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Oliver Cross: Hall for the best?
This week, after walking past it hundreds of times, I read a blue plaque at a side entrance to Leeds Civic Hall and learned something.
The plaque says the hall was “erected 1930-33 by the unemployed building workers of Leeds,” which is a rare acknowledgment that buildings are constructed by builders; the only people thought worthy of mention nowadays are architects, sponsors, construction consortiums, big wigs and money men.
It’s also an indication of how backward people were before the invention of modern economics. There they were, surrounded by unemployed people, and instead of waiting for the markets to spontaneously create sustainable growth while not annoying the credit-rating agencies, they seemed to think the easiest way out would be to create more jobs, which was irresponsibility of the highest order.
Didn’t they realise that you can’t spend your way out of an economic crisis of the type that struck in the 1930s and is draining us today – well, not unless you’re a bank?
And why spend all that money (the Civic Hall cost £360,000, although I don’t know whether that was a lot or a little for the time) on a public-sector facility which nobody, apart from unemployed building workers, can profit from?
Fine
OK, the people of Leeds have, to make us all proud, a very fine Civic Hall built by highly-skilled builders rather than Meccano operatives. But how does that make anybody richer, and if not, what’s the point of it?
Perhaps, since we’ve decided we don’t really need a public sector, except for embarrassing cases such as demented older people or disabled children, Leeds Civic Hall could join the 21st century.
I would suggest a drive-through fast-food and weight-counselling facility on the ground floor, with a boutique hotel and health spa above. Then those 1930s building workers would know they hadn’t laboured in vain.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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