Hello everyone, its John Chiko. So today I will be talking about the trauma of Coventry. So, I have lived in Coventry for almost 20 years now, having come to the country and to the city in 2004.
I remember when I first arrived that everything looked amazing to me, working roads, double decker buses and affordable food, everything was fine and dandy. However, as I started going to school, interacting with the environment and friends, I began to notice that there were social issues that a lot of people of Coventry were going through, especially with the use of hard drugs, especially within families.
When I have conversations with the locals of Coventry about drug abuse issues the city faces, the older citizens always say that the issue has been happening for a very long time, since the 80s some will say. Those that speak about the time before that speak of how their parents were employed in industrial jobs and how good that time was, before the drug epidemic began. It got me wondering about this issue a bit deeper. So, people before the 80s had good industrial jobs, drug problems started around the 80s, the drug problems seem to run within families, and they seem to be generational. That made me think of a special Prime Minister and the great changes that she brought, that effected a great many people.
Margaret Thatcher, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, implemented a series of policies that had a profound impact on the country. Her policies, often referred to as Thatcherism, were characterised by a commitment to free-market principles, deregulation, privatisation, and a reduction in the role of the state in the economy. Thatcher’s policies contributed to a period of economic growth, but they also led to increased income inequality. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor widened during her tenure. The privatisation of state-owned industries changed the landscape of the British economy and had mixed results, with some sectors becoming more efficient and others facing challenges.
The North of England, traditionally associated with manufacturing and heavy industry, experienced significant economic changes. The decline of traditional industries, such as coal mining and steel manufacturing, led to job losses and economic challenges in some northern regions. Coventry, like other industrial cities in the UK, faced the challenges of deindustrialisation. The decline of manufacturing industries had a substantial impact on employment and economic dynamics in the city.
I believe that this is when the social problems within Coventry truly began for the working class in the city. The deindustrialisation of the city most certainly affected entire families and communities, having their entire way of lives changed based on an economic plan that did not include them. The south benefited from the economic policies and the opportunities provided by the financial sector. But the industry that fed the north was no more, people were left with no jobs, no money and families left with no security.
Now this is where I believe that collective trauma of the city began, when their livelihoods were taken away. I can only imagine how life within all those homes at that time changed. I wonder the anger, frustration and the depression that must have filled them, because I can see the emanation of it surviving till this day, living within the people from that time and living in their children and their grandchildren. I truly believe that to face the social problems that are faced in the UK is to face the changes that were made during Thatcher’s time and the social services that were dismantled during her time and how it is still affecting the Country.
Lest not forget, before Thatcherism, Coventry had a thriving Automotive Industry, Manufacturing and Engineering, Coal Mining and Public Sector that employed many people in the city, which all began to face problems and restructuring in the 1980s. You take all that away from a people, a whole region, what do you expect to happen?
