2010 marks fifty years since the clos­ure of the Naval Dock­yard on the Isle of Shep­pey in Kent. It was quite a blow to the island. There was the imme­di­ate loss of an ‘occu­pa­tional com­munity’ where the single large employer that had dom­in­ated the local eco­nomy and brought people together with a shared sense of pur­pose and belong­ing was sud­denly gone. Some people were able to secure work at the dock­yard in Chatham, but oth­ers from what was effect­ively an isol­ated work­force were less for­tu­nate and unem­ploy­ment on Shep­pey after the dock­yard clos­ure was 11% when national rate was 2% (Pahl, 1984: 169). The full impact of what had happened was not felt until some years later, how­ever. Some of the inter­viewees’ accounts col­lec­ted as part of the Liv­ing and Work­ing on Shep­pey pro­ject are not espe­cially neg­at­ive about their own exper­i­ence of clos­ure of the dock­yard at the time. But it’s over time that the impact of some­thing like this is felt, that the social and cul­tural life of a place like Sheer­ness starts to unravel.

Since then, it’s fair to say that Shep­pey has struggled. Although new industry has been estab­lished, Shep­pey ranks highly on ‘indices of depriva­tion’ (health, poverty etc). It was hit badly in the 1980s reces­sion, and the situ­ation is mixed today. The steel mill remains a sig­ni­fic­ant employer, as do the three pris­ons, but the local eco­nomy is now dom­in­ated by the import busi­ness – of cars and fresh pro­duce. Over­all, the pic­ture is volat­ile with a high per­cent­age of people employed in rel­at­ively vul­ner­able indus­tries. Edu­ca­tional attain­ment is well below the aver­age for the South East. And life expect­ancy is sev­eral years lower in some parts of Shep­pey than it is in other areas in the bor­ough of Swale and the South East more widely.

When Ray Pahl car­ried out research on Shep­pey in the late 1970s and 1980s – pub­lished in what became a sem­inal soci­olo­gical text, Divi­sions of Labour (1984) – he drew atten­tion to social polar­isa­tion between house­holds. Some com­bin­a­tions of work (paid and unpaid, formal and informal) allowed people to ‘get by’ effect­ively; oth­ers did not. There is ongo­ing con­cern that cur­rent devel­op­ments (e.g. hous­ing rather than jobs-led regen­er­a­tion) may fur­ther rein­force social divi­sions across Sheppey.

The Liv­ing and Work­ing on Shep­pey pro­ject explores the recent his­tory and changes in work­ing lives on Shep­pey in the last dec­ades of the 20th Cen­tury and into the 21st. The pro­ject, fun­ded by the Higher Edu­ca­tion Fund­ing Coun­cil for Eng­land through its South East Coastal Com­munit­ies Pro­gramme, is a com­bin­a­tion of new research and sec­ond­ary ana­lysis of Pahl’s earlier data. A first strand is based on inter­views con­duc­ted by local people with older mem­bers of the com­munity about their memor­ies of Blue Town (Sheer­ness) and the naval dock­yard before its clos­ure in 1960 and their exper­i­ences of chan­ging times since. A second strand invited young people about to leave school to write essays in which they ima­gine what their futures will hold in terms of work and fam­ily life, a repe­ti­tion of an exer­cise under­taken by Pahl 30 years ago.

A mont­age of Blue Town High Street by TEA

The pro­ject team includes Dawn Lyon, Peter Hat­ton, Tim Stran­gle­man, and Clive Arundell (Uni­ver­sity of Kent), Gra­ham Crow (Uni­ver­sity of Southamp­ton), Jenny Hur­kett and Alice Young (Blue Town Her­it­age Centre), the UK Data Archive, the artists group TEA, and Ray Pahl as con­sult­ant. The con­tri­bu­tion of the artists group TEA is the cre­ation of a short film of a ‘walk’ along Blue Town High Street based on a model con­struc­ted from archives, the ‘real­ity’ in 2010, and ima­gin­a­tion — a mont­age of past, present, and future (as in the image above).

A work­shop on Sat­urday 12 June 2010 at the Blue Town Her­it­age Centre will present the work of the pro­ject and invite com­ment and dis­cus­sion about it. This event is free of charge but places are lim­ited and regis­tra­tion is required. Any­one inter­ested in attend­ing – or if you would like any other inform­a­tion about the pro­ject – please con­tact Alice Young, Pro­ject Coordin­ator, Blue Town Her­it­age Centre, 69 High Street, Blue Town, Sheer­ness, Kent ME12 1RW; tele­phone: 01795 662981; email: seccproject@hotmail.com.

Ref­er­ences

Pahl, R.E. (1984) Divi­sions of Labour, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.