On Friday the 9th April, His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, passed away, not far short of his 100th birthday. In his lifetime, he will have seen steady changes in some matters, rapid change in others, and countless new inventions.
In the first I would include road travel (how many production cars would reach 50mph in 1921?), in the second a change in rail travel (from steam trains to diesel to electric being the norm), and in the last air travel – the jet engine was patented in 1937. Of course the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight only 18 years before Prince Philip was born. Now I don’t expect anyone reading this to be alive in 100 years’ time, but several of us may well live for 100 years. What has changed in our lifetimes so far? My first pocket money was in shillings and there were 240 pennies in a pound. The moon was unconquered. In my first job, two years in, a lady was employed, with her own room, to deal with the latest technology. She was the “word processor operator” – and this machine was the size of a filing cabinet. Will this ‘internet’ thingy catch on? What a silly name Google is – that definitely won’t work. Oh yes, they both have. I think the Coronavirus pandemic has brought a number of changes to the world some of which were maybe overdue, some of which have been unexpected, some of which have been bad and some may have been good. I think most people are possibly slightly kinder following the pandemic than they may have been before and this must be a benefit to the society as a whole. However, of course we have seen the collapse of such stalwarts in the High Street as the Arcadia Group (Dorothy Perkins, Burtons, Top Shop/Top Man/et al), Debenhams department store, Monsoon and major reconstructions and rationalisation at Peacocks, Edinburgh Woollen Mill and M&Co amongst others. How much of this would have happened without the pandemic is obviously a matter of speculation but I think it is generally considered that a lot of the traders that have been lost were not investing in their premises or their brand as much as those that are surviving and thriving. There is of course much discussion on the whole future of the High Street and in December 2020 Central Government promised investment of up to £830,000,000 across 72 High Streets in the country. In our local area, this includes Sunderland, Bishop Auckland, Blyth, Northallerton, Middlesbrough, Stockton and South Shields. Gateshead Council has its own agenda to redevelop the High Street (the road that is actually called High Street) to try and concentrate retail within a smaller area based around Trinity Square and Jackson Street. I might make myself unpopular by saying this, but I think this is actually possibly a good idea to make the town centre more vibrant if it is not stretched out over a long strip. Being in touch with people in other areas in the country, I am told that other towns are looking at similar principles and there is also a general move towards making the High Street more mixed. Going back to the start of this article, I said about the numbers of changes over the last 100 years. Probably one of the most striking things in town centres has been the loss of predominantly private traders in town centres and the growth in multiple traders both national and international in their place. Is that tide now changing and are we going to see the return of more independent traders that will bring character back to our High Streets? If independent traders can be supported by local authorities, by landlords, and most effectively by consumers, I see a major change in character, but not the death of the High Street. As the whole world is continuing to evolve then as business leaders, workers and consumers, we all need to work with the changes. We need to embrace the new worlds opening to us every field. And in each of our roles in life, we ignore them at our peril.
