The Northern Question: A History of a Divided Country

by Thomas Hazeldine

A history of the UK's regional inequalities, and why they matter
Differences between England's North and South continue to shape national politics, from attitudes to Brexit and the electoral collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall' to Whitehall's experimentation with regional pandemic lockdowns. Why is this fault line such a persistent feature of the English landscape?

The Northern Question is a history of England seen in the unfamiliar light of a northern perspective. While London is the capital and the centre for trade and finance, the proclaimed leader of the nation, northern England has always seemed like a different country. In the nineteenth century its industrializing society appeared set to bring a political revolution down upon Westminster and the City. Tom Hazeldine recounts how subsequent governments put finance before manufacturing, London ahead of the regions, and austerity before reconstruction.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Paperback

Published September 21, 2021

Reviews

[Kieran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book brought home the advantages and the limitations of Marxist history, in this case of the English North-South divide. The advantage was that it did identify the deep socio-economic causes of this problem, and in places did so compellingly. The disadvantage was that the framework required some adjusting to fit the narrative, and this meant it was easy to get lost or bogged down in places.

[C.L. Spillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The rise and fall of Northern England as an industrial power is one of the signal processes in modern British history."

So begins our tale of that history, as seen not from the usual perspective of the corridors of power in London, but from the region - the people - whose hard work made that power possible.

We start with an interesting premise: socially, the North of England is more 'conservative' - more Trad. - than the South. This does seem so: it was 'our' Guy Fawkes (born here in York), after all, who continued to support Catholicism in the face of that newfangled setup from the Continent, Protestantism.

Northerners are also, the narrative goes on, less individualistic and more likely to stick together in the face of adversity: note the Great Trespass and the many other movements against Enclosure - although it could be said that the West Country takes some credit here, as do any parts of England, and latterly Britain, who were far enough from London to fail to share in its riches, yet near enough to have their resources tapped-into for its wealth.

The introductory chapters draw on Marx's analysis of the effects of the distribution of riches and resources, and Gramsci's writings about the North and South (polarity reversed) in Italy.

We then leave the theory and embark upon a blow-by-blow account of our country's political history - its access to resources, and details of its legislative wranglings in the face of these - starting from William 1st's Harrowing of the North (in 1086, two thirds of the land area of Yorkshire and Northumberland were recorded as 'wasteland'), extending all the way up the the present. That present being, at the time of the book's writing, the 'revolt' of the resentful folk of the North, outside of our university cities, in the form of Brexit.

I found this detailed yet curiously unsatisfying reading, perhaps because I never studied British political history from the 'usual' London perspective to get a comparison, so that a lot of the material was new to me and as such difficult not only to remember but also to stitch together into a 'story'. One does get a good impression, though, of the shifting sands of fortune: for example how during the industrial revolution although Yorkshire continued to thrive with its wool, Lancashire was suddenly devastated by a change in the supply of cotton for its mills.

One thing that resonated, however, was the reaction of London-based politicians in the face of structural poverty: just like those of today (well, until last week at any rate), they proposed individual solutions, thus implying individual blame, for region-wide problems. Tebbit's 'On your bike!' has, it turns out, many an historical precedent.

I recommend this read for those who already know plenty of British history from 'the usual perspective' and want to see it all in a fresh light. But not necessarily to those, like me, for whom this is all new.

However, I'm still glad I gave this book a read. It will help me understand what comes next in our history, with our new government.

[Mari C.L. Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This worked well to shift the perspective and add context to both contemporary sociopolitical patterns and historical ones. Shifting the narrative perspective illuminates much overlooked or much that had not been connected. At times reading I felt I lost the thread, but in general the text was effective.