Rusty lane Redux

I realise that last week, my anger about the continued existence of Dewsbury Moor may have led me into incoherence. The reference to Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, comes from a stirring passage in English Journey by J B Priestley (1936).

It's one of those touchstone texts, along with George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier, which I keep coming back to, every time I feel I am going soft and maybe David Cameron has some kind of point.

Anyway, here's the full text of the passage:

The whole neighbourhood is mean and squalid, but this particular street seemed the worst of all. It would not matter very much - though it would matter - if only metal were kept there; but it happens that people live there, children are born there and grow up there. I saw some of them.

I was being shown one of the warehouses, where steel plates were stacked in the chill gloom, and we heard a bang and rattle on the roof. The boys, it seems, were throwing stones again. They were always throwing stones on that roof. We went out to find them, but only found three frightened little girls, who looked at us with round eyes in wet smudgy faces. No, they hadn't done it, the boys had done it, and the boys had just run away. Where they could run to, I cannot imagine. They need not have run away for me, because I could not blame them if they threw stones and stones and smashed every pane of glass for miles. Nobody can blame them if they grow up to smash everything that can be smashed.

There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial and industrial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, and about West Bromwich. While they still exist in their foul shape, it is idle to congratulate ourselves about anything. They make the whole pomp of government here a miserable farce. The Crown, Lords and Commons are the Crown, Lords and Commons of Rusty Lane, West Bromwich... and if there is another economic conference, let it meet there, in one of the warehouses, and be fed with bread and margarine and slabs of brawn. The delegates have seen one England, Mayfair in the season. Let them see another England next time, West Bromwich out of the season. Out of all seasons, except the winter of our discontent.

Amen