The Industrial Revolution, one of the most pivotal events in British history, has little influence today. Whereas some countries have retained a respectable industrial capacity since the idea of deindustrialisation emerged several decades ago, the British economy rests closer to a literal definition of post-industrial. With a critically unbalanced service economy on one hand and a state which stifles development on the other, an unhealthy reliance on a steadily more tenuous environment of globalisation has developed. 

In other words, Britain is unlikely to become the prospering centre of exciting new industries anytime soon, despite the rhetoric of the recently departed government and its successor. What all this has wreaked upon the national psyche, including the many towns which have lost their major employers to deindustrialisation, should be continually highlighted, lest we become resigned to this pervasive sense of unending stagnation and decline. In 1864, during a time of far greater domestic industrial prowess, the art critic John Ruskin put forth a framework which linked the spirit motivating an era’s development and the architecture to which it accorded the most splendour. Within this, he paid particular attention to the centrality of industrialisation to the Victorians, which to him constituted one of these eras. This concept should be brought up to the present to explore the animating force — or lack thereof — behind our own time.

In his speech to a group of apparently well-to-do gentlemen in Bradford, ostensibly about an exchange they wished to build, Ruskin quickly diverted into a wide-ranging discussion about what good architecture is and what we build it for. His central arguments to this end were that “all good architecture is the expression of national life and character” and every distinctive national architecture was “the result and exponent of a great national religion.” The tenability of such notions aside, “religion” here is used to mean the general mission of a nation, not necessarily with reference to its theology. This developed (or digressed, depending on one’s viewpoint) further into his personal view of the progression of European history and “religions”, as expressed by its most important schools of architecture. 

After linking classical architecture to the Greeks, Gothic to mediaeval Christianity, and Renaissance or Baroque to an early modern “religion of Pleasure” which ended in the guillotines, he proclaimed Britain had become host to a fourth industrial “religion” and corresponding architectural mode. In spite of the nominal Christianity of Britain, Ruskin believed the “ruling goddess” of his audience was the “Goddess of Getting-on” or “Britannia Agoraia”, meaning “Britannia of the Market” from an epithet of Athena. Instead of building cathedrals, he claimed all the great architecture of the age was devoted to this goddess, including railway stations “vaster than the temple of Ephesus” and chimneys atop all manner of factories “more mighty and costly than cathedral spires”. Indeed, he included the exchange he was invited to consider amongst those buildings, so left it to his audience how best to determine the architecture moulded by and dedicated to Britannia Agoraia.

Of course, the Victorians built plenty of ecclesiastical architecture and a few cathedrals to service the rapid population growth of the period, but that misses Ruskin’s point. What he highlighted was the idealisation and unbounded faith in industrial progress held by a largely new class of self-made industrialists, those who had most profited from the seemingly ceaseless technological development and urbanisation of the period. He also stressed the flaws of this “religion”, as the success of industrial Britain was evidently not without cost, which he expressed as “Getting on — but where to?” Unlike the previous “religions”, which he claimed relied on the continual increase of wisdom, comfort and pleasure respectively, accumulating the profits of industry could certainly reach a point of “cessation of function.” Furthermore, Britannia Agoraia did not ensure a state of “getting-on” for all, for Ruskin identified the “vital, or rather deathful, distinction” that the idealised vision of the good life in industrial Britain was a rather exclusive one.

His eventual message was that industrialists should pursue a more Christian existence

This may all seem quite abstract to readers, although the speech shows Ruskin understood the stark social realities of the time. His eventual message was that industrialists should pursue a more Christian existence, caring more for their fellow man than vanity or sheer riches, and have that reflected in the architecture they wished to build. However, we can compare the more tangible facets of Ruskin’s Britannia Agoraia to the industrial and architectural situation of today. Insofar as there is a market on a similar scale to Victorian industry, it is embodied by the financial markets of the City of London and Canary Wharf. Britain is better off for being a global financial centre than not, indeed for possessing a well-developed service economy more broadly, but that sector alone cannot account for all the material needs of a nation. In that case, in our efforts to produce both raw and manufactured goods, the Britannia Agoraia of the Victorians has more or less perished from decades of uninterrupted neglect. Irrespective of whether the factories were descended from lumbering state enterprises or wholly private affairs, the industrial base recent governments like to be seen scrabbling to protect are merely its struggling remnants. Since the foreseeable and avoidable bankruptcy of MG Rover in 2005, the automotive industry has consistently warned about their lack of long-term commitment to assembly in Britain; the three remaining factories for locomotive building have too recently expressed alarm about their situations. The steel industry is rapidly facing the prospect of having no domestic capacity to produce new steel — only recycling the scrap back into the supply chain. A couple of the handful of shipbuilders left are evidently struggling, whilst the facilities related to the oil and gas industry appear to have been forced into a managed decline by governments which claim to have all these industrial interests at heart.

The ill effects of this wave of British deindustrialisation have been ruinous, beyond the kinds of manufacturing already discussed, for areas which are indisputably vital for a nation’s continuing economic independence. Energy costs are more expensive than advanced countries elsewhere because so little has been done to nurture cheaper means of domestic energy production, particularly nuclear energy. In turn, expensive energy makes all forms of industry less viable. Britain’s preparedness for almost any kind of future conflict has increasingly come under scrutiny, since domestic military capabilities and the corresponding capacity to produce them have become so diminished. It is crucial to remember that when closures or outsourcing lead to the loss of a certain industrial capability, most of the proprietary and tacit bodies of knowledge once used to reinforce quality or productivity are lost too. This fact complicates and lengthens any attempt at rebuilding important capacities, despite the security and resilience they might ensure. For a country dependent on imports for so many goods, any disruption to global supply chains may produce a bout of inflation, or something worse like shortages, that the government would have little power to directly counteract. To return to Ruskin’s theories about architecture, our willingness to predominantly expend our energies on building boxy houses, warehouses and offices, few of which are visually appealing, demonstrates the Victorians’ industrial spirit does not underpin Britain today. Indeed, the general eschewing of architectural style and features would, in Ruskin’s eyes, indicate the lack of any animating force behind this post-industrial age. One can certainly observe this amongst the towns where a cultural identification with a now former industry was apparent.

The proper role of government in reindustrialisation will be tackling the obstructionist bureaucracy and their favoured laws

If any positive impulse should drive British industry and overall economic productivity away from its present stagnation, it must be that of restoring, as far as possible, the capabilities lost to hubris. Recent governments’ industrial strategies have been insufficient in this regard from their subordination to more transient partisan missions. However, the state cannot bear the full responsibility of reindustrialisation. If anything, the Thatcherite episode of deindustrialisation showed the mistakes of excessive state interference in industry, clearly a contrary approach to how the Industrial Revolution sprang up so successfully in Britain to begin with. Creating unwieldy state-owned behemoths without any proper competition, elsewise regulating things out of existence or forcibly redistributing private industry to the point of near ubiquitous inefficiency, simply will not produce desirable results. The proper role of government in reindustrialisation will be tackling the obstructionist bureaucracy and their favoured laws, no small undertaking in itself. From the manifold EU regulations gathering dust on the statute books to the totemic planning laws of the Attlee government still preventing major development, there is much to be done to recreate a climate where most industrial investment is not relentlessly disincentivised. Following that, with any luck, the industrial base and its expertise can slowly rebuild around many of the areas once defined by such links. Perhaps state subsidies will be needed for certain industries which enjoy similar benefits in major markets abroad, but that too should be conducted prudently lest it devolves into predetermining winners and losers. Some argue that foreign ownership of new manufacturing should be restricted if reindustrialisation proceeds, yet the initial base is so low relative to similarly sized economies that there is probably little choice in the matter for the time being. Whilst it would be preferable for the theoretical profits of industry to be more likely invested domestically, it is undoubtedly better to have a foreign-owned factory established in a post-industrial area than no industry at all.

Britannia Agoraia, meanwhile, along with the class of Victorian industrialists it might have galvanised in some way, have more firmly passed into the realm of historical curios. Ruskin’s social concern, albeit not unique amongst his contemporaries, was eventually heeded by Liberal and Conservative governments alike, which slowly passed laws to ameliorate those who were not beneficiaries of his supposed “Goddess of Getting-on”. Nevertheless, the connections Ruskin drew between the character of historical eras and their architecture, despite questioning the ultimate goals of industrialists, did not need to be acted upon in 1864. There was a security in faith in merely the contemporaneity of that era and hence its continuation in good order, just as there was once the assuredness of local communities and economies built around crucial heavy industries. What the present era needs, which Ruskin might teach us, is a renewed faith of a more temporal sort in society, something which could stem from an economic life a little more tangible than reports for faceless services firms. Maybe then we might invest ourselves into an architecture which is more than an embodiment of vessels for services and their consumption, something which could instead inspire senses of pride and belonging in places. If a government committed to long-term national prosperity over quick slogans can emerge, it has abundant reasons to give reindustrialisation a chance so the country as a whole may get on more successfully.