This independent production from Swingbridge Video serves as a non-commercial, non-broadcast visual essay on the legacy of social and civic legislators of the Victorian era. It addresses the question of whether industrial and architectural development has been employed as a means of social control. Title: Past Crimes The film opens with scenes of architectural destruction and industrial decline as an old Newcastle factory,walls are bulldozed. A poignant contrast is set between these images...

This independent production from Swingbridge Video serves as a non-commercial, non-broadcast visual essay on the legacy of social and civic legislators of the Victorian era. It addresses the question of whether industrial and architectural development has been employed as a means of social control. Title: Past Crimes The film opens with scenes of architectural destruction and industrial decline as an old Newcastle factory,walls are bulldozed. A poignant contrast is set between these images and then a scene in which a cobbled path along the Quayside is relayed and restored emphasising a sense of selective cultural memory. From the King Edward VII Bridge, the camera pans up to the 'modern day' High-level 'Metro' Bridge and a sequence of roaming footage depicting Newcastle’s classical architecture ensues: a clock tower, civic buildings with grand Hellenistic archways and statues. This is then juxtaposed with derelict factory scenes, quite possibly including those at Lower Steenberg's Yard and from this, a fortress-like red-brick prison building against which the voiceover commentary is suggesting that it became commonplace to model social institutions on prison architecture. Combinations of quotes incorporated (read by different people) into the next sequence of archive photographs of schools, prisons, hospitals, factories (inc. A.F. Turnbull Ltd) and workhouses. Voiceover: “The obedience at every moment to inflexible rules and the regularity of a uniform life are calculated to produce a deep impression upon his mind [referring to an inhabitant]. This idea is applicable to all establishments in which within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection no matter how different the purpose … whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious confirming the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, caring for the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry or training the rising race in the path of education.” Prolonged views of derelict shipyards rendered dormant under slate-grey skies and workshops festooned with debris and broken glass, are accompanied by a discordant piano score, imbuing the film with a wistful melancholy. The abandoned buildings are subtly accompanied by low wind/draft recordings. Architects, social reformers, industrialists and government ministers are quoted and referenced in fluent succession, portraying the civic and architectural advancement of the North East as an instrument for instilling disciplinary mechanisms. Archive images of crowd scenes is subtly appended with raucous background ‘cheering’. Mass gatherings and protests are seen as a threat by the civic custodians and ‘social guardians’. As the film turns its attention to future generations, children are heard playing as archive photographs vindicate the didactic quotes prescribing rigorous discipline and systematic exploitation by inducing hunger. Terraced housing estates filmed from above exemplify the ideal dwellings in close proximity to the work site and at the same a social composition which can maintain spatial and psychological divisions between families. Men working in a factory: welding and soldiering. More harsh directives in the voiceover from quotes which speak of the ‘correct rate of work 'being that of which man can undertake to physical capacity, reducing his state of existence to that of 'human machine''. Contemporary views of 1960s council flats at Cruddas Park in Newcastle against a backdrop of blue sky ensues in a series of montages. The theme of the commentary turns new technology and the control of ‘new powers and energies released by science’. Standards of living are noted to have improved dues to the ease of automation and the growth of the economy is seen as paramount for social welfare and a ‘pleasant environment.’ A ‘free economy’ is purported to be the mainstay of achieving this. Transformations of manufacturing are embodied in the fully automated factory setting, which we now see, replacing the labour-intensive application of the past. The 1980s is clearly represented as the harbinger of computerisation both in the work place and domestically as more camera shots depict memory backs, automated machinery, terminals, a myriad of multi-coloured cables attached to indistinguishable micro-processors, an almost wholly synthetic environment. CCTV camera watch over passengers on a platform of the Tyne and Wear Metro system, passengers climb the stair leading from Monument station. The commentary continues a strident diatribe against the ‘creation of opportunity’. Credits: Camera: John Warwick Assistant: Paul Otter Sound: Graham Denman Recordist: Christine Bellamy Music: Penny Callow, Rob Allen Voices: Gas Casey, Pauline Moriarty, Ronan Paterson, Jen Pringle Title: Thanks to Amber Films, Audiotracks, Barron Demolition, Clark Kincaid Ltd and workers at St Peters Works, Gateshead M.B.C., Mr Kettle, Newcastle Polytechnic, Northumberland Public Records Office, Philips Electrical Ltd, Washington, Sarah Shaw, Trae Films, Tyne and Wear P.T.E. Made with Support from Northern Arts End credit: Researched, directed and edited by: Sarah McCarthy. © Swingbridge Video 1986