School of Politics and International Studies The Politics of the North: Governance, territory and identity in Northern England School of Politics and Edited by International Studies Richard Hayton University of Leeds Leeds, United Kingdom Leeds, United Kingdom, LS2 9JT LS2 9JT Arianna Giovannini E: [email protected] Tel. 0113 243 1751 W: www.wrcn.uk www.leeds.ac.uk Craig Berry The Politics of the North © The authors, 2016 Published January 2016, by the White Rose Consortium for the North of England www.wrcn.uk Published and printed in Leeds by the Print & Copy Bureau, University of Leeds Page 2 The Politics of the North Contents Acknowledgements 4 About the authors 5 Introduction 6 Richard Hayton, Arianna Giovannini and Craig Berry 1 Regional identity in the North East: death and re-birth 11 Howard Elcock 2 Will the North rise again? 14 Paul Salveson 3 The ‘devolution revolution’ 17 Simon Lee 4 The Northern Powerhouse project must bring 20 democracy out of the shadows Brenton Prosser and Matthew Flinders 5 Inequality knows no compass points: 24 questioning the North/South divide Neil McInroy and Matthew Jackson 6 Devolution dilemmas: the role of unions 28 Neil Foster 7 Understanding Labour’s English questions 31 Michael Kenny 8 Cumbria, the North, and what makes a ‘territory’ 36 Mark Sandford 9 Sport and the idea of the North 39 Tony Collins Post-Scriptum: Slouching towards Barnsley 43 Alex Schafran and Zac Taylor Page 3 The Politics of the North Acknowledgements The idea of this e-book developed as part of the work that the authors have conducted for the White Rose Consortium for the North of England (WRCN). The primary aim of this network of academics from the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, and York, was to foster interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research into the governance, identity and political economy of the North – acting as a forum to facilitate dialogue between researchers, practitioners, local and national politicians and other stakeholders with an interest in these issues. To this end, over the past year the WRCN organised a number of academic and public engagement events. The presentations and discussions developed in these meetings were extremely insightful, and offered a range of arguments encompassing local, regional, national and international perspectives. No matter how diverse, it seemed to us that all the views emerged in these events pointed in one, clear direction – showing the increasing relevance of the North as a contested political space within the current political discourse. The idea of writing this volume stems precisely from this acknowledgement, and from the need to shed light on the complex governance, territorial, identity issues that surround the politics of the North. We are therefore indebted to all the speakers and delegates who have contributed with their research, thoughts and questions to the work of the WRCN and, ultimately, to the ideas that have led us to work on this collection. We would also like to thank Prof Martin Smith and Dr Sandra Leòn (University of York) for their sustained intellectual support and contribution to the WRCN project. Last but certainly not least, we are grateful to the White Rose University Consortium, which is supported by the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, for the grant that allowed us to set-up the WRCN network and organise very successful and insightful events. For more information about the WRCN, please see www.wrcn.uk Page 4 The Politics of the North About the authors The Editors Richard Hayton is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds, and founder of the WRCN network. Craig Berry is Deputy Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), at the University of Sheffield. Arianna Giovannini is a Researcher at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield. She also teaches Politics at the University of Huddersfield. The Contributors Tony Collins is Professor of History at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University. Howard Elcock is Emeritus Professor of Government, at Northumbria University. Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, and Director of the Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics. Neil Foster is Policy and Campaigns Officer for the TUC in the Northern and Yorkshire & the Humber regions. Matthew Jackson is Deputy Chief Executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). Michael Kenny is Professor of Politics and Director of the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London. Simon Lee is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Hull. Neil McInroy is Chief Executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). Brenton Prosser is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield. Paul Salveson is a visiting professor at the University of Huddersfield and General Secretary of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation. Mark Sandford is a Senior Research Analyst at the House of Commons Library. Alex Schafran is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds. Zac Taylor is a PhD researcher in Geography at the University of Leeds. Page 5 The Politics of the North Introduction Richard Hayton, Arianna Giovannini and Craig Berry England is, in geographical terms, a relatively small country. At 130,373 square kilometres (50,337 square miles) it is less than a third the size of California, and barely a fifth the size of France. With 54 million people England has a population density of over 400 people per square kilometre, making it one of the most densely populated nations in Europe (ONS, 2013). Major population centres in the North of England, cities such as Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, are little over two hours by train from the capital, London. Yet at times ‘the North’ seems a world apart from the metropolis, seemingly inhabiting a radically different political, cultural and economic space. How can this be? Debate about the North-South divide is a longstanding feature of life in England, and has become commonplace shorthand to explain the ‘fractures’ that cut across the country. Invariably these discussions rest on definitions of one against the other that are often caricatured and sometimes imagined, but easily recognised and understood by those involved. They run deep in our national psyche. It could even be argued that such tropes, highlighting Northern and Southern differences, are a distinctive trait of English identity. Frequently cited examples include party politics, where the South is portrayed as a Conservative stronghold and the North as Labour’s heartland; class (Southern middle versus Northern working) and with it accent and dialect; but also culture and history, geography, landscape and weather. In his seminal book Looking North, Dave Russell (2004) explains in an exemplary way the richness and complexity that surround the idea and the identity of the North of England, and its tight and problematic relationship with the South. The North is often referred to as ‘a region’—and yet, it defies a univocal definition, it does not have clearly defined borders (especially towards the South), it does not appear on official government maps, and lacks its own political institutions. But, as is widely accepted, regions are by definition dynamic, shifting and fluid entities, that exist as much on the territory as in the mind of their inhabitants (Paasi, 2000), irrespective of whether or not they have explicit geographical boundaries. The North is no exception to this and, as Russell (2004) argues, it is as much a state of mind as a place. In this sense, the North is made of and constituted by a rich mixture of the discrete meanings associate with a ‘real place’ and a more abstract representation built on and rooted in social imagery (Shields, 1991). The very idea and meaning of the North, therefore, is not to be found on maps or in official documents, but is socially constructed, and engrained in the way in which people perceive and perform it as a cultural, social and political space, as part of their everyday practices. From this perspective, the North can be seen as a ‘vast region’ – an imagined community made of and constituted by collective values, traditions, beliefs, history, a shared sense of belonging to a distinctive social space and, as Russell (2004) illustrates, even a specific character (proud, hardworking, down to earth, and tough). Such a view of the North as a broad region is rooted within the discourse of the North-South divide – and yet, there is more to it. As Russell (2004, p. 14), once again, aptly reminds us, ‘the North has been imagined [and defined, we could add] in various ways according to time, context, subject matter and, crucially, angle of vision’. Following this remark, if we shift the focus from a North-South perspective to a view of the North from within, the idea of the North changes and plays the role of an overarching symbolic structure, embracing a number of regional and local identities. Thus, in the context of the North-South divide narrative the North stands as a coherent region, coalescing primarily in its difference from the South, especially in view of Page 6 The Politics of the North the dominant role of the latter in the national imagination in political and economic terms. But once the ‘external other’ (i.e. the South, the centre, London) is taken out of the debate, Northerness manifests and defines itself against ‘internal others’ – showing a wealth of meanings and identities. Within the North, historical counties like Yorkshire continue to maintain their own distinctive identity and a sense of belonging to what is often defined in popular culture as ‘God’s own country’.