Breaking Barriers
From Kirkby to Waltham Cross
Why I Believe in Team UK
Breaking Barriers was originally a twelve-month series exploring some of the barriers that can shape the lives and opportunities of children, young people and families.
My twelfth blog brought that series to a close. Or at least I thought it did.
Recent conversations about the North and South, regional inequality and how we create prosperity across the country have got me thinking again. Perhaps some of the barriers we explored throughout that series aren’t only experienced by individuals and families. Sometimes they are experienced by whole communities.
From Kirkby to Wigan
I was born in Kirkby, Liverpool, before growing up in Winstanley, Wigan. At 16, I left home and joined the Royal Navy.
Over thirteen years of service, I had the opportunity to live in very different parts of the United Kingdom. Wherever possible, I chose to rent within the local community rather than live behind the gates of a naval establishment.
That meant actually living in places such as Plymouth, Helensburgh, Dunfermline and Portsmouth. My life beyond my naval postings also meant spending significant periods of time in Washington, near Sunderland, and Birmingham, where I stayed regularly for more than a year. My final naval draft then brought me to the Isle of Dogs in London, where I was seconded by the Royal Navy to London Youth while still serving as a Physical Training Instructor.
These weren’t places I studied on a map or visited for a couple of days. I experienced everyday life in communities across the North West, North East, Scotland, Midlands, South West, South Coast and London.
Those places were very different. Different accents, different industries, different histories and different identities. Yet the more places I experienced, the more I noticed how much people had in common.
Parents wanted their children to do well. Young people wanted to belong and find something they were good at. Families worried about money, housing, work and what the future might hold. People wanted to feel proud of where they lived.
Most of all, they wanted opportunity.
Image @gettyimages
Then life Changed
When I was medically discharged from the Royal Navy, I had to work out what came next. My sister had already moved south with work and was living in Epping, which gave me somewhere to stay while I rebuilt my life.
Opportunity Is What Brought Me To The South East….
It wasn’t about choosing the South over the South West or North. It was simply about following an opportunity and trying to work out where I could make a difference.
I was fortunate to find what became my dream role with Skill Force, a charity made up largely of former military NCOs working alongside young people in inner-city schools. I was lucky enough to be based at Islington Green School.
Working alongside young people and families from communities including the Marquess Estate, Packington Estate and New River Green taught me something that has shaped almost everything I have done since.
Image @prosenjit81
Families Don’t Experience Education, Housing, Health or Policing Separately.
They Experience Life.
If a family is struggling with housing, it can affect a child’s education. If a parent is worried about money, those worries don’t disappear at the school gate. If a young person doesn’t feel they belong, doesn’t see opportunities around them or cannot imagine where their education might take them, simply telling them to raise their aspirations isn’t enough.
We have to help create the conditions in which aspiration feels possible.
From Islington to Waltham Cross
That journey eventually brought me to Turnford in 2007 and, a few years later, to establishing CHEXS. For the last fifteen years, we have worked alongside children, young people and families in communities including Waltham Cross, Turnford and Wormley.
Looking back across the places I’ve called home and the communities I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside, something has stayed with me.
The postcode changes. The accents change. The industries change.
The hopes, stresses and anxieties of families rarely do.
That is one reason I sometimes struggle with the way we talk about the North and the South as though they are two competing teams. Life isn’t that simple.
What Happened To The Industries That Gave Places their Identity?
Every community has its own story, shaped by its people, geography, history and the industries that grew around it.
Mining shaped communities around Wigan. Cotton helped build towns across Lancashire. Shipbuilding shaped communities along the Clyde. Dockyards sustained Plymouth and Portsmouth. Across Britain, farming, fishing, manufacturing, engineering, logistics, technology and countless other industries have shaped generations of families and communities.
These industries didn’t only create jobs. They created purpose, identity and pride. Many have now changed beyond recognition. Others have disappeared altogether.
I don’t believe the answer is trying to recreate the past. The much bigger question is:
What creates that same sense of opportunity, purpose and prosperity for the next generation?
That, for me, is where the conversation becomes really interesting.
Opportunity Has To Mean Something Locally
A national strategy matters, although opportunity ultimately has to be something people can see, touch and believe is possible where they live.
Every community needs a vision built around its own strengths, people and potential. Those local visions can connect into regional strategies, creating opportunities that individual towns and communities could never create alone.
Regional ambition can then be backed by a national strategy that makes sure prosperity doesn’t become concentrated in a handful of successful cities or postcodes.
To me, thinking as Team UK means connecting those different levels rather than setting them against one another.
It isn’t about making every community look the same. It isn’t North versus South. It isn’t London versus Manchester.
It is about every community having the opportunity to become the best version of itself while contributing to, and sharing in, the success of the whole United Kingdom.
Where Does The North Actually Start?
There is an old joke about the North beginning at Watford Gap. Someone else will tell you it starts at Birmingham. Someone from Newcastle might have a completely different opinion about Manchester being described as northern.
Ask ten people and you’ll probably get ten answers.
Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of debating where the North begins, perhaps we should be asking:
Does every community have a fair opportunity to become the very best version of itself?
Communities don’t need to become Manchester. They don’t need to become London either.
They need the opportunity to build on what already makes them unique while creating new industries, new possibilities and new reasons for young people to believe their future can be found close to home, if that is where they want it to be.
Image @gettysignature
The Opportunity Gap Starts Much Earlier
This is where I come back to children and young people, and why I believe this still belongs within Breaking Barriers.
We often talk about regional inequality through productivity, investment, infrastructure, wages and economic growth. All of those things matter, yet there is another part of the story:
What does a child growing up there believe is possible?
- Can they experience different careers before being expected to choose one?
- Do they meet adults from different walks of life who help widen their view of the world?
- Can they take part in sport, learn to swim, experience arts and music, travel and enjoy activities outside school?
- Are employers visible within their community?
- Do they have trusted adults around them who notice what they are good at?
- Can their family access help early when life becomes difficult rather than waiting until things reach crisis?
- Most importantly, does that young person have reasons to believe they have something valuable to contribute?
That is where national prosperity becomes personal.
A new data centre, railway line or investment zone may create opportunity, although children and young people still need the confidence, experiences, relationships and belief to imagine themselves benefiting from it.
Otherwise, we can create opportunity around people without necessarily creating opportunity for them.
Thinking as Team UK
For more than twenty years, working alongside children, young people and families has taught me that lasting change rarely comes from simply creating another programme.
It comes through trusted relationships, opportunities and people feeling that they belong. It comes through communities recognising and building on their strengths. It comes through local people helping shape local solutions, with organisations prepared to work differently around them.
None of those lessons belongs exclusively to the North or the South. They belong to every community that wants something better for the next generation.
When I started writing Breaking Barriers, I was looking at the things that can limit opportunity for children, young people and families. Perhaps what I’ve realised through writing this is that some of those same barriers exist at community level too.
Where you grow up shouldn’t determine how much opportunity you get to experience or how strongly you are able to believe in your future.
Perhaps that is the next barrier we need to break: the belief that one part of the country has to lose for another to succeed.
I want Manchester to succeed. I want Wigan to succeed. I want Liverpool, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Glasgow, Birmingham, Sunderland, Holyhead, London and every town and community between them to succeed.
I also want Waltham Cross, Turnford and Wormley to succeed.
Not by becoming somewhere else, but by becoming the very best versions of themselves.
That is what I mean by thinking as Team UK.
It isn’t a new name or slogan, and it isn’t about taking away the identity and pride people have in their town, city, county or region. Quite the opposite. It is about recognising that we can be fiercely proud of where we come from while also wanting communities hundreds of miles away to succeed.
National success shouldn’t simply be measured by which city or region is growing fastest. For me, it should be measured by something much more human:
Does a child growing up there believe there is a place for them in the future we are building?
Every community matters. Every child matters. Every family deserves the opportunity to thrive.
Different places. Different strengths. Different possibilities.
One United Kingdom, succeeding together.
That’s what I mean by Team UK.
