W(h)ither Unionism and Loyalism?

[NHH]

What Nef said, in spades. There used to regional boards for gas, water and electricity; ITV regions used to contribute programmes to the national ITV set-up. There's been a deliberate hollowing out of regional presence in England, started under the Thatcher government and, like so much else, either accepted or only weakly pushed against by Labour. At the same time, Scotland and Wales and NI have achieved much more concrete instantiations of their difference from the rest of the UK, leaving everyone in England with no-where to go.

I've always felt that English identity was other to me (growing up a Catholic of Irish extraction in England will do that to a person and in any case, was clearly a southern thing) but why cleave to a British identity which is rapidly losing any meaning (or is shared with unionist boneheads)?

It feels like huge swathes of the north and midlands have turned their backs on centuries of antagonism and lost all sense of any regionalist identity and identify now with the bellicose English nationalism, even as they abjure the activities of the very people who are most clearly identified with that English identity in the South East.

[Nefertiti2]

It's fascinating seeing this compared tot he stateof things in germany. "Conservative" areas, like Bavaria have a huge amount of regional pride which means the infrastructure is infinitely better than it is in the UK. In fact on say Covid responses Bavaria has in some ways been the most stringent. The idea that a conservative leader would glory in the amount they have cut from a regional budget is unthinkable. And we shoudla slo recall that elections have stopped in Northamptonshire because the Tories bankrupted the council with little apparent concern

[sw2borshch]

It's my hobby horse about there being no conservatives, just liberal righties/national liberals on one side of the non-fash right and Christian Democrats (socials) on the other.

[sw2borshch]

This whole thing about the disappearance of regional head offices in business, the civil service, quangos and the career routes etc. they provided has been linked to Leave voting.

[Capybara]

The regional utilities boards went with privatisation. Some of them are still there following renamings, mergers, takeovers and sale to French companies or whatever. To be fair, Labour showed interest in regional government in the 00s and even gave the north-east the chance of an assembly subject to a referendum. I watched in despair as arguments such as 'I don't want another tier of government' and 'I don't want to be ruled by Newcastle' won the day. A decade or so later the region voted for Brexit on the basis that they were being ignored by London.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Weren't those "regional government" ideas of Blair's pretty bloody rotten?

[Patrick Thistle]

The loss of regionalised decision making apparatus (including in the media) is a hallmark of fascism that always seeks to concentrate power in the centre.

It's why the devolved parliaments are targets now for the UK Government. The Brexit legislation is designed to strip power from the devolved governments.

[E10 Rifle]

It feels like huge swathes of the north and midlands have turned their backs on centuries of antagonism and lost all sense of any regionalist identity and identify now with the bellicose English nationalism, even as they abjure the activities of the very people who are most clearly identified with that English identity in the South East.

Here's a genuine question: is there less "anti-southern/London" instinct in the north of England now than there was, say, 20 or 30 years ago? In my two stints of living in the north (late 80s-early 90s, then again in the late 90s), getting gyp, "banter" or outright abuse for being a Londoner was definitely A Thing. Even if exaggerated, the idea that you'd want to keep your accent muted in certain pubs in Leeds had widespread currency, even if it wasn't really a Hostile Environment or anything. Has that underlying resentment been replaced by hostility to foreigns/Remainers etc? Not a seamless thing, obvs, as racism was prevalent 30 years ago as elsewhere in the country.

[Patrick Thistle]

The "any other ethnicity" stuff leaves me fairly cold tbh. Welsh people aren't subject to deportation to countries they've never lived in. Should they commit crimes abroad, they're not stripped of their citizenship. We don't have to endure people publicly claiming child-abuse is solely a problem within the Welsh community, we didn't have a political party just win an election promising pogroms against us.

When Boris Johnson attacked people for not speaking English at home, Welsh speakers (together with Scots and Gaelic speakers as well as middle-class European nationals) are largely collateral damage - we know who he was really directing his words towards.

You are, of course, right in all that.

But there are still some comments like the following from AA Gill

"loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls”.

“I yield to nobody in my deep concern for the malingering man of Europe – the gargoyle-visaged Welsh."

where I think the reaction and fall-out would have been very different if "Welsh" was replaced with "Jew", for example. (Although admittedly not, if replaced with "Arab")

[sw2borshch]

The flip is the increase in urban mayoral roles, but even that is aimed at undermining social democracy.

[sw2borshch]

Here's a genuine question: is there less "anti-southern/London" instinct in the north of England now than there was, say, 20 or 30 years ago? In my two stints of living in the north (late 80s-early 90s, then again in the late 90s), getting gyp, "banter" or outright abuse for being a Londoner was definitely A Thing. Even if exaggerated, the idea that you'd want to keep your accent muted in certain pubs in Leeds had widespread currency, even if it wasn't really a Hostile Environment or anything. Has that underlying resentment been replaced by hostility to foreigns/Remainers etc? Not a seamless thing, obvs, as racism was prevalent 30 years ago as elsewhere in the country.

Depends if you are drinking shandy and how curly your hair is.

[ad hoc]

I'd be interested to know that too. That anti London/anti Southern thing goes back a long long way. (My hatred of Arsenal and Middlesex stems from my Granddad's similar hatred, and the sense that London was a bunch of rich boys shafting the rest of the country, and I suspect his sense of this came from people who went before too)

[sw2borshch]

And to be fair, much of that instinct would in response to bloody students.

[pebblethefish]

It's why the devolved parliaments are targets now for the UK Government.

No, the reason that devolved parliaments are targets now for the UK Government is that you keep disagreeing with them.

[Lang Spoon]

Uppity buggers.

[Duncan Gardner]

Well done all esp Duncan Gardner for starting this fascinating and wide ranging discussion

[NHH]

The regional utilities boards went with privatisation. Some of them are still there following renamings, mergers, takeovers and sale to French companies or whatever. To be fair, Labour showed interest in regional government in the 00s and even gave the north-east the chance of an assembly subject to a referendum. I watched in despair as arguments such as 'I don't want another tier of government' and 'I don't want to be ruled by Newcastle' won the day. A decade or so later the region voted for Brexit on the basis that they were being ignored by London.

The choice of the NE as the vanguard of regionalism seemed to me to be fucking stupid because the experience of local government as one-party states meant that government didn't mean 'things done in our interests' but 'things done by political parties in their own interests'.

[sw2borshch]

And for the benefit of Newcastle.

[Duncan Gardner]

NHH sw2borshch do you think Blair's project might have worked somewhere other than Newcastle?

[pebblethefish]

It would have worked in Liverpool. They're always telling us that they're a different nation.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yeah, there's a tale about our dad's mam going down to the school and threatening to swing the teacher round by his moustache.

That story may have been cleaned up a bit for your young ears.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

And for the benefit of Newcastle.

And for the benefit of their own personal bank balances in relatively recent history (in the minds of older voters anyway).

[sw2borshch]

Had Durham City as the capital of the NE and its parliament there? Possibly, but probably not.

The mood music here, as Capy has mentioned, was apathy, indifference, a concern about more power and resources going to Newcastle and a desire to reduce layers of government. It wasn't that long since Cleveland County had been abolished in favour of the unitary authorities and there had been some kind of vote on that with a 'write-in' Option 3 for Teesside and simply no one gave a shite.
There's a fairly deep-rooted fatalism here (bloody typical) and government is something that is done to us, not that we do.

[sw2borshch]

That story may have been cleaned up a bit for your young ears.

The telling usually involved a 'bloody' if I must make a full disclosure.

[sw2borshch]

Swearing in front of children wasn't really done in my extended family, but bloody and bugger were very much exceptions to this. Considering how rude a word it is it's fairly amazing how liberally bugger was used.