The former Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend.
Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/BloombergBrexit Region Lives With Alarming Echoes of the Past
“Whole families, whole districts, whole towns are feeling abandoned and there’s not much to fix it on the horizon.”
People in the hardy suburbs of Newcastle, home of the bank where Britain’s financial crisis began, have become used to living on the brink.
They lost two icons in quick succession just over a decade ago, when the Tyne River shipyards that were a cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution finally succumbed to global competition, and when lender Northern Rock collapsed—a full year before the demise of Lehman Brothers in 2008. An era of government spending cuts then compounded the misery in an area of England with some of the highest dependency on the state for jobs and welfare.