A UNIQUE CITY OF CONTRADICTIONS

HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS CONTINUES OUR THREE-DAY CELEBRATION OF THE CITY CENTENARY BY SUGGESTING IT'S THE 'HUGE DUALITY' OF THE PEOPLE THAT GOT US HERE...

- by historian Mervyn Edwards

TOKE-ON-TRENT is a peculiar city that has known much scrutiny in 100 years.

Some critics do not even see it as a 'real' city, whilst even some local people have an intriguing love-hate relationship with it. City folk are not alone in feeling this inner turmoil.

The writer Polly Devlin, in describing Irish author James Joyce's attitude towards Dublin - his home city - has reflected that Joyce's stance was a typically Irish one: "On the one hand, he despised both it and its inhabitants, on the other hand, he loved it with a passion."

We should compare this view with Reginald Pound's take on Hanley-born Arnold Bennett, who was also ambivalent about his own patch.

Pound, writing in 1952, had it that Bennett had not only gibed at Potteries people for their 'crassness' in being satisfied with 'their miserable Loop Line' (internal railway system) as a means of connecting them with the wider world but had made notes on the seedier side of local life, such as middle-aged women on potbanks paying young teenage boys for illicit pleasures.

However, asseverated Pound, Bennett defended locals against the slander that they gloried in man versus dog fights. "He would not have that," affirmed Pound.

Today, I delight in hearing the Stoke-on-Trent public's disparate reflections on their own kind, whether those opinions are aired in The Sentinel's letters column or at a Stoke or Vale match, or at the Victoria Hall or the Regent, or in Hanley's heartbeat pubs, where views on the city can be dismissive, scathing, protective or tub-thumpingly proud.

How has the city been seen in the last century - by outsiders and by natives? Have views changed on the Potteries since 1925?

Well, it's fair to say that the city has occasionally been blackened in print just as its landscape was sullied by filthy smoke from its trademark bottle ovens.