In the corner of the exhibition a three-hour film, Mouth of the Tyne, shows footage of Smith in the mid 1980s, explaining the ideas on devolution he lobbied for in the 1960s: Britain divided up into eleven locally administered areas, each of which would control the ‘commanding heights’ of its local economy. These would elect a repeserntative to a second camber, replacing the House of Lords. This would then be integrated into a federal Europe, and in the process the south-eastern aristocratic biases that skew British politics would be eliminated. The failure of this is all around us, as Old Etonions dominate the government and their think tanks advocate the population of Sunderland moving to London
Owen Hatherley, A Guide To The New Ruins of Great Britain – pg 178
Mark Carrigan 