EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING.

[Stanley]

EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING.

09 January 2003

In a recent article I commented on the fact that whilst the Second World War was a horrible and destructive event, it made it possible for Barlick to start a new chapter in its history with the arrival of the aero engine industry, a terribly black cloud definitely had a silver lining. Good came out of bad.
This got me to thinking about the number of times in my life something that looked like a disaster had actually proved in the long term to be a benefit. For instance, if I hadn’t been made redundant in 1978 I wouldn’t have gone to university and my life would have been completely different. How many workers were spared Bissinosis, rupture or deafness by the closure of the mills? It seems to me that the reason why this line of thought can be so fascinating is that the benefits come as a complete contrast to the original evil. Then I noticed another event just before Christmas. It was the 50th Anniversary of the Great Smog of London and there were several pieces done about this. I’m afraid my prejudices start to poke out a bit here, the anniversary was presented as though there hadn’t been any smog anywhere else. I’m not saying that the fogs in London weren’t bad, I’d just like to put it on record that other parts of the country had events which were just as bad and perhaps even worse.
For the benefit of my younger readers who have never seen an old fashioned ‘smoke fog’ or smog, smog occurs when you have a lot of pollution from industry which is producing very small particles of carbon, sulphur and a lot of other nasty and acidic chemicals. This mixes with natural fog which is suspended water droplets and under certain weather conditions it is trapped, say in a valley, and can't get away. Instead of diluting in the wind and dispersing, it sits there getting thicker and more poisonous until eventually it becomes a killer.
I was born in Heaton Norris, Stockport which sits in the valley of the Mersey. It was heavily industrialised before the war and was a breeding ground for smogs, they were common even in summer. Also because of the river valley Stockport has one of the biggest brick railway viaducts in the country which carries the main Manchester to London line and was a key target for the Luftwaffe during WW2. If they could cut that rail link it would have been a massive blow to our war effort.
Before the war, and during the war itself the Germans put a lot of effort into obtaining aerial photographs of prime targets. It was noticed in the 1930’s that the German airship Hindenburg used to get lost quite often when coming in over England from America. It flew over Nelson and the Rossendale Valley and there was grave suspicion that this was deliberate, they were taking reconnaissance photographs. It was the belief that the enemy had this sort of knowledge which prompted the government to move vital war industries to safe areas, like the Rover Company to Barlick.
This being the case, as we sat in the Anderson Shelter in the garden at Heaton Norris listening to some very heavy bombs falling all round us, what we couldn’t understand was why they never hit the viaduct! It wasn’t until after the war when the Luftwaffe archives were captured and examined that we found out what had saved us. It was industrial pollution, smog, they couldn’t see us or the viaduct. Every aerial photograph of Stockport had one thing in common, a big black smudge hiding the centre of the town. We had our own protective umbrella of dirty stinking fog!
In case you younger ones are thinking that this is a bit far-fetched, I can remember the fogs of the Autumn of 1952 and they were as bad as anything I’d seen up to then or since. I can remember coming out of school on to Wellington Road, it was dark and if you stood under a lamp standard and looked up you couldn’t see the lamp even though it was lit, there was only a dim halo of light. If you held out your hand in front of you, you couldn’t see it. All the traffic had stopped except for the trams and the only way they kept moving was because the conductor walked in front carrying an oil flare. These were cast iron lamps with a rope for a wick, they were fuelled with thick oil and gave an orange flickering flame which was easier to see in the fog. It took almost two hours to get from Davenport to Heaton Moor Road, about five miles. When I eventually got home, my mother went to the corner shop about 200 yards away and got lost, she didn’t get home for almost an hour. Imagine how bad the visibility was to make this happen.
So, the message is that even the darkest cloud can have a silver lining. WW2 brought industry to Barlick. The smogs of 1952 killed thousands of people all over the country but led eventually to the Clean Air Acts. During the war smog saved Stockport Viaduct. The only problem is that if there was ever another bombing war we wouldn’t be so lucky, the Clean Air legislation has worked so well that modern aerial photographs of Stockport are crystal clear. Get the tin hats out lads!

09 January 2003