change always seemed imperceptible as the city presented a stoic and stony invincibility. It felt as if the crenellated ramparts of the castle would always stand firm and Saint Cuthbert would always lie in his own quiet corner of the cathedral. Durham is self-contained – a town dressed up as a city; posher than Sunderland, but not as cosmopolitan as Newcastle.
But things have deteriorated lately. Though I live across the border in Yorkshire, my family and friends are still in Durham and I’m back often; my recent Saint Cuthbert-inspired novel, Cuddy, is entirely set there. Two things strike me when I return: the main thoroughfare of Silver Street feels close to collapse. Gone is the Marks & Spencer where I first discovered escalators and hummus. Alongside it are several other empty premises, six phone shops and a vape store. Even the sticky-floored Klute nightclub, famous for having been described as the second worst in Europe by FHM and for once employing Dominic Cummings, closed this year.
Tourism may have contributed £1bn to County Durham’s economy for the first time in 2022, but County Durham is bigger than Greater London and the spoils are certainly not visible in the city.
The reasons for Durham’s decline are manifold: out-of-town retail parks designed for convenience have starved its centre of footfall, as has the move towards online shopping. University students have colonised the last affordable residential properties. Everyone I knew who lived in the city’s terrace houses has been priced out or, in the case of older residents, driven out by antisocial student noise. These problems have not been addressed by Durham University. [The university disputes this – see footnote].
And then there’s the fact that parts of the county rank as some of the most deprived in the UK (the top 10 are all in the north). Many simply never recovered after the “managed decline” approach of Thatcher, post-miners’ strike, and the Conservatives have not been inclined to invest in an area still seen as a cloth-capped backwater full of people who’ve never even heard of Fortnum & Mason.
“The biggest difference for me has been the effect on schools and the NHS,” says the Durham-based writer Anna Barker. “My daughter’s school doesn’t put the heating on in the winter months any more. My partner recently had a stroke and was told it’d be five hours wait for an ambulance, then when we got to A&E there were six ambulances backed up with patients still onboard.”
Anna’s daughter, it should be noted, attends the best state school in the region. Others were firmly hit by the recent Raac scandal, while the comprehensive school I went to (built in the 1960s) is being flattened and rebuilt. A friend who has worked at Durham council for 30 years also points to the many library closures he has seen – nationally, almost 800 have disappeared since 2010. [See footnote].
Worst of all is that the famous “red wall” of County Durham was breached in 2019 when Boris Johnson’s party utilised Brexit-era frustration for its own political gains and emerged victorious. Let’s not forget Durham was once Tony Blair’s turf. He went to school here and later held the adjacent seat of Sedgefield. And post-1997, Durham – like Newcastle – visibly boomed.
I’m not blinded by parochialism, though. In the 1980s it was a tough town, and at 2am it can still be a drinking-and-fighting kind of place, while resentment towards the student population has amplified. Town and gown relations are strained, though the city would be far worse off without the university, and Durham people are also some of the friendliest you could meet. The sing-song accent and cheery disposition is born out of historical hardship in a region whose majority wealth came from coal mining; the humour is sardonic but the outlook optimistic. Pomposity is soon dispensed with, as I once discovered when ordering a white wine spritzer in my favoured grungy pub.
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Far from Westminster, local culture is self-created, and many friends and relatives are self-starters with side hustles – releasing music, selling artwork, trading vintage clothes or taking photos. No one waits for handouts because they rarely come. People just crack on.
“Despite 14 years of Tory underfunding, which has had inevitable impacts, Durham has demonstrated a character and resilience,” says Richard Turner, who works as a mental health advocate and who co-ran a launderette-cum-music venue, hosting the likes of the Unthanks, Martin Carthy and Paul Smith (Maxïmo Park). “It’s important to note that this applies predominantly to the city centre, and while to an extent this permeates to the suburban, often ex-mining communities, perhaps it is these that have endured the impact of 14 years of Tory rule more.”
In this respect, Durham is not that different to any large town or small city: after 14 years, its services are beleaguered. Yet I believe that the optimism that defines us will prevail. The north, as the cliche goes, will rise again.
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Benjamin Myers’ novel Cuddy won the 2023 Goldsmiths prize. His new novel, Rare Singles, is published by Bloomsbury on 1 August.