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‘A firm foundation for future understanding, respect and friendship’: the ideals and reality of post-war town twinning, 1945–2020

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2023

Tosh Warwick Open the ORCID record for Tosh Warwick [Opens in a new window]
Tosh Warwick*
Affiliation:
Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
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Email: info@heritageunlocked.com
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Abstract

Formalized in the 1970s through the Middlesbrough–Oberhausen Town Twinning partnership (Partnerschaft Oberhausen–Middlesbrough), the connection between the two post-industrial towns dates back further to informal connections in the early 1950s and an age of reconciliation between the two nations. This article explores the origins, mechanisms, benefits and challenges of town twinning by drawing upon a rich body of empirical evidence from local authority records, press coverage, interviews and community reminiscence. The study provides the first academic analysis of the changes, challenges, continuities and continued relevance of town twinning in one of Britain’s leading pro-Brexit areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , First View , pp. 1 - 16
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 ‘Middlesbrough’s town twinning with Oberhausen celebrates 40th anniversary’, Evening Gazette (EG), 12 Aug. 2004, www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/middlesbroughs-town-twinning-oberhausen-celebrates-7598748, accessed 9 Sep. 2020.

2 Ibid.

3 ‘Oberhausen gets its blitz’, Daily Mail, 16 Jun. 1943.

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9 Teesside Archives (TA), U/MTT/55, report and diary of Karl Weinert of a visit organized by the Oberhausen Education Department to Middlesbrough in Yorkshire from 15 to 30 Aug. 1953. I am grateful to Felix Fuhg and Tom Williams for assistance in translating the original German text.

10 Private collection, Tom Williams’ translation of Karl Weinert’s diary and report. Instances of hostilities towards German visitors were not isolated to Teesside but were recognized as having a detrimental impact on the development of twinning. For example, the refusal of Oxford’s mayor to provide an official reception for visiting former German Wehrmacht paratroopers was described as a ‘monstrous insult’ by the Oxford Veterans’ Association and was brought to the attention of the Foreign Office’s twinning staff despite the visit falling outside of any twinning arrangement. Town twinning between West Germany and UK: Congress of Linked Local Authorities, 1967. See The National Archives (TNA), FCO 131/89.

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12 TA, CB/M/C/1/118, Middlesbrough Council minutes, Standing Sub-Committee, 11 Feb. 1959, 1583.

13 TA, CB/M/C/1/121, General Purposes and Parliamentary Committee, 14 Jun. 1960, Middlesbrough Council minutes, 150.

14 TA, CB/M/C/1/122, General Purposes and Parliamentary Committee, 26 Sep. 1961, Middlesbrough Council minutes, 674.

15 TA, CB/M/C/1/126, General Purposes and Parliamentary Committee, 28 Sep. 1965, Middlesbrough Council minutes, 690.

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17 TNA, FCO 13/427, Information Talks between United Kingdom and Germany.

18 Joint Twinning Committee of the Local Authority Associations of Great Britain and Northern lreland, Places in Partnership: A Twinning Handbook (London, 1988), 14; David Budd, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

19 TA, CB/T/1/9, Further Education Sub-Committee, 16 Jun. 1971, Teesside Council minutes, 289; TA, CB/T/1/10, Further Education Sub-Committee, 14 Jun. 1972; TA, CB/T/1/11, Further Education Sub-Committee, 13 Jun. 1973.

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21 Joint Twinning Committee, Places in Partnership, 9. The absence of a fixed criteria for twinning produced a number of ‘esoteric excuses for twinning’ including tenuous joint links to an individual or even two areas possessing major Palaeolithic sites, as in the case of Mauer in Germany and Tautavel in France. See Zelinsky, W., ‘The twinning of the world: sister cities in geographical and historical perspective’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81 (1991), 1–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 TA, CB/T/1/10, Management Committee, 16 Aug. 1972, Teesside Council minutes, 940.

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26 TA, U/MTT/20, Jumelage Dunkerque Middlesbrough opening ceremony booklet.

27 TA, U/MTT/25, ‘Sorry, wrong number’, newspaper cutting, no date.

28 Ibid., ‘Trips for a “select few”’, newspaper cutting, no date.

29 ‘Smiles of friendship from the “twins”’, EG, 7 Oct. 1974.

30 Recent correspondence with Middlesbrough Council’s civic support and town twinning officer has revealed only a small number of gifts from Szczecin in the civic collection.

31 TA, CC/C/3, Cleveland Days in Szczecin 1978 album.

32 TA, CC/S/1/13, Policy & Finance Committee, 16 Apr. 1984, 1635.

33 TA, CC/S/1/3, Resource Planning Committee, 26 Apr. 1976, Cleveland County Council minutes, 1040.

34 TA, CB/M/C (8) ACC 3262, Middlesbrough–Oberhausen Agreement souvenir; TA, CC/N/CC/256, Cleveland County colour negatives showing town twinning mayor of Middlesbrough with visitors from Oberhausen.

35 TA, CC/S/1/5, Education Committee, 12 Oct. 1977, Cleveland Country Council minutes, 489.

36 ‘The stamp of Dunkerque’, EG, 30 Nov. 1979. Amongst the gifts exchanged between the towns are a range of plaques and pottery that now form part of Middlesbrough and Oberhausen archival collections in Britain and Germany.

37 Gillian Smith, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

38 Middlesbrough Reference Library (MRL), twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Twin offer from the USA’, EG, 8 Dec. 1988.

39 The most prominent example of this is Coventry where the city’s left-wing Labour council proactively sought to build relations underpinned by ‘Labourist’ internationalism and relations. See Haynes, M., ‘Coventry in the long boom’, in Begley, J. et al. (eds.), Revival of a City: Coventry in a Globalising World (Cham, 2020), 82 Google Scholar.

40 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Town hall staff cement union’, Northern Echo, 24 Mar. 1988.

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43 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Euro charter is backed’, 19 May 1989.

44 Ibid.

45 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Twins make Euro-pledge’, 5 Jun. 1989.

46 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘African link’, Northern Echo, 22 Mar. 1989; Mamadouh, V., ‘Town twinning: over the (ir)relevance of the paradiplomacy of European cities’, in Mamadouh, V. and van Wageningen, A. (eds.), Urban Europe: Fifty Tales of the City (Amsterdam, 2016), 339–46Google Scholar.

47 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Possible links with North Moravia, Czechoslovakia – progress report’, Cleveland Council, Jul. 1991.

48 TA, U/MTT/19, programme of the group from Middlesbrough, Feb. 1992. I am grateful to Nigel Sayer and Julie Lewis for sharing their recollections of interactions with various twinning partners.

49 MRL, twinning newspaper cuttings, ‘Re-forging twin links’, EG, 1 Sep. 1990.

50 Grosspietsch, ‘More than food and folk music?’, 1284.

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54 TNA, FCO/13/187, town twinning between France and UK, 1967–68; Ewen, S., ‘Transnational municipalism in a Europe of second cities: rebuilding Birmingham with municipal networks’, in Saunier, P.-Y. and Ewen, S. (eds.), Another Global City: Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment, 1850–2000 (New York, 2008), 101–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cremer, R., Bruin, A. De and Dupuis, A., ‘International sister-cities. Bridging the global–local divide’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 60 (2001), 377–401 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cited in Grosspietsch, ‘More than food and folk music’, 1291.

55 Nigel Sayer, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

56 Middlesbrough Council (MC), Deputy Mayor Report to Council, 18 May 2005, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att13724.doc, accessed 20 Sep. 2020.

57 MC, Executive Member for Environment Report to Council, 22 Jun. 2005, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att11611.rtf, accessed 20 Sep. 2020.

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60 MC, Executive Member for Regeneration and Economic Development Report, 15 Sep. 2010, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att1261.doc, accessed 22 Sep. 2020.

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62 MC, Executive Member for Culture Report to Council, 6 Jan. 2016, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att1007273.pdf, accessed 18 Oct. 2020.

63 MC, Vision for Middlesbrough 2025 – Update, 24 Jan. 2018, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att1013013.docx, accessed 20 Oct. 2020.

64 www.multi-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-Erfahrungsbericht-Multi-England.pdf, accessed 20 Oct. 2020.

65 TA, Kevin Parkes interview with Tosh Warwick, Aug. 2020.

66 Ibid.

67 D. Schott. ‘Review of Historikertag 2002: Entwerten oder erhalten, entdecken oder gestalten. Der Umgang mit Geschichte in städtischen Politikentscheidungen und Zukunftsentwürfen des 20. Jahrhunderts. H-Soz-u-Kult’, H-Net Reviews, Oct. 2002.

68 Langenohl, ‘The merits of reciprocity’, 572; ‘Bishop’s Stortford Town Twinning Association folds after more than half a century’, Bishop’s Stortford Independent, www.bishopsstortfordindependent.co.uk/news/stortfords-town-twinning-group-folds-after-more-than-half-a-century-9095262/, accessed 20 Oct. 2020.

69 ‘Group seeks new members to keep friendship alive’, Love Middlesbrough, 23 (2020), 21.

70 See M.S. Laguerre, Global City - Twinning in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor, 2020).

71 MC, Executive Member for Culture and Communities, 24 Jul. 2019, http://democracy.middlesbrough.gov.uk/aksmiddlesbrough/images/att1016613.pdf, accessed 14 Sep. 2020.

72 H.E. Ryan, ‘Brexit has made town twinning a battleground – but it’s always been political’, The Conversation, 6 Mar. 2020, https://theconversation.com/brexit-has-made-town-twinning-a-battleground-but-its-always-been-political-131965, accessed 18 Oct. 2020.

73 M. Tausendpfund and L. Schäfer, ‘Town twinning and political support’, Local Government Studies, 44 (2018), 552–76.

74 Ori Atana, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

75 David Budd, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

76 TA, Parkes interview, Aug. 2020.

77 Mick Thompson and Jim D. Smith, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

78 Ian Gray and Mike Carr, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

79 Carolyn Dodds and Mieka Smiles, Oberhausen–Middlesbrough Town Twinning Questionnaire responses, Oct. 2020.

80 Middlesbrough Council to FOI Request 018570, Feb. 2023.

81 John, ‘Productive European cooperation’.