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with Harry Pearson
The man who found a Brave New World ... in Billingham !
Ordered – An aerial photo of ICI ' s Synthonia Plant in Billingham , where Aldous Huxley found the inspiration for his classic novel , Brave New World . Photo from the JR James Archive , creative commons licence . Flickr . com / photos / jrjamesarchive / 9400748704 .
Teesside ’ s industrial beauty has a long tradition of inspiring great science fiction , as columnist Harry Pearson reveals
The 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner is set in 2019 . When I mentioned that to a friend of mine , he said , “ Well , at least they got the weather right .” Even though it ’ s set in a futuristic California , in Blade Runner it ’ s permanently bucketing down . That ’ s because the design of the film was inspired by director Ridley Scott ’ s walks from Redcar to Hartlepool when he was a Teesside art student .
“ It always seemed to be gloomy and raining ,” he ’ d later recall .
As we can judge from this year ’ s Tees Tech Awards , our region has always helped shape people ’ s vision of the future ( though as a child of the sixties , I ’ m naturally a little disappointed by the lack of jet-packs and hover-cars among our output ).
It ’ s a state of affairs that dates back a long way . In the 1920s , a tall , gawky young man came up to work as a chemist at the ICI plant in Billingham . His name was Aldous Huxley and he ’ d be so stimulated by what he saw he ’ d base his seminal 1932 sci-fi novel Brave New World on it . According to Huxley , the Billingham plant represented an “ ordered universe in the midst of a wider world of planless incoherence ”.
Before he ’ d arrived on Teesside ,
Huxley had been working as a French teacher . The French classes at my school were pretty much planless incoherence personified – with the additional mass flicking of ink-soaked blotting paper – so I can see where he was coming from .
The synthetic ammonia plant at Billingham had been built during World War One to help create the raw materials for high explosives . In 1920 it was taken over by Brunner and Mond , who turned the synthetic ammonia into fertiliser . In 1926 , Brunner and Mond merged with various other firms ( including Nobel Explosives , whose Swedish founder , Alfred Nobel , had invented dynamite and then been so shocked by the uses people put it to , he invested part of his profits into founding the Nobel Peace Prize ) to form Imperial Chemical Industries . The plant at Billingham boomed ( though not in an explosive way , thankfully ) and was soon the biggest in the British Empire .
The two men behind Brunner and Mond at the time Huxley came to Teesside were Sir John Brunner – who hailed from Everton and was so wealthy the British press nicknamed him “ the Chemical Croesus ” – and Sir Alfred Mond , whose father , Ludwig , had co-founded the company . Sir Alfred had a dome-like bald head , circular glasses and a moustache so vast and luxurious it looked like a ferret was sleeping under his nose .
Sir Alfred was a liberal with a social conscience . He and Brunner had introduced shorter working hours , injury and sickness insurance and holiday pay , and organised sports facilities and clubs for the workers ( including Billingham Synthonia FC , whose former players include a certain Brian Clough ).
Huxley was impressed . He saw Mond ’ s ICI as a model for the future and styled Brave New World ’ s “ Resident World Controller of Western Europe ” on him , giving his character the name Mustafa Mond . Billingham became the model for the “ Central London Hatchery ” in which the new citizenry are created in test tubes .
Huxley described Billingham as “ a magnificent poem ”. He was altogether less fond of Middlesbrough , though , which he likened to poisonous bacteria bubbling in a test tube full of chicken broth . Mind you , people who worked for the ICI were always a bit snooty about the steel business .
Middlesbrough became the dark , raindrenched city in Blade Runner , Billingham the sunlit Utopia of Brave New World . Hopefully one of the Tees Tech entries will inspire another vision of the future . Personally , I ’ m not so bothered about the weather , so long as there ’ s a monorail to the Riverside .
Harry Pearson ’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now . The voice of business in the Tees region | 143