1 April 2024 marked a somewhat depressing anniversary for Yorkshire. Just 50 years ago central government abolished the three great ‘Ridings’ of Yorkshire. They were replaced by a constantly shifting mosaic of new counties, metropolitan boroughs, districts, and more recently new unitary authorities.
It also resulted in some key parts of these historic Three Ridings being unceremoniously thrust into other neighbouring jurisdictions – Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Teesside, Cumbria and short-lived Humberside, now partly subsumed into a reduced East Riding.
Was there ever such as thing as “the historic county of Yorkshire”?
There are those who argue that the Ridings were not abolished by the 1972 Local Government Act, but still exist as part of the “Historic County” of Yorkshire.
Whilst it true that the historic province of Yorkshire still retains its unique landscape, heritage and powerful cultural identity, reality has to be faced. Was the former Anglo-Viking Kingdom of York ever just a single ‘county’? If we accept, going as far back as the ninth century, that the three Ridings – divisions or ‘shires’ of that independent Kingdom governed from their historic capital, also known as Jorvik, now York – were ‘counties’ in their own right, how can they be merely part of another “county” ?
The term ‘county’ is a vague term, mainly accepted in common parlance because of Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The older word for a subdivision of England – ‘shire’, used in Anglo-Saxon times, based on the Norse word ‘scir’ – simply meant a division. Parts of Yorkshire to this day retain ‘shire’ in their name, as in Hallamshire or Richmondshire. ‘County’ simply means an area under the jurisdiction of a count (from Norman French ‘comte’). Not many of those in Yorkshire.
The creation of the Ridings: enviable democracy
In 954, after the fall of its last king, Eric Bloodaxe, Jorvik was absorbed into a federal England as an earldom, its name shortened to ‘York’. Soon after the Norman Conquest, the earls became ‘Dukes of York’, traditionally the second sons of the ruling monarch, but with little more than ceremonial authority over powerful local landowners and barons. There was a ‘Sheriff of York’, a civil servant whose legal powers gradually became less significant. Local administration was largely vested in Norman manors, and both ecclesiastical and civil parishes, and a complex system of Anglo-Norse ‘wapentakes’ (more akin to modern districts). Older towns such as York, Richmond, Doncaster and Kingston upon Hull were semi-autonomous towns or boroughs with charters dating back to Plantagenet times.
If we take the great Victorian Local Government Act of 1888 as the defining moment of our traditional English counties, Yorkshire was not created as a single county but three – East, North and West Ridings, each with their own coats of arms, Lord Lieutenants, county halls and elected councillors. In addition, the Ridings contained self-administrating county boroughs such as Bradford, Leeds, Richmond, Sheffield and Hull, plus a complex network of urban and rural district councils – local democratic structures we now have cause to envy, with community-based town halls accessible to local people.
Profound changes that have led to a loss of local control
When on 1 April 1974 people woke up to find that overnight they were living in a different Riding or county from the one they were born in, and they were told that nothing had really changed – that these were only local government administrative changes and they still were part of ‘Yorkshire’ – these officials were lying. Things had profoundly changed.
Fifty years later, with changes of population, people moving into former areas of Yorkshire, paying their community charge and electing politicians to new authorities, are more likely to feel allegiance to post-1974 reality. Most young people living in Middlesbrough, still within the Ceremonial Province of Yorkshire, now identify as Teessiders, not Yorkshire.
Modern Yorkshire is now made up of 13 different local government administrations, described by that ghastly bureaucratic term “unitary authorities”: the five metropolitan districts of West Yorkshire; the four of South Yorkshire; North Yorkshire and East Riding unitaries; and the two still independent boroughs of York and Kingston-upon-Hull. A fourteenth, North Lincolnshire, is still officially part of Yorkshire & Humber Region, but most people in that part of Lincolnshire look south to identify with Greater Lincolnshire.
Together these 14 make up the Yorkshire & Humber Region. We are one of the internationally recognised nine regions of England. With a total population of 5.4 million, Yorkshire is larger in population than Wales or Northern Ireland and about the same size as Scotland, all of whom have their own elected parliaments or assemblies and first ministers, within the United Kingdom. Yet 5.4 million Yorkshire people, roughly the same in numbers as Norway and Denmark, have minimal control over their own affairs, as the region suffers serious economic decline within one of the most over-centralised states in western Europe.
Metro mayors – a divide-and-rule device by Westminster
As a belated concession to local democracy, the region is now divided between four ‘Metro Mayors’ – West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, York & North Yorkshire and, subject to final agreement, Hull & East Riding.
The mayoral combined authorities although welcome, are not genuine regional devolution, rather a familiar Westminster divide-and-rule device. What is needed are new political and administrative mechanisms to transfer real power from Westminster to the English regions. Unlike in Greater London, Yorkshire’s metro mayors are not answerable to an elected assembly yet have restricted powers. They control only limited budgets offered by Whitehall; nor can they set up, for example, regional banks to encourage inward investment in new technologies, transport and industries.
The great entrepreneurial spirit of the industrial cities of the north has been undermined by Westminster through de-industrialisation, as power and investment has been, with few exceptions (such as financial and legal services in Leeds) largely diverted to the south-east.
Wide agreement that devolution is vital for regional growth
Three recent major reports have suggested that only through real and fundamental devolution can this economic and social decline be reversed not just in the north but the whole of the UK. A report from the House of Lords rightly points out that “England is highly centralised, with far greater regional economic inequalities compared with other Western European countries”. In a report from the Labour party the case is made that so-called ‘levelling up’ can only be achieved by properly resourced English devolution.
In February, a report by Harvard University Kennedy Centre, part-authored by former shadow chancellor and Yorkshire MP Ed Balls, came to identical conclusions. This also emphasised that to achieve economic recovery, a layer of governance must be created between parliament and local authorities, which as in most other democratic nations of Europe, needs to be defined in terms and scale as a region, land or canton.
Yorkshire action for meaningful devolution
On 1 April, at the Eye of York by York Castle, a declaration supported by 100 signatories is to be made, calling upon all Yorkshire people, whether by birth or adoption, to support action for meaningful English devolution. This event is to be followed on Wednesday 31 July, the eve of Yorkshire Day (1 August) in York, by a major regional ‘conversation’ on the future governance of Yorkshire, hosted by the Yorkshire Society. All Bylines readers are invited. Full details will be available shortly at www.yorkshiresociety.org/events.
Will these actions change anything? Or will Yorkshire remain one of the last of Britain’s exploited colonies? Let’s hope we don’t have to wait until 1 April 2074 to find out.
