Rust Belt Blues
From Dayton to Durham: The politics of industrial decline expressed in songs and stories.
Let's locate the Rust Belt with a quick couplet from the Bruce Springsteen song Youngstown:
“From the Monongahela Valley to the Mesabi iron range, to the coal mines of Appalachia, the stories always the same.”
The story he writes about, the devastating impact of industrial decline on communities, is a universal seam mined by songwriters and storytellers from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Tyne and Rhine rivers.
The Rust Belt spreads through parts of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Rust Belt prosperity was built on its geography of coal, iron ore and ample navigable waterways for the transportation of those natural resources. “From the 1950s to the 1980s,” says the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, “the Rust Belt experienced significant economic decline and dislocation because of foreign competition, increased labour costs, failure to modernize equipment and infrastructure, and technological advancements that replaced workers.”
Never Mind the Politics
To this litany I would add some ‘last straw’ details: the deregulated, de-unionised, low tax, free market, Neo-liberal Chicago-school economics of Milton Friedman, implemented by fellow conservatives Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher. Their long-term legacy – for better or for worse is not for debate here – still contributes to today's politics. We can see this in Trump’s ‘too many jobs have gone abroad’ critique of the Reganomics inspired North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Calls from the far right to patriotic sentiment, combined with appeals to the ‘why-have-you-forgotten-us’ grievances of deindustrialised regions provide a volatile political cocktail whose potency has been swallowed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Hence today we have the selection of the author of the disturbingly moving Hillbilly Elegy, J.D Vance, as President Trump's running mate, and, on the UK side, the calcified bones of the Brexit carcass. It’s ironic that the long-term consequences of policies initiated by conservatives have been spun to become the bedrock of rebellion against the ‘elitist liberal left,’ [centralists really] who continued them.
I digress a little, but the phrase ‘Rust Belt’ itself was first derived from political rhetoric. In 1984, Walter Mondale gave a speech to Cleveland steelworkers in which he accused Ronald Regan of “turning our industrial Midwest into a rust bowl.” [Rust bowl, reminiscent of 'dust bowl' was mixed by journalists with 'belt,' from popular-use in corn belt or bible belt to give the ‘rust belt’].
Even before Mondale’s use of the term Rust Belt negative impacts of neo-liberal economics were being observed in songs. Bob Dylan grew up in the Mesabi Iron Range town of Hibbing, Minnesota. In the song Union Sundown (1983), he wrote about the effects of a laissez-faire global economy, “When it costs too much to build it at home you just build it cheaper someplace else.”
Outspoken Democrat Billy Joel was just as politically forthright in the even earlier song Allentown (1982), beginning, “Well, we're living here in Allentown and they're closing all the factories down…” At the core in his song is the same question, still alive and well today: Can my children achieve or exceed my life expectations? [and if not, why not]. Joel sings: “Every child had a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got…”
Another undisguised, undiminished, unapologetic democrat is Bruce Springsteen, who wrote numerous eighties songs referencing industrial decline and the personal impact on the characters in his songs:
From The River, “But lately they ain’t seen much work, on account of the economy…”
To Atlantic City, "Everything that dies someday comes back…"
To My Hometown, “Foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back…”
To Born in the USA, “Hiring man says son if it was up to me…”
So issues raised by Democrats in the eighties are being re-run by MAGA Republicans today. Sometimes it seems like the steelworks have just shut down. [Btw, should anyone have a Rust Belt song from a Republican angle I’d love to hear it in the comments below].
Fast-Forward Fifty-five degrees North
While the Rust Belt is physically located in the USA, analogies can also be found in the Ruhr region of Germany, the Donbas of Ukraine, Post Soviet Bulgaria and my home-town region in the UK.
In the North East of England, the “build it cheaper someplace else” process Dylan sang about would include Japanese, South Korean and Chinese ship builders outcompeting local shipyards on scale, technology and price.
Should you have experienced industrial decline in the UK, it’s no great leap to understand parallels with the United States. State Department Russia advisor to Trump and defence advisor to the current Labour government advisor Fiona Hill was raised in the coal field town of Bishop Aukland, County Durham.
A quote from her coal miner father contained in the title and blurb for her 2023 book, says it all.
‘Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: "There is nothing for you here, pet," he said.’
The book “There Is Nothing for You Here.” was the result, and within its pages she gives voice to the grievances she overcame through a high-flying education:
"Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan helped to drive the nail into the coffin of the twentieth-century industry while ensuring that those trapped inside the casket would find it practically impossible to pry the lid off,” she writes.
Though pockets of the North East have prospered threadbare pockets that were always poorer remain threadbare. Former ship-building towns like Howdon and Wallsend have become well-springs for expressions of gritty resilience in songs by Sting in The Last Ship, Sam Fender and Jimmy Nail; while the economic refugees who faced the back of Maggie’s hand in Mark Knopfler’s Why Aye Man were the builders who left Newcastle to find work in Germany.
These songs could easily have been written in America, and the cross-cultural pollination is obvious: Dylan gave expressive permission to them all, Springsteen’s producer worked with Knopfler, Knopfler worked with Dylan, Sting worked with Springsteen and Knoplfer, while Fender took musical lessons from them all.
Just like Springsteen there was no plan B career for Fender, music was the only way to break out of a poverty of aspiration. Which takes us to the closing coda: “We Gotta Get Out of This Place," (1965). Springsteen claims the Animals tune is “every song I’ve ever written.”
Although written in America some small lyrical changes situate it in the Animal’s home town of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Eric Burdon’s delivery transforms the story from a city in the USA to one about escaping the gritty, working-class culture of North-East England.
“In this dirty old part of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me, there ain't no use in tryin'
We gotta get out of this place!
If it's the last thing we ever do…”