Today a book arrived in the post. Jesus and His Sacrifice, by Vincent Taylor. The author was one of the leading Methodist British New Testament scholars of the mid 20th Century. Inside I found a postcard, one of those eloquent fragments of someone else's life.
The Rev Booth was being reminded of a meeting of local preachers. The business is described as routine. The postmark is November 1963, and the address is Sunderland. And the local post stamp is an early promotion advert for Sunderland's business enterprises and aspirations.
A fragment therefore of social history, and a community's hopefulness and desire to get on in life. "New Industry Thrives in Sunderland". Much was to happen over the next 55 years that those 1960's communities with their desire to work and thrive, could never have foreseen. It has left me sadly thoughtful.
In the early 1960's British industry was in full recovery mode and as new tyechnology and increasing household gadgets became more widely affordable and available the future looked bright and promising. The postmark on the postcard is a local promotion slogan, a large industrial town with the self confidence to self advertise. Within 20 years changes in political and economic goals, shifts of manaufacturing overseas, and the long relentless decline of heavy industry and manufacturing sucked the heart and life out of so many communities in traditionally industrial towans and communities. Now half a century later that self confidence in a thriving local economy with buoyant businesses inviting others to come and admire and share the good life, seems more like a feel good film that never happened.
And yet. What makes me both sad and thoughtful, is a postcard that is a momentary glimpse into the ordinary hopes and routines of folk half a century ago, in a largely working class town, but where upward mobility could be expected and enjoyed. That history took the course it did wasn't inevitable. It was the result of political choices, but also of corprorate business decisions over which workers had no control and Governments were losing control. And though some way in the future, the relentless march of technology and mechanisation, the advent of computerised machines and the gathering pace of runaway consumerism all threatened to eclipse the hopeful confidence and social aspirations of Sunderland and so many other communities built around factories, mines and available workforces.
And in the midst of it all local preachers, and the Rev Wood, probably becoming aware of the early signs of malaise and faltering in the core support for churches and their programmes. In that context this is a postcard from the edge, an early intimation that older ways are passing, that routines are being challenged, that the church also will have to change to survive let alone thrive. So this accidental postcard, used as a bookmark and forgotten, re-emerges in 21st Century postmodern Scotland, and brings a passing whiff of hopes that used to be. Even the humble printed paper rate postcard is a quaint memento of the pre email age, a reminder of a slower age that might be less than impressed with the immediacy and intensity of our dictats by emails and reminders by text message.
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