What shall we be?

On Saturday, a wild and wet day, I thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected experience (unexpected, because I didn’t know it was possible until I arrived there) of taking the high level walkway, 160 feet up, on the transporter bridge across the River Tees, in Middlesbrough. 

Built in 1911, at a time when we had imagination and purpose, when we had individual, local and national pride, lots of money and first rate engineering ability, the Tees Transporter Bridge is one of only two of its kind surviving in the UK. The other is across the Usk at Newport, Gwent. I dimly remember a third, the one that connected Widnes with Runcorn, and which was replaced by a huge arch suspension bridge, painted pale green. Back then, in 1960, the future was exciting, so very foolishly I took photos of the new bridge, while neglecting the old one, which was demolished soon after.

From the Middlesbrough transporter bridge views extend to the North Yorks Moors, and right across Teesside and into County Durham. On Saturday, the cloudbase was very low and the visibility poor. Even so, sadly, from this altitude, the loss of heavy industry on Teesside was all too apparent, and the rectilinear street pattern of the city, very American in appearance, revealed a great many oblongs of emptiness or dereliction. The waterfront at Middlesbrough – currently a small poxy “viewing area” surrounded by rubbish - could be the location for something truly exciting. But what? If you Google “Middlesbrough” the first results you see refer to football, not to a city of more than 138,000 inhabitants where, in another age, from half a world away, Sydney Harbour Bridge was constructed. Football, of course, is for some folk far more important than mere matters of life or death or engineering.

 

The question of purpose was reinforced when I descended again via the glass lift to ground level, and noticed the municipal logo, “Erimus”, on one of the bridge piers. It translates as “We shall be”. Indeed, hopefully we shall, but what? Not just in Middlesbrough, but each one of us. What shall we be, individually, locally, and nationally? What, in this post-industrial, purposeless, fractured, shabby, morally bankrupt, impoverished, broken down, Britain’s Got Talent, twitchy little nation of ours? What will become of us? What shall we be?