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The North East exists – I’ve seen it with my own eyes…

September 27, 2012 1:50 pm

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I’m from the North East. That’s how I always explain when I’m asked, from time to time, where I’m from. The North East has always seemed the best description. Technically I’m “from” the edge of Gateshead borough, a small village called Crawcrook attached to a slightly larger village called Ryton. It’s near Northumberland, but the largest nearby place most people from outside the region have heard of is Newcastle.

To confuse matters, I’m a Sunderland fan, which – in a region where identity and football intertwine perhaps more than anywhere outside of Glasgow – really matters. That made school…fun, at times…

But I say that I’m from the North East not because it’s a more convenient way of explaining my slightly confused identity, but because I think of it as where I’m from. It’s a large geographical area, but it has a real unified sense of place. It even has its own excellent encyclopaedia, which allows me to bore/entertain people with facts about the region. Which is often.

(For example – the French revolutionary Marat once lived in Newcastle. Never let it be said that I’m not teaching you something here.)

So I was baffled to see Tory MP for Stockton South James Wharton arguing on ConHome today that the North East doesn’t exist. It’s a “political construct” he claimed.

*sigh*

The idea that the people of the North East could genuinely feel bound together and united by our shared history and a sense of solidarity seems to be alien to him. Which is sad, as Wharton is – whether he likes it or not – from the North East just like me. I wish he felt that connection with people from across the region like I and most others – Geordies, Smoggies, Mackems – genuinely feel for each other. We may mock each other. We may loathe each other’s football teams. But there’s no doubt that the North East is arguably the English region with the strongest sense of regional identity (matched perhaps by the North West).

When I meet someone from Stockton – for example – there will more likely that not be some reference made to the North East, shared history, probably a bit of piss taking and – yes – football. The connection is similar to the one you’d expect if two people from Scotland or Wales – for example – met elsewhere. The North East has an almost nation state feel to it – culturally at least.

That’s why I was so disappointed when the North East rejected a regional assembly. Surely if such a thing could work anywhere, it’s the North East. But the campaign was run badly, and only a small minority (of which I was one) backed greater autonomy. Although I suspect that now the country is back under Tory control – a different result might be achieved today…

So yes, the North East does exist – and as a social and cultural entity, not as a political construct. It’s somewhere I am hugely proud to come from. And now I’m off to eat a Greggs Pasty. Because on top of everything else, James Wharton has made me homesick for the region I, and millions of others, love. Does anyone know where I can buy a stottie cake and pease pudding in London?

(If the Tories were smart they would listen to David Skelton of Policy Exchange on North East identity. He’s a Tory who gets what makes the region tick. Although of course I hope they don’t.)

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Related posts:

  1. Election day: updates from Glasgow North East
  2. Balls attacks Corus on North East visit
  3. Glasgow North East: remember to thank Cameron and Salmond too (and some replies to my last post)
  4. Progressive solutions needed to tackle multiple deprivation in Glasgow North East
  5. North-South Divide Widens – is it time for a North of England Assembly?
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000124753169 Joe Anderson

    I think the North East culture is alien to Mr Wharton and other Tories and Lib Dems on Teesside, who for some reason long for a county that hasn’t existed for four decades (the North Riding)

  • http://www.facebook.com/Dan.Filson Daniel Filson

    It’s slightly off topic to being from the North East, but my eye was caught by the anti-HS2 advertisement from the HS2actionalliance. I’m a supporter of HS2 which will relieve pressure on the West Coast Main Line and enable an increased volume of freight traffic on it, so removing goods from roads or preventing a greater move of goods to road transport. The HS2 opposition is partly nimbyist and partly on grounds of cost. Most members of the public have no idea of the cost of infrastructure projects and only ruck at the big projects and don’t grasp just how much is spent each year on road projects. What is this to do with the North-East? Well in part because the M1 peters out before it gets there and infrastructure matters. The east of Pennines spur of HS2 is so far only planned as going to Leeds but an extension could be planned to go further, building stronger and faster links between West Yorkshire and the North East, let alone the South. But what I ask is whether it is right for Labour List to carry political advertising from lobby groups? Should money buy you access to the politicorati? What about the lobby groups with no funds, do they get no equal voice?

  • johndclare

    Wrong link, Mark – should be: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2012/09/james-wharton-mp.html

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/ABCHYQUWF645BEL4CMMSKJITKU Saskia Neibig

    I totally agree about the North East identity thing. My family are British-German and I moved to Newcastle at the age of two and now work in London. I don’t feel British as such, or German but damn right, I am from the North East! If anyone tried to tell James Wharton his British identity wasn’t real, he’d be pissed off.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506504208 Catherine Smith

    Great piece Mark; as you know I agree with you about the merits of the North (East / West / The North) and think actually it’s worse than a denial we don’t exist, it’s a real disconnect between the Tories and Northerners. Looking at regional polling is the best way to see Northerners have still not gone back to them, hence the coalition… this crime of denying we exist is just another in a long list!

  • Dave Postles

    Wharton probably still reminisces about Deira and Bernicia and their demise under that political construct, the kingdom of Northumbria.

  • Dave Postles

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Banog7orYHI

  • PaulHalsall

    I recall cheering for Sunderland against Leeds  United in the 1973 FA Cup final.  [Those were the days when the FA cup was shown on both main channels, and the build up on TV began at 9am.]

  • Dave Postles
  • https://mikestallard.virtualgallery.com/ Mike Stallard

    1. Do you honestly think that a new load of rich governmental people all on expenses, all generous with our money is going to bring back the ship building, the coal production and the steel to your area?
    2. Catalonia in Spain really is a different region to Castille and always has been. It even has its own language which goes back to Roman times (Different class of people then). Now it is demanding independence and a general has warned them not to disturb the sleeping lion. They had a civil war a few years ago, you may remember which was strongly influenced by regionalism.
    Scotland has produced Alex Salmon (or whatever his name is).

  • http://twitter.com/RedfishUK Mark Reilly

    Well as someone who was born in the North East (Ashington) but moved away to London at 7 (in 1973, just after someone won the FA cup!!) and has lived there and now Yorkshire, I would agree that there is a very strong North East identity…not sure if it is stronger than the Yorkshire one..my partner really does refer to it as God’s County without any irony..and indigenous Londoner’s (as opposed to those who happen to be working there) are equally as proud…

    I think the trouble with the Regional assembly came out in a few ways..
    1. It came at a time when it was easy to play on the divisions between town & country (with Foot & Mouth, banning hunting etc). So the natural Tory county vote was more easily scared by being taken over by the  ”townies”
    2. The North East doesn’t have a natural Capital so while there is a sense of identity there was always mileage in telling someone from Sunderland they would be “ruled” by Newcastle! Perhaps Yorkshire would have been easier as Leeds, Hull and Sheffield would have accepted York for historical reasons. (The North West would be a nightmare!!! apart from perhaps Lancaster??)
    3. We should have let the assemblies in Scotland, Wales and NI bed in, so that voters could see the advantages and some of the fears were allayed.
    4, and your right at a time when the Labour government in London was genuinely popular, the push for change was probably not as strong as it was in the 80s or now?

    • postageincluded

      All good points, though I’ll add that Sunderland’s paranoia about “rule from Newcastle” was paralleled by Newcastle’s paranoia about rule from south of the Tyne – where the great bulk of the region’s population is (“Greater Durham” was one Geordie’s description).

      Wharton’s comments probably resonated with the Stocktoners’ hatred of being lumped together with Middlesborough and Hartlepool, first in Teeside, then in Cleveland. And I know my family in Darlington resented the downgrading of the independent borough to a lower tier authority of County Durham in the 70′s; it made local government less local. Around the region the legacy of that disastrous reorganisation still rankled.

      Unfortunately, a loss of localism was all the regional assembly promised. There was little, if any,  devolution from London (The Treasury – proprietor G Brown – didn’t want to let go of the purse strings, so the story goes). So all that was left was a centralisation of powers previously held by the boroughs and counties. It’s not surprising that the referendum failed.

  • sdrpalmer

    I’ve been there too, and I like it.
    Must go again soon.
    Big up the NE!

  • http://www.facebook.com/jim.crowder2 Jim Crowder

    It’s still a load of rot though. If you class the North East as the area from Humberside to the border and across to the Pennines, it’s just an area. There’s not much common interest or culture across the area. It’s like linking Cornwall, Devon Somerset and Dorset (and occasionally Wiltshire) together. Just because they seem near each other doesn’t mean they have similar needs or desires. Someone in Penzance isn’t really bothered about someone in Bournemouth, and vice versa.

  • postageincluded

    Of course there is a common history, Mark, but very few people in the NE know it, and most of the early stuff has to do with repelling invasions from Scotland. It’s not quite PC in the Labour Party to celebrate events like the rout of the Scots and the capture of their king at the Battle of Neville’s Cross 1346 (17th October – start getting the bunting ready).

     To me, the biggest unifying factor is “the language”. When I moved from Darlington I discovered that the rest of the country thought I was a Geordie, despite my protests that I very definitely was not! Yet I have to admit that I still, after 35 years away, feel more at home speaking to an Alnwick man than to a Yorkshireman – a feeling  which for me was summed up, years ago,  by a line from The Likely Lads “He comes from somewhere down south. Leeds I think”.

    I think the other prominent identity factor is the TV region. Mike Neville, over a prominent 40 year career in TV in the region, probably did more to give the North East a sense of  it’s own cultural cohesion than any political figure could have done. 

    Wharton’s remarks are just the usual Tory divide and rule stuff – in effect he’s saying to (relatively) leafy Stockton “you don’t want to be lumped together with all those plebs, do you? – Vote Conservative”.  He’s got it the wrong way round, there’s no political construct at all, there’s only cultural identity, and the economic connections within the region.  But are these things enough to ever make a political identity for the region?

  • Dave Postles

     SSI at Stockton-on-Tees produces slab steel for export to the Far East.  The first slab destined for the far East rolled out of the plant in April of this year.
    On the other side of the country, Tata Chemicals is a massive plant near Northwich, right next to that wonder of British manufacturing, the Anderton Boat Lift (image from my desktop – Linux Mint 13 64-bit with Cairo Dock).

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