David Taylor-Gooby

28.06.24

I was born in a town called Watford in Hertfordshire. It’s where the Metropolitan line goes from London. I went to Watford Grammar School and was lucky to attend Cambridge University on a state scholarship. I was involved with the chapel and thought of being ordained, but I didn’t think I was religious enough. I had this idea of doing things in the community to empower people so they could make their communities better. That’s a theory of community work; you don’t do things for people. You encourage people to do things themselves.

I got a job in Newcastle, which was different from where I was raised. I felt guilty about having been to an upper-class university. That’s how I felt, whether it was right or wrong. Then, I became a socialist. I wanted to go and work in a different sort of area. I worked as a community development worker in the West End of Newcastle. I did quite a lot of work with young people. It was a contract for two years. It’s rather rough in the West End; you’ve got Scotswood and places like that. After that, I trained as a teacher and worked for a year in a girls’ grammar school in Teesside. Then I got a job in Peterlee. That’s when I first came to Peterlee.

I met Maureen, whom I am still married to 43 years later. She’s been extremely good to me, correcting me about the local attitude and stopping me from being idealistic. I have two stepchildren, and our son lives in London. I have a grandson now, too.

When I first came to work in Peterlee in 1974, I lived in a pit village called Ludworth. I got a cheap house there, and it was extremely interesting culturally. I married Maureen in 1981 and moved into Petelee. So, I’ve lived in Peterlee for about 40 years and worked there for nearly 50.

I’ve seen significant changes in the town. I was a District Councillor for twenty years. We used to have a District then, the district of Easington. The headquarters was at the top of the colliery, lasting twenty years. I didn’t get re-elected when that council was subsumed into the county. So, I was asked to go on the Health Board. I was on the Health Board for about eight years. One of my big roles on the council was Chairman of  housing. That meant I saw a lot about the conditions. You can’t escape from poverty and things when you’re a councillor. You come up against it all the time. And you’re acutely aware of the divisions within society. Not so much between rich and poor, but trying to fix the system for those who can’t. Because they don’t have the wherewithal to do it, they often resort to their ways of sorting things out. Informal. It’s not necessarily crooked, but it’s not the official way of doing things.

While on the council, I became aware of the Apollo Pavilion. It’s modernist and was initially meant to fit in with the square houses in Sunny Blunts. I got interested in this, and there was a lot of antipathy to it because when Peterlee was built, it was built by a company with a lot of power and money: the Peterlee Development Corporation. It was state-owned because that’s how you did things in the ‘40s and ‘50s. And they looked after it, cleaned it, and so on.

Now, the District Council and then the County had it. They were not very experienced at looking after artworks. It got a bit of stick from locals due to the drug-taking, and a local councillor wanted to knock it down because she didn’t have much else to campaign about. She was independent, and she used to go on about it. She used to like getting publicity. But I don’t think the Pavilion was the cause of the
drug-taking. I believe the drug-taking took place, and it happened to be near the Pavilion. I got more annoyed by this. This councillor, Joan Maslin, was trying to demolish an artwork that people worldwide were coming to see. I was on TV talking about it. I used to do a double act with her. Somebody came from Russia to look at it, believe it or not. That’s how I met Colin Robson; he was an officer of the council, and we set up an action group to defend it. Eventually, we were lucky to get the funding, and it was restored in 2009.

Since then, it’s declined. It’s a real mess. Having to get on to the council all the time is a pain. And I know they’ve got no money. But I am exploring other ways of supporting it. I don’t want it to decline, and I’m interested in modernist art. English Heritage is a possibility.

I didn’t expect my fellow councillors to be experts, but I told them…‘You have an artwork that people regard highly. What would the rest of the country think if you knocked it down? They’ll think you’re a load of idiots in Peterlee.’

But thankfully, we still have it and myself, Colin and others campaign for it. Many people know me for being involved because I went around canvassing, and this bloke who lived near it started going on to me. He said…‘that Taylor-Gooby should be shot’ because he wanted it knocked down. And I said… ‘Well, actually, I am David Taylor-Gooby.’ That made for quite an interesting conversation. He apologised and laughed. I laughed and told him we were trying to get it cleaned up.

I’m not involved as much now because I am 78 years old. I still feel strongly about the community and the changes I’ve seen. When I first came to Peterlee, they wanted middle-class and working-class people to live there. And most of Peterlee was rented, so you had people who either worked at the pit or women who worked in the factories. It was a significant improvement on the pit villages, which were very grim. There were no green spaces before they knocked down some houses at Easington Colliery. It was just rows of houses. Peterlee was an antidote to that: the idea of giving people fresh air.

My experience on the council was that there was usually great demand for houses in Peterlee. People wanted to live there. Another thing was they had gas, whereas, in the villages, they still had to have coal fires. You can romanticise coal fires; miners like them because they got the coal-free. But my wife tells me how she hated going out into the coal house in the winter. Initially, she lived in a colliery village, but we now live in a bungalow in Peterlee because she has mobility issues. She won’t admit it, but she’s middle class now. She said…‘You can romanticise as much as you like, but it wasn’t very nice. Nobody wanted to go in the middle of the night to get coal or go to a privy outside.’

I’ve noticed how the standards of living have increased. We used to have a much better shopping centre than we do now. We used to have a big shop called Doggarts. There used to be one in Durham, a big one where Boots is now, in the square. They were a chain of department stores, and
you could also buy furniture there. Such shops were more common in those days. Doggarts went bust in the miners’ strike because an awful lot of stuff was on-tick, and the miners couldn’t afford to on-tick anymore. That was before the supermarket came to Peterlee, and like many other towns, we had lots of smaller shops, too.

I’ve also noticed changes in social mobility because where I live now is called Oakerside. It’s an estate at the top of Peterlee. It was originally designated as a science park, but they couldn’t get the industries to come in. In actual fact, the housing is quite attractive. But we did live in Durham for three years, and you can get nice houses there, but the next house is about a foot away; they are packed in. Whereas up here in Oakerside, they were built in the 1980s, and there’s lots of open space between the houses. It’s very nice.

People say…‘why did I move back from Durham?’ Well, partly because we needed a bungalow, but even though it was her idea to go to Durham, my wife missed East Durham. The quality of the housing is better. There isn’t much culture here, but I think the cultural life in Durham is somewhat overrated. But some places are easy to get to. I suppose it’s also because life has changed. If you’re interested in something, you can contact people online. You can be part of an online community that enables you to keep things going. So, I’ve noticed more mobility.

On the bit of Oakerside where I live, it’s no longer a segregated middle-class community. Many people who live up here are successful tradesmen and builders. The town is now less segregated than it was. I used to joke about there being an Orwellian “Pro-etarian sector.”

Your bright working class, some of them have bought houses, and they’ve done well. They usually become independent traders. If I go out jogging early in the morning, I will see about ten builders’ vans going off in different directions: engineers, electricians, plumbers, and all sorts. However, if I go into the council estate, more unemployed people will be. So socially, the people came from a place with a sort of cohesion, a working-class cohesion. It’s become a more atomised society. But that’s probably happened all over the country.

I’m a member of the Labour Party. And I’ve been complaining that there’s only six or seven of us in Peterlee out of a membership of over a hundred who have gone out doing any canvassing. Some are old, but there is a general apathy; they’re fed up. And if we had a demonstration, nobody would turn up. But I can remember back in the 1980s, we had a May Day parade. When Neil Kennet came to Easington, we marched over the street, and there were banners, bands, and the whole lot. And that’s what I would call an organised working class. The miners union would turn out. And they would feel a sort of loyalty to that. That’s all broken now.

I went to a pro-European demo in London. I went three times. We were very pro-European. Members of the Labour Party called me a traitor. There’s been a sort of change in solidarity. I suppose it’s partly because when I came up here, I did admire the miners’ union and their ethics of solidarity, of helping each other rather than individualism.

I’ve always been interested in community development. I was interested in the concept of a new town and whether it could build a thriving community, especially without a dominant industry like pit villages or fishing ports with dockers. People have studied East London because dockers had to go to work at different times of the day and had very close-knit, supportive communities, just like miners. If you had three miners in the family, they came in at different times. So, I was perhaps more interested in the philosophy and sociology of a new town rather than the design. Once I lived here, I became very interested in modernism and brutalist architecture. I think other people might be more interested in the sociology of it as to whether you can design a community.

They tried it with the Byker Wall. They built it in Newcastle to keep the community that had worked in the shipyards together once the shipyards closed. Unfortunately, people have a habit of dying off, so it was challenging to keep that community going. But they tried to design a community, which didn’t work. I’ve changed my views about that sort of thing.

One of the features of a community like that is that it prevents people’s intellectual development. The period of my life when I was doing something creative was when the pits closed, and all the miners’ wives came into college to do access courses. And you had these very clever women who had never had a chance to do anything. And they were very bright but had yet to be corrupted by education. They just thought in a raw way.

Peterlee has become much more diverse. We now have many black people here. At college, I took people to London to see black people because they had never seen them. But now we have quite a contingent of black people here. I meet them through the church. They tend to come to the church a lot. I have been involved with the church as well. I’ve always continued my church involvement, and I raise money for them because I do sponsored walks. Sunderland University is desperate to get more students, so it recruits 25% from overseas. And there are also a lot of Nigerians, and many of them live in Peterlee now. That’s become more diverse, Peterlee.

It’s also become less homogeneous culturally. You’ve got more people like me living here. People have come in from outside. And this makes for a more interesting community. But in the general design, we now make much more fuss about nature than we used to. We make much more fuss about the Dene. It’s a five-star nature reserve. If you go to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle, Castle Eden Dene is held there as a really good example of woodland. One of the best nature reserves in the North East. Nobody was fussed about Castle Eden Dene when I first came to Peterlee, except for kids who wanted to go camping there. But now we get people coming to see it. I have been interested in the woodlands since living here. I also do voluntary work for the Woodland Trust. I don’t do much physical work now; I’m a bit ancient. But I do go and give talks to raise money. I like to keep busy. Maybe in a year or two. I’ll have conked out.

We have two big attractions: the Apollo Pavilion and Castle Eden Dene. We should promote those more. We also need a decent hotel. They should sell Shotton Hall and make it a hotel.

I think the future is bright. I don’t think it will become the working-class utopia that some people wanted it to be. It’ll become a more mixed community. Very much a dormitory community. It will have good quality housing. We will still have deprived areas, but not as much as we used to. We need to do something about the awful state of the pit villages. Horden, in particular. The state of the housing down there is terrible. And if levelling up means anything, they’ve got to do something about that. But I think Peterlee will probably thrive. But it will be like most medium-sized towns, it will have a crap shopping centre.

One of the problems, I think, is the transport for people who can’t afford cars. Because if you want a decent shopping centre, you have to go elsewhere. But some people who don’t have a vehicle fight it hard to get to places like Dragonville. I don’t think there’s any point in trying to have a cinema in Peterlee, but you’ve got one in Dalton Park. And you’ve got this new centre in Sunderland: the Fire Station. I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s got quite a lot of exciting things on there. I think Durham used to regard itself as a cultural place, but now it’s more of a drinking place, as far as I can see. You go to Durham to go drinking. Some people do. It’s not my cup of tea. I once went to a nightclub, got bored stiff and left after a quarter of an hour. I like talking to people but couldn’t hear anything.

I’m going canvassing with Labour Party people from Peterlee. If you include me, one is retired, and two are retired teachers. One does work with the County Council, but she’s self-employed. I don’t know what she does for a living, but she’s a bright lass. There are not many traditional cloth cap socialists there, although I have a selection of cloth caps I wear down again. The nature of the community is changing. This just reflects things all over the country.

I know this from sociology; if you do a questionnaire that says yes or no, you don’t get real answers. Let them talk like I have if you want to know what people think. And you don’t get something so easy to have otherwise. So, do I like living in Peterlee? Well, yes, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t. My wife says I should move back south to be near my relatives. We get invited to family parties and are familiar faces on L.N.E.R. now. I’m going to my brother’s 50th wedding anniversary, my niece’s wedding and my son’s wedding, Andrew. We’re going to London three times. So my wife says it might be nicer if we lived there. But I don’t want to. I like going to London for the art galleries, but I don’t want to live there. Andrew lives on the edge of London, Enfield, he has a nice park and goes to the countryside because it’s quiet. His life isn’t much different from ours. He digs the garden. But housing is cheaper here. And you get more bang for your buck.

But I canvassed for the mayor, and I still pester her to do some because the public transport is poor here. And to make the most of living in the North-East, you must be mobile. If you want to go to the cinema, to Sunderland, Newcastle or Durham, or even go into the countryside, you’re knackered if you haven’t got a car. If you want that sort of lifestyle, travel around. Whereas if you’re in London, you’ve got very good public transport.

That’s one of the big problems with Peterlee. About 80% or 70% enjoy living here and are mobile. They could go to other places to see these things, but the housing quality is good here. And you’ve got a minority who can’t go anywhere else and are rather stuck. Transportation has gone down by 44% since the Conservatives have been in power. But it is awful. I hope we can improve it.

Again, yes, I do like living here. But I am fairly privileged. I know there is a poor minority in Peterlee for whom it’s not quite so nice.

[Docs, Images]

● [DTG] Apollo illiminated by Steve Massam

● [DTG] Apollo Pavilion

● [DTG] Pavilion 2022

● [DTG] Pavilion Lumiere 2021

● [DTG] Pavilion 2024

● [DTG] Guardian article_20240915_0001