All Our Yesterdays: Looking back on August 1993

All Our Yesterdays – a monthly look at Harlow in years gone by – drawing upon the wonderful news archives of Harlow Museum, and beyond.

By Ian Beckett

I hope that Your Harlow readers enjoyed last month’s exploration of 2013 online news. Comments normally give me some kind of steer and as there were none, I do wonder if 2013 was too recent for a series of features largely built around reminiscence. So, this month we go back thirty-two years to August 1993 and the pages of the Harlow Star.

Sickening!

This isn’t very scientific, I have not kept five-bar-gates, but having ploughed through the newspaper archives over the last year, it seems to me that “headline making local news” over the years has been made, more often than not, by major fires or physical assaults.

The front page of issue 687 of the Harlow Star screams “Sickening” and is accompanied by a photograph of the victim a brutal beating “in which his ear was almost ripped off.”

The photograph is of thirty-year-old David Thompson who, together with his twenty-two-year-old friend Richard Hallesy, were “ambushed by two attackers on the cycle track running behind the derelict Gilbeys factory”. The pair were walking home from the Square Club around midnight when they were set upon by two assailants.

The front-page photo is a testament to the viscous attack that left Mr Thompson with severe cuts and bruises to the side of his face, a split tear duct in his eye and had to have his ear stitched back on”.
Again, I have no empirical evidence, but my life-experience tells me that there are far more reports on the victims of such attacks, which of course are not confined to Harlow, than of convictions of perpetrators of such crimes.

Worst in the region

Whilst the town’s crime statistics were not receiving in-depth scrutiny, the town’s local authority’s record on collecting Council Tax certainly was.

Most people born in the 1960’s will be of an age to remember the Poll Tax, the derogatory name applied to the Community Charge, introduced by the Conservative Government in Scotland in April 1989 and in England and Wales in April 1990.

The Community Charge had been introduced to replace the old property based “Domestic Rates” with a “Head-Tax” that was widely criticised as being unfair, and a disproportionate burden on those least able to pay. To say it caused a riot is the truth not poetry, nor a metaphor!

Whether it was because of the poll-tax protests, which, despite predictions didn’t not bring about the fall of the Conservative central government, or an act of political expediency on behalf of the Tories, the Poll Tax was axed and a new Council Tax system introduced in April 1993.

Perhaps we can forgive journalists at The Star for referring to Council Tax as “the new community charge”, the new name had only had four months to embed itself. Critics of Harlow Council were not quite so understanding, and it was reported that the town had “the worst record in the region” for collecting the tax, with the regional average standing at 26% gathered, whilst Harlow lagged behind at just 8.2%. A spokesperson for the Council said that he delays were largely due to central government and the council having to re-bill residents.

Workforce slumps to a gloomy 15-year low

There was more bad news to be found with The Star on the third week of August 1993 with Paul Newman, News Editor reporting that “the number people working in Harlow has fallen to an all-time low since records began”.

A Council spokesman admitted that whilst the figures made gloomy reading, a major drop of almost 4,000 people in work in just a two-year period, they suggested that Harlow was in a good position to make a fast recovery from this recession and that spirit of optimism was reflected on a special two-page feature entitled:

A VISION OF THE FUTURE

A special two-page spread by the Harlow Star’s Chief Reporter, Steve Farrar, reported on a new plan by the local authority called Harlow 2000 Initiative, designed to prepare the town for the 21st Century. The report consolidated a 44-page publication from Harlow Council called Trends and Issues, designed to stimulate discussion before a special conference in October 1993.

Mr Farrar’s opening paragraph lays out the underlying message that the council wished to convey, that “the well-planned Harlow New Town of the 1960’s and 1970s is now beset with social and economic difficulties – but there is light at the end of the tunnel”. The report revealed that despite many successes that Harlow had to celebrate, almost a third of the town’s population were living in, or on the margins of poverty. Readers might be interested to note that Harlow Foodbank did not start providing its valuable services until April 2009.

Council’s “Trends and Issues” Photo

The Council’s “Trends and Issues” document drew heavily on the 1991 Census which showed that in a ten-year period the population of Harlow had dropped by over 5,500 to just over 74,620 – one of the sharpest percentage drops in Britain. The report also highlights that trend was on the way upwards, largely due to the development of Church Langley.

The census also revealed that of the 29,168 Harlow households:
48.4% were owner occupiers.
46.1% rented from the council.
5.5% rented privately.

In addition:

Harlow had the highest percentage of one-parent families in Essex.
A quarter of households had one or more people with long-term illnesses.
33% of households had no car, whilst 25% of households had more than one.
Only 3.6% were from non-white ethnic groups.
The remainder of this feature appears under four headlines:
Slow to recover, but all set to thrive.
Unemployment had increased threefold since 1989.
Manufacturing jobs had dropped from 51% to just under 28%.
Women in work had almost doubled to half the Harlow workforce.
The promise of 11,500 jobs at Stansted Airport by 1995 now looked uncertain

Despite all this, major industries in Harlow look well placed to thrive, though travelling to work by car was set to become the norm and the use of public transport would significantly decline.

Close to the edge.

Poverty, unemployment and homelessness had become major problems in Harlow.
The number of people claiming social security had steadily risen.
Harlow had higher instances of domestic violence compared to other towns.
Young people felt increasingly dissatisfied with the town especially in relation to the housing crisis and waiting lists for council properties.

Changes in education.

The education system had been radically restructured, including the introduction of new qualifications and the National Curriculum.

The number of fifth year school-leavers had fallen by 29.2% over a five-year period.

Of Harlow’s 1992 school-leavers 66%, almost double that of 1986, continued in education; 11% went into youth training; 9% went “on the dole” and 7.5% found work.

It was anticipated that to meet Government national training targets, further changes in funding priorities and the objectives of Harlow College would be forthcoming.

Need for new homes.

This section begins with the following statement: “Housing in Harlow has been in a state of crisis for several years”.

Harlow’s population was predicted to grow to 79,000 by the year 2001.
5,250 new homes (3,500 at Church Langley) had been planned to cope with that growth.

The Council’s housing waiting list had increased in a ten-year period from 2,319 to 5,013.

The “Right to Buy” legislation had reduced the Council’s housing stock by a third and central government rulings prevented them from being replenished.

It was predicted that be the end of 1993 there would be 463 homeless families living in temporary accommodation in Harlow.

The “Harlow 2000 Initiative” was not the first time that the town’s administrative body had taken stock of where it had been, where it was at and where it thought it would, might, or ought to be in the years ahead; and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Would it be too cynical to ask how much has been spent on surveying the landscape compared to how much, or how little, the landscape has improved for the better? When and why did the housing crisis start? Has it or will it ever end? These are only partially rhetorical questions. Any answers I might offer up would be opinion and if I felt I had a lasting solution I would probably set up my own renaissance company!

My last ruminations centre around two very different photographs chosen to accompany the two-page spread exploring Harlow’s readiness of the 21st century. They couldn’t be more different. What was the journalist seeking to convey?

Digging in to save our past

If there is one thing that will have Harlow residents on their hands and knees it’s the town’s history, and once again it is Harlow Star’s Chief Reporter, Steve Farrar, who shines a light on this. He lays the foundation for his story by drawing attention to the fact that “beneath the concrete and steel of the new town, Harlow boast a surprisingly rich history”, however he suggests that for sometime there has been a constant battle between the archaeologists and the builders to rescue the fragile remnants of Harlow’s past, and he asks “what future is there for Harlow’s past?”

The story reveals that it was over 120 years before Harlow was designated a new town that local resident John Barnard, let the cat out of the bag when he told the Society of Antiquaries, in 1821, that Roman coins were being regularly unearthed on a mound near the River Stort. It was the lighting of a touchpaper, that may have occasional smouldered but has never fully gone out.

Volunteer Diggers Photo

In 1927, famous archaeologist Miller Christy dug a trench across this mound, uncovering the famous Roman temple from which Templefields derives its name.

Many archaeology enthusiasts followed Christy’s investigate lead at a leisurely pace until in the early 1960’s “a tide of grey warehouses began to rise around the temple mound, threatening to drown the 2,000-year-old remains”. The following decade became a battle of wills between the local experienced amateur archaeologists, led by the West Essex Archaeological Group and what the Harlow Star called “the greedy developers eager to reap the profits of the new industrial estate” whose only constraint were their conscience. Many of the finds of the local archaeologists, found their way into the Harlow Museum when it opened on its original site, Passmores House in 1973. However, the unscrupulous behaviour of some developers meant that much of the fragile traces of Harlow’s Roman residents was lost forever. In 1970, a massive Roman building, twice the size of the temple, with wall six-feet thick was discovered, only to be bulldozed to the ground.

Give me a sporting chance

As I have confessed in previous blogs, I do not have a vast knowledge of sporting matters, however, I do understand that football is a game of two halves. This couldn’t be clearer than in the Harlow Star’s sporting news. In their general round-up under the banner “Football action as local sides hit top form” Harlow Town are shown to be in fine form.

The Hawks’ youth team recorded a 1-0 win over Barkingside, whilst the Harlow Town Reserves chalked a remarkable 5-1 victory over Boreham Wood Reserves.

The Star’s Lead Sports Reporter says “Harlow Town marked their comeback into competitive football with an opening-day-of-the-season victory” of 2-0 over Camberley in the Diadora League Division Three.

HAWKS OFF TO A FLIER AS LIDDLE STRIKES photo

The Hawks flying start was curtesy of “Ace goalscorer” and local boy Tony Liddle, “who bagged 51 goals for the club in a previous two-year spell, and netted in each half to kick-off Harlow’s welcome back party”.

However, as I said, it’s a game of two halves and the main sports headline on the back page of The Star declares “Goal Hero Tony Faces Three Week Ban”. The report details that Hawks manager Dave Edwards faced the prospect of being without his main marksman as Liddle faced a three-week suspension picked up while playing for Sawbridgeworth last season.

Next Month

September’s edition of “All Our Yesterdays” will take a look at coverage of the Harlow Town Show over the years.