Theo Mallier: Growing Pains

1991

1991 was a memorable year for Theo Mallier. It had seen Desert Storm, the mortar attack on 10 Downing Street, Rodney King, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Internet. It had also said goodbye to William Penney, Robert Maxwell, and Freddie Mercury. The earth-shattering news in Theo Mallier’s world came when his home estate, Meadowell, appeared on the national news.

North Shields was named after a set of houses that had been built in the 13th century to accommodate the men providing fish for the monks in Tynemouth Priory. The houses soon declined into slums, slowly forgotten and left to dilapidate while the town stretched its body to incorporate other villages.

In the 1930s, The Ridges council estate was built to house the people from the original slum dwellings, and was renamed Meadowell in the 1960s - its name implying an idyllic meadow built around a well to try and soften the image of the deep, dark underbelly of malice. It was the only change the council made to help the estate, and it was becoming a no-go area to visitors and police, they preferring to let the residents and the estate implode on itself.

On 9th September 1991, or as Theo called it since 2001, 9/9, the long and drunken history of the estate, mixed with the simmering resentment of all outsiders, finally resulted in its decompression and attempted self-destruction.

Some of the residents had finally had enough of the sub-human class treatment they received everywhere they went. To say to others that you were from North Shields was already becoming anathema, but to say you were from the Meadowell was to be a victim of the utmost prejudice.

As with all problems and misconceptions, the Meadowell riots were caused and administered by an unjustified minority. Bad apples. The Ridges Radges. The majority of people living there were disgusted and dismayed by the wanton destruction and crime-fuelled vandalism that for three days engulfed their home estate. The police, who had previously been unseen around the estate for any prolonged periods, were present at all times during those three days, protecting the innocent from the feral, despicable crime wave that was taking place, though still the overriding impact and shock of what had happened was enough to jolt the realisation that something had to be done to make sure it never happened again.

A lot of funding went into the estate over the next three years, begrudged by other local towns that couldn’t see why they had to go without improvements while over £60 million was spent on people who had become the squeaky wheel making the most noise. The estate improved and the majority within it got their pride back, though the reputation of the estate unjustifiably remained.

The riots were a scaled-up version of a person’s life within the estate. Being brought up in resentment, alcohol-fed anger and tears, and poor treatment by others who considered themselves superior, had led to a pressure build-up, ending in a final lashing-out to all around them and against them. The lack of care about what anybody thought was the result of the estate’s mid-life crisis, and it would move on with a more enlightened and depressurised view of the world.

To a twelve-year-old, the riots were an excuse for salvage and finders-keepers. Over the space of those three days, he and his brothers and sisters would come into the house with something new they had found ‘discarded in the street’. For the younger ones like him, the treasure was sweets and comics, though for the older children, it was cigarettes and alcohol. It was noticeable at the time that, with all the looting of shops that had taken place, and all valuable stock removed from such places, the only remaining goods left in the off-licenses were tray upon tray of untouched Ace lager.

Even for free, nobody wanted it.