George Kerevan: No tears as our industrial heritage is annihilated

Pictures of the destruction of this great Scottish landmark were duly tweeted and broadcast around the globe. And of course, the balletic dance of death of the two chimneys looked spectacular. But in their loss we have just witnessed the calculated, wilful annihilation of a great piece of Scottish industrial design.

Cockenzie power station, with its elegant stacks, was the brainchild of Robert Matthew, one of the foremost Scottish architects of the 20th century, a recognised global leader in his profession, and (last but not least) a committed Scottish nationalist. The loss of Matthew’s masterpiece at Cockenzie – which raised hardly a whimper from the Labour-Tory coalition council in East Lothian – speaks volumes for Scotland’s failure to protect or honour its industrial heritage.

Why do we ignore our industrial and design history? Why were the Cockenzie towers blitzed? Why is the RMS Queen Mary, the quintessence of Clydeside art deco, languishing in Long Beach California, as a sleazy local tourist trap? Why, when most countries are proud to keep their aviation heritage flying, is there not a single example of the great Scottish Aviation Pioneer (designed and built at Prestwick) extant in its homeland? Why isn’t there a Twin Pioneer flying in Scotland as proof that we were, once, a manufacturer of superb aircraft? Can it be that there is some conspiracy to hide the fact that manufacturing – the fount of innovation, high wages and value added – has been shrunk forcibly to barely ten per cent of the economy, as the UK has prioritised so-called financial services over making real things?

The destruction of the Cockenzie twin towers is merely a poignant symbol of a lost heritage. A greater danger signal comes with Chancellor George Osborne’s bizarre trip to China, where he virtually pleaded with buccaneering Chinese capitalism to take over what is left of the UK’s industrial marketplace.

Once upon a time, ministerial trips were designed to sell UK goods to foreigners (usually weapons). Now David Cameron’s likely successor takes a retinue of British business executives abroad in the hope that the Chinese will buy up what is left of the UK economy.

The Chinese stock market may have fallen 40 per cent in the last three months, and her economy might be based on a giant credit bubble, but Osborne is only too anxious to get China to supply our nuclear reactors and high-speed trains. Meanwhile, two Scottish power stations – including Cockenzie – have been closed because transmitting electrical power down the grid to England is taxed! At the same time, commercial generators of nuclear power in the south of England get a subsidy. So much for the “free” market.

The present Tory government (like the Labour one before it) is fixated not just on nuclear power but on subsidising foreign competitors to provide it, to the detriment of local industry. The daftest project is Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which is slated to cost an insane £24.5 billion. To induce the state-owned French EDF utility to build and operate Hinkley Point C, Mr Osborne is offering to guarantee the company a £92.50p per megawatt hour for 35 years – a staggering double the current wholesale price.

NOW here’s the truly crazy thing: even with this gargantuan subsidy, EDF won’t go ahead unless somebody else comes up with the capital investment. Hence George Osborne’s desperate trip to China to persuade Chinese banks to fund this crazy project. How did he manage this? By offering to lend those Chinese concerns some of the cash – £2bn to be exact. So why not just fund it ourselves? But there’s more. Osborne has offered to let the Chinese build a reactor of their own design in the UK, doubtless also subsidised to the hilt with taxpayers’ money. In other words, the UK Treasury has just helped kick-start China’s advance into the global energy market just as it is abolishing subsidies for UK renewables.

Which brings me back to the wilful destruction of British and Scottish manufacturing at the behest of the financial oligarchy that is the City of London. It is a pure lie that making things is an obsolete economic activity. Today in the UK, manufacturing produces only ten per cent of GDP, but in richer Germany it is nearer 22 per cent. Of course, as the Volkswagen scandal shows, manufacturing companies are no saints. But a strong manufacturing sector provides the exports that pay for necessary imports. In the UK, with its huge current account deficit, we need to borrow the equivalent of six per cent of

GDP each year in foreign currency to buy food, fuel and goods from abroad.

Robert Matthew, the genius behind the firm that designed Cockenzie power station, is one of Scotland’s modern heroes. A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, he became London County Council’s chief architect, responsible for the Royal Festival Hall. Back in Scotland in 1953, his innovative RMJM architectural practice brought flair, Scandinavian-style efficiency, and even a cool beauty to the public builds needed in the post-war world. Matthew and his team were responsible for the David Hume Tower in Edinburgh, the original Turnhouse Airport, Europe’s largest teaching hospital at Ninewells in Dundee, the new University of Stirling; and a series of power stations which later included Longannet, Inverkip, and Peterhead.

Like many other prophets, Matthew has little honour in his own land. In fact, you can blow up one of his buildings and no one seems to mind. But in his day, Matthew’s inspired activity as a leading architectural “modernist” was renowned around the world, particularly in Latin America. As a result, in 1963 he was elected president of the worldwide Union Internationale des Architectes. The way was open for Scotland to build a global architectural and design industry based on Matthew’s pioneering lead. But the latter part of the 20th century brought the rise of the City of London financial oligarchy and with it enforced de-industrialisation in Scotland. Architecture these days is focused on building London skyscrapers for the big international banks.

The Cockenzie stacks are no more. But an independent Scotland would be in a pole position to rebuild its manufacturing base, freed from the fiscal lunacies of George Osborne. For we still have great universities and the native talent to generate ideas that we turn into exportable hardware. Above all, we have the inspiration of those geniuses who went before, like Robert Matthew. Here’s my suggestion. We’ve lost the Cockenzie towers, but we can bring the Queen Mary back from Longbeach. And we can get a Twin Pioneer back in the air over Prestwick.