E. D. Smithies, B. A. Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor Of
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THE CONTRAST BETWEEIJ NORTH AND SOUTH IN ENGLAND 1918 - 1939: A STUDY OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROBLEMS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE EXPERIENCE OF BURNLEY, HALIFAX, IPSWICH, AND LU TOIN. E. D. Smithies, B. A. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Leeds. 1974 2 ABSTRACT The thesis begins with a discussion of present views on the nature of the contrast between North and South in England. It proceeds to test those views against the experience of four English towns - Burnley, Halifax, Ipswich and-Luton - between 1918 and 1939. Chapter Two examines the causes and extent of economic growth in the four towns, and devotes special attention to employment and factory construction. A discussion of industrial change in the four towns as individual entities comprises a major section of this chapter. Chapter Three discusses incomes. An attempt is made to establish the proportion of the population in each of the towns living in poverty. Account is taken of the impact of rent and union activities on incomes. Chapters Four, Five and Six analyse social conditions in the four towns. Chapter Four looks at changes in population, the role played by migration, compares the health of the towns, and concludes with a discussion of the development of the public health services. Chapter Five takes for its subject the provision of housing and the demolition of slums, and incorporates a note on town planning. In Chapter Six, the educational services are compared and special attention is given to the impact the depression had on their development. Chapter Seven reviews the financing of local government and compares the contributions made by the rates and by Central Government Year-to-year grants. management of local authority finance is surveyed, and the varying roles played by the Chairmen of the Finance Committees are considered. Chapter Eight examines local government, and isolates for special consideration movements in party support; the contrasting fortunes of the parties, and especially the rise of Labour and the decline of the Liberals; changes in the social composition of councils; the role of clubs, societies and religious organisations; and the contribution these factors made to the quality of local government, and to the interest the public showed in municipal elections. Chapter Nine 3 looks into the relationship between councils and the business organisations they controlled, with special reference to the transport systems, which underwent a crisis in this period. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relations between chairmen and local government officials. Chapter Ten presents the main findings of the thesis, and sums up the factors responsible for these conclusions. 4 PREFACE; In preparing this thesis I have received great assistance from the staffs of a large number of libraries, who have devoted many hours to the tracing of materials. I also owe a considerable debt to numerous officials of companies, local government departments, and social organisations, and to many private persons, who have given up their time to answer my enquiries about detailed aspects of life in their localities. Individual correspondents are too numerous to list here, but I should like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my gratitude to them for the patience and understanding with which they have responded to my requests. I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Professor A. J. Taylor, who has devoted much care and attention to this thesis, and from whose advice I have greatly benefitted. 5 CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT 2 PREFACE 4 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER TWO: INDUSTRIAL CHANGE 43 CHAPTER THREE: INCOME LEVELS AND THE EXTENT OF POVERTY 104 CHAPTER FOUR: POPULATION CHANGE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 155 CHAPTER FIVE: HOUSING 182 CHAPTER SIX: EDUCATION 209 CHAPTER SEVEI: THE FINANCING OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT 240 CHAPTER EIGHT: MUNICIPAL POLITICS 273 CHAPTER NINE: THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND THE PUBLIC UTILITIES 330 CHAPTER TEN: CONCLUSION 361 * APPENDIX: LIST OF TABLES IN THE THESIS 363 * BIBLIOGRAPHY 367 * 6 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION This thesis seeks to examine the North - South relationship in England between 1919 and 1939 by comparing economic, social and political developments in four English towns, two in the North (Burnley and Halifax) and two in the South (Luton and Ipswich). The divide between North and South has attracted a great deal of attention during the last two decades. One writer has claimed that the view that "over the past few years two Englands have taken shape, one in the North the other in the South, unequal socially l and economically" has become "our major domestic preoccupation". Although there are many opinions about the nature of the North - South relationship, and still more views as to what constitutes the "essence" of Northernness or Southernness, studies which attempt to quantify the regional gap have been much rarer. Factual evidence is meagre. This is all the more surprising in view of the fact that the North - South "problem"2 has a very long history. Some authorities 2 have traced it back as far as the sixteenth century. It is however, possible, to discern two main periods when the North - South relationship was transformed: the first, which began with the Industrial Revolution, made the North industrially supreme; the second, commencing at the end of the First World War, saw the South regaining its old supremacy, and the North becoming increasingly a disadvantaged region. This second development still continues. It was during the first of these periods of crisis that many authorities formulated concepts of the difference between North and South which remain current today. Two Victorian novelists, attempting to analyse the "Condition of England Question", portrayed the 1. G. Moorhouse, Britain in the Sixties: The Other England (1964) P" 13. 2. D. Read, The English Provinces c. 1760-1960. A Study in Influence (1964)ß P- 275" 7 depth of the mutual misunderstanding between inhabitants of the two regions. In North and South, Mrs. Gaskell confronts a Southern clergyman's daughter and a Northern millowner, and each is made to express his view of the other's "country". Thornton, the Darkshire (Lancashire)} entrepreneur, declares "I would rather be a man toiling, suffering - nay, failing and successless - here, than lead a dull prosperous life in the old worn grooves of what you call more aristocratic society down in the South, with their slow days of careless ease. " Margaret Hale, the Southerner, reacts in a way "that brought the colour into her cheeks and the angry tears into her 'You eyes ... are mistaken ... if there is less adventure less there is less I or progress .., suffering also.. see men ... going about in the streets [in the Northhwho look ground down by some pinching sorrow or care - who are not only sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. "''" Margaret concludes "'you do not know the South"', whilst Thornton in his turn remarks " and may I say you do not know the Nbrth? '"1 In North and South, Mrs. Gaskell sought to explain operative and millowner, Northerner and Southerner, to one another and to the reader, with the aim of reconciling the differences between them. Charlotte Bronte, however, was more partisan.. In Shirley, a Yorkshire girl, Caroline Helstone, and a Southern curate, Donne, converse. The latter seeks to ingratiate himself with Caroline by "abuse the Yorkshire ... of natives of .... complaints of the want of high society; of the backward state of civilisation im these, districts; murmurings against the disrespectful conduct of the lower orders in the north toward their betters; silly ridicule of the 1. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ()Penguin Books edn., 1970), pp"122-123. 8 manner of living in these parts, - the want of style, the abscence of elegance. " Unfortunately, Donne has misjudged his audience. Caroline "hated to hear Yorkshire abused ... and when brought up to a certain pitch, ... would turn and say something of which neither the matter nor the manner recommended her to 1 Air. Donne's good-will.! It was Charlotte's sister, Emily, however, who expressed a view of Northerners that has persisted up to the present day, when, in Wuthering Heights, Lockwood, a Southerner, remarks of people living in the wilder parts of Yorkshire: "they do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing. "2 The idea that life in the North was more "in earnest" was, developed by many commentators writing after the First World War. Even so careful a writer as J. B. Priestley refers to "the Lancastrians as people worth considering as people, real folk" unlike "the vapouring creatures from the South Country. "3 Elsewhere, he defines the qualities of Lancashire people as "shrewdness, homely simplicity, irony, fierce independance, [and] an impish delight in mocking whatever is thought to be affected 4 and pretentious., Presumably, one of the objects of Lancashire mockery is that part of England, which, irr the same work, Priestley has described as "the whole affected tittering South Country. "5 Theae Northern and Southern stereotypes have continued to have currency. Alan Sillitoe, in his introduction. to Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale argues that "when a man 1. Charlotte Brontd, Shirley (Everyman 1969), 90. edn. t, p. 2. Emily Brontd, Wuthering Heights (Penguin edn., 1964), p. 65- 3. J. B. Priestley, English Journey (Collected Edition, 1949), p. 254- 4. Ibid., p. 253- 5. Ibid., p. 168. 9 fi.