Yale historian calls for new industrial revolution

Mar 20 2010 by Iain Laing, The Journal

A WORLD-FAMOUS Tyneside- born historian has spoken of his sadness at the region’s industrial decline – and urged a push for rebirth.

Paul Kennedy CBE, 64, head of history at Yale University in the US, said it was time for greater investment in manufacturing and backing for innovative small businesses.

This “industrial revolution” could help drag the country out of recession, he claimed. Professor Kennedy, born in Wallsend to a Swan Hunter shipyard- worker father, said small businesses especially should be given better support.

In a lecture to small businesses at Cambridge University, he told how he remembered rushing to the Tyne to see ships launched. He said: “Each time a ship was launched we would get the day off school and go down to the dock, trying to get a glimpse of our father and uncles who had built the ship.”

But he added: “However, now when I go back the Tyne is sparkling and salmon swim in it because there has been no heavy industry on it for 50 years.

“My father left school at 11 to start a seven-year apprenticeship as a boilermaker. By the age of 18 he was a fully grown man and a qualified boilermaker.”

Professor Kennedy shot to fame in 1987 when his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers achieved international acclaim. Although covering 500 years of history, it caused uproar in the White House during the Reagan administration for suggesting the US was in economic decline.

He found himself the focus of attack from Casper Weinberger, the then US Secretary of Defence, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s one-time foreign policy adviser. Even Secretary of State George Schultz was sent on a tour of Asia to attack his thesis.