The North Side: The Beatles from Liverpool (Image: Getty)
Famous television playwright Dennis Potter (from Gloucestershire, since I asked) described the North as “slate gray rain and polished ovonium…the legacy of a-bah-gum”.
Look beyond these old clichés and you’ll find a region with a rich and important history and cultural life and one that, in my opinion at least, contradicts the so-called North-South notion that London is the center of Britain and the rest of the country can be disrupted.
The truth is that northerners and southerners have been making fun of each other for centuries.
In the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the Middle Ages, there were riots between the two groups of undergraduates. The first recorded joke about ‘North Watford’ was by a southerner in 1580: someone believed it ‘the sport to deceive a man from the North, so he described all northern men born XXti’ [twenty] mylles north of London.”
Since then, we northerners have, for the most part, given our best. Industrialization shaped the image of the North and the split between North and South.
Northerners viewed themselves as independent, outspoken, knowledgeable, and pragmatic. Southerners considered them wicked, lacking in social graces, over-competitive, and undeveloped.
Even southerners acknowledge the North’s role in the Industrial Revolution. Inventors such as George Stephenson (the railroad), Joseph Whitworth (the helical thread), James Hargreaves (the spinning Jenny) and Benjamin Huntsman (cast steel) made the modern world possible.
Oasis from Manchester (Image: Getty)
Southerners may reluctantly admit that many of the best comics come from the North. Think Ken Dodd, Morecambe, Wise Lees Dawson, Victoria Wood, Peter Kay and Sarah Millikan.
However, there is much more to the North story. It experienced waves of immigration, invasions and battles. Ideas and movements from the North helped change the world – think of Ernest Rutherford who split the atom in Manchester and Emmeline Pankhurst established suffrage there.
The North produced not only engineers, but also writers, artists, musicians, mathematicians, social reformers, and politicians.
But where is the north and what is the north? These are controversial questions.
I take a liberal view. The north is where the people who live in the north think they are. A northerner is a person who thinks of himself as a northerner.
The first northern hunter and gatherer was likely an early human species, ranging north in search of food at least half a million years ago. The first we can name it was Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes tribe when the Romans invaded.
Comedian Peter Kay from Bolton (Image: Getty)
Its territory covered Yorkshire and much of Lancashire, Northumberland and Durham. It is much less well known than Boudica, the rebel in eastern Britain.
This may be because Cartimandua collaborated with the Romans, divorced her husband, married one of his lieutenants and was overthrown by a revolution.
However, it kept the Romans off their lands for up to 30 years, while Boudica’s rebellion led to a terrible revenge.
The Romans knew the land they conquered here as Lower Britannia (Northern England)
and Britannia Superior (southern England and Wales). It sounds like a slander, but the names simply mean that Britannia Superior was closer to Rome.
Six or seven emperors visited northern England while they held supreme power, beginning with Hadrian, who built a wall unmatched anywhere in the empire.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, stretching from the Firth of Forth to the Humber, possessed more power and autonomy than the North had ever seen. Its golden age produced scholars such as the venerable Pedy and illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels.
If Northumbria survived, northern England today may be at the center of North-centered Britain, rather than a hinterland of a region ruled from the south. But it was destroyed by infighting and dismemberment of the Vikings.
Soul: Comedian Sarah Millikan of South Shields (Image: Getty)
William the Conqueror was the opponent of the North. Harriet of the North destroyed crops in an attempt to stem the rebellions. According to one historian, 100,000 people starved. Folk memory has haunted the North for centuries.
The Wars of the Roses were not between Lancashire and Yorkshire, but between rival branches of Plantagenets – of powerful north-south proportions.
Those trying to seize the crown often raised their bids in the North.
Tudor power was centralized in London and the southeast, but as we see again today, northerners were often reluctant to follow where the London-based ruling class wanted them.
The Pilgrimage of 1536, a revolt against the Protestant Reformation
30,000 rebels took part in the dissolution of Henry VIII’s Abbeys, the largest uprising in English history. Henry panicked, but ultimately failed.
While the industrial north is notorious for radical movements, the region was often conservative, particularly in social and religious matters.
Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland (Image: Getty)
The geography of civil wars in the 17th century bore similarities to the 2016 European Union referendum – although the latter was less lethal. The Royalists gained support from the north and west of England, similar to the support for Brexit. Parliament drew support mainly from London, the southeast and the cities.
The parallels are imprecise, but the pattern suggests that England’s economic and cultural divide has recurring features.
It was the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1760, that shaped the established image of northern England. He has been hardworking and daring and supporting the growth of the nation for more than a century.
It was led by pioneers such as textile magnate Richard Arkwright, a Preston barber and wig maker, who invented the water frame for spinning cotton and played an important role in establishing the factory system.
The geographical factors that once held back the North – mountains, thin soil, cold and rain – suddenly became advantages. It had rivers to supply water, coal to supply steam engines, soft water, a moist atmosphere ideal for spinning cotton and wool, and easy access to iron and chemicals.
The Industrial Revolution would eventually allow populations to grow and raise living standards, but in the early days it created horrific slums in cities where people died young.
Emmeline Pankhurst from Manchester (Image: Getty)
It relied on cheap cotton, the slave trade, which ended the American Civil War, and created the cotton famine in Lancashire and surrounding counties in the 1860s.
The highest historical point in the North, relatively speaking, was 1911 when its share of England’s population peaked at 36.5 per cent. However, the seeds of industrial decline have already taken root. The North was overly dependent on industries such as textiles, coal mining, steel, and shipbuilding.
Some were not innovating quickly with global competitors, and the region was not developing new ones.
Since then, the North’s share of England’s population has fallen to 27.5 per cent and its share of British economic output has shrunk from 30 per cent after the First World War to 20 per cent today.
However, despite this, its economy is still larger than that of countries such as Argentina, Ireland and Sweden.
The past century has been rough, but the North still contributes wonderfully to British culture. Both Gracie Fields and George Formby Jr. were local movie stars. Fields got a lucrative Hollywood deal, but insisted that the four photos be taken in Britain.
The 1950s and 1960s brought plays and movies for the likes of Sheila Delaney and Keith
Waterhouse and David Storey. In pop music there was Merseybeat led by The Beatles.
The Manchester music scene took off from the late 1970s with Joy Division, New Order and The Smiths. Later, Sheffield produced bands like Pulp and Arctic Monkeys.
Now in 2022, the North faces the future amid the uncertainty it is accustomed to. Northern cities were central to the UK’s narrow vote on Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum.
That wasn’t much of a surprise: Even in the 1975 referendum, the North voted “no” higher than the rest of England. In the 2019 general election, the collapse of the “red wall” of former Labor seats accounted for nearly half of the Conservatives’ gains.
Do these findings indicate a permanent reorganization? For now, that seems far from certain, although tribal voting patterns have weakened a lot.
What does ‘upgrading’ mean for Boris Johnson and will it be more successful than efforts made since the 1920s? This is also not clear.
But any renaissance must certainly include unleashing the talents, energy and projects of northerners.
- Northerners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day by Brian Groom (HarperNorth, £20) now released. For free UK delivery call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.com
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