An amateur film produced by Ray Snaith about the issues facing the inner-city in the late 1980s. The Scotswood area of Newcastle is used as an example of an inner-city area with Ray travelling west from the Redheugh to the Scotswood bridges highlights some of the changes that have taken place in the area, much to the detriment of the local population. Title: Gannin alang the Scotswood Road Title: A Study of the Inner City Standing beside a sign for ‘Scotswood Road Car Park’, filmmaker Ray...

An amateur film produced by Ray Snaith about the issues facing the inner-city in the late 1980s. The Scotswood area of Newcastle is used as an example of an inner-city area with Ray travelling west from the Redheugh to the Scotswood bridges highlights some of the changes that have taken place in the area, much to the detriment of the local population. Title: Gannin alang the Scotswood Road Title: A Study of the Inner City Standing beside a sign for ‘Scotswood Road Car Park’, filmmaker Ray Snaith introduces the film by stating how much the road and the West End of Newcastle has changed in the past century. The area is also a good example of what he describes as an ‘inner city area with serious economic and social problems.’ A montage of pictures and photographs of the Elswick and Scotswood Road areas are used to show it growth and decline from the opening of the Armstrong armaments factory in 1847 through to the re-development in town planning in the late 1960s. The sequence ends with the question being asked, what is the area like twenty years on? Ray stands on the Redheugh Bridge with traffic speeding past, a panoramic view the Elswick area below featuring factories, a rail yard with two gas holders with the Scotswood Road in the near distance. A phantom car ride begins along Scotswood Road past light industrial units and small businesses. On the other side of the road a landscaped grassy bank where once stood terraced housing for the works of the Armstrong Works. A woman pushing her child in a pushchair along Scotswood Road past ‘Fish ‘N’ Chippy and several shuttered shops. On the other side of the road pedestrians walking past a boarded-up shopfront. A dog sits atop a wall behind which a row of modern housing, many with boarded up windows. A high-rise apartment block, part of the Cruddas Park estate changes to pedestrians and shops along another part of Scotswood Road. A woman and small child walk past the Lower Scotswood Community Playhouse on Lightwood Avenue. A large fence surrounds the property. The phantom car ride along Scotswood Road continues passing rows of modern housing build a few hundred yards from the road on a hill. Standing outside Vickers-Armstrong works on Scotswood Road Ray Snaith talks about this ‘slimmed down nationalised Vickers’ now employing hundreds rather than thousands of men. The camera pans along the side of the main factory with cars coming out of the entrance and traffic moving along Scotswood Road. Standing outside the Scotswood Sport and Social Club on Denton Road, Ray describes the building as a ‘symbol of the local authorities attempts to meet the needs of local people… enforced leisure for the unemployed’. A little further along Denton Road is another symbol of the inner city and the ‘imagination of the people’ in the form of a pelican crossing. Standing beside it with traffic moving past Ray explains how the crossing was built through the efforts and campaigning of the local people. On Whitehouse Road the Whitehouse Enterprise Centre described by Ray as being the ‘unlimited power of private capital’. In the distance on the other side of the River Tyne the Metro Centre shopping centre which Ray describes as not being made for people from the inner city rather those with ‘loadsamoney’. On a wall of an alleyway a sign for the ‘Drift Garden Centre’ a worker’s co-operative of unemployed. Nearby a shed with wheelbarrows outside it, next to it a large water barrow with ‘Yuppie’s Out’ painted onto it. Another montage of archival images of the Armstrong Works and Scotswood area follows. Standing on the Scotswood Bridge looking back towards the inner-city area of Scotswood including the Vickers-Armstrong works and River Tyne. Ray end the film by asking how is the area like this, who is to blame and what is the solution that takes in both the needs of local people and of profit. Title: This video was made with the co-operation of Des Walton West Newcastle Local History Group, City of Newcastle Libraries Local History Section, John Teasdale Gateshead, Educational Technology Centre College of Art and Technology Newcastle upon Tyne Credit: Written and directed by Ray Snaith End title: A R.S. Production 1988