On 11 May, in the appropriate surroundings of Hull Minster, the third and so-far largest Yorkshire Heritage Summit, will be hosted by the Yorkshire Society, an independent not-for-profit voluntary organisation. This event will take place in the minster’s magnificent nave and choir.
Around 40 Yorkshire-based organisations, almost all voluntary groups, will occupy the nave. Each group will bring their displays, publications and programmes, safeguarding and celebrating Yorkshire’s special and distinctive cultural and natural heritage, whilst networking with each other.
Whilst the exhibitions take place, there will be a symposium in the choir focusing on Hull and East Riding’s heritage. This too little known part of Yorkshire has much to offer both local residents and visitors, including the city of Kingston-upon-Hull, its estuary, coast and maritime heritage and the adjacent magnificent chalk Yorkshire Wolds landscape.
The deeper meaning of heritage
Heritage is an overused word but is nevertheless a vital component in the understanding of our history, our sense of place and identity. The past shaped who we were – our personal, family and collective memory. It also determines who we now are, as a community, as a people, and who we will be in the future.
The rich and powerful – their politicians, billionaire financial backers, hedge-fund speculators and press spokesmen, have a different and narrower understanding of the word heritage. What is frequently offered by politicians is a sanitised and glamourised view of British Imperial history which deliberately obliterates the horrors of colonialism or for that matter the exploitation of working people in the British Isles, in both agriculture and industry, over many centuries.
Such facts are frequently brilliantly explored and exposed by archaeologists and local history societies. Heritage can be deeply subversive.
From centralisation to citizen power
It is not without significance that, before the Norman Conquest, Yorkshire was not only a distinctive province of England, but for a time an independent Anglo-Viking and prosperous Kingdom of Jorvik, before the expulsion of King Eric Bloodaxe in 954AD. Jorvik – Yorkshire – willingly joined a more federal Kingdom of England, as a powerful northern earldom. A century later however this was followed by a cruel period of oppression and colonisation that many people believe held back the development of English culture and language for almost three hundred years.
Almost a millennium after 1066, Yorkshire still struggles to find and reassert its identity within a hugely overcentralised British state, which is itself a relic of a long-vanished empire. Since 2010, this centralisation has become ever more marked, with ‘austerity’ starving local government of resources at a time of rapidly rising demand for social services, to a point when many face bankruptcy, and increasing subservience to a remote and centralised Whitehall. Civil servants, not local elected representatives, now take many crucial decisions that affect the people of Yorkshire.
By using political and economic power to control the narrative, creating so called ‘anti-woke’ culture wars, increasingly authoritarian and deeply philistine governments have exerted political power disguised as economic necessity to undermine the arts and the teaching of humanities throughout England. Creativity – whether in the mediums of literature, music, drama or filmmaking, is both hated and feared by authoritarian governments. Starving theatres, music venues, and libraries, of cash, is the perfect strategy to close down critical thinking and dissent.
But in Yorkshire, citizen power, in the form of thriving voluntary sector heritage and environmental groups, has done much to reverse this dismal trend.
The voluntary sector steps into the breach
Heritage is about rediscovering pride in the strength and creativity which returned to the North of England when the Industrial Revolution brought huge wealth, and with that wealth, political power to the towns and cities of Yorkshire between the 18th and 20th centuries.
These were the years when Leeds was a huge centre of engineering and textiles, when Sheffield was synonymous worldwide with steel making and tool manufacturer, when Barnsley coal provided the nation’s energy needs, when the price of wool worldwide was decided in Bradford, when Hull was a mighty port and centre of the fishing industry, and York, still retaining its ancient status as England’s second city, was a focal point of both railways and chocolate manufacture.
As national governments of all political hues have in recent decades failed us, and local government, starved of essential resources, has suffered decline, it has been left to the region’s voluntary sector to come to the rescue.
Many traditional voluntary organisations, some going back to Victorian times, have taken the initiative. These organisations have included many historical and naturalist societies, civic groups and trusts, but also many smaller village and local conservation groups established by local communities to protect and celebrate what otherwise be threatened physical and cultural environments. This also includes groups concerned with such precious aspects of our heritage as music, literature and language.
This is especially strong in the cultural province and modern region of Yorkshire England in which we live, a region of 5.4 million people. This is almost as large in population terms as Denmark, as large as Scotland, Norway, Slovakia, and larger than Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. With the exception of Scotland, all these are fully independent nations with their own governance.
Yorkshire: European style semi-autonomous region
Whilst there is no serious suggestion of it ever becoming an ‘independent’ nation, Yorkshire being given the status of a European style semi-autonomous region, whilst remining a part of England, is perhaps the most viable way forward to achieve economic and social recovery from decades of what has been Westminster and Whitehall indifference, underinvestment and neglect. Many examples from mainland Europe and beyond demonstrate such success.
The brutal truth is that whatever the outcome of the next election, measured by many different criteria, post-Brexit Britain is a failing nation. We need massive change in order to survive and recover economically and socially. That change has to come from the grassroots – in the regions, the cities, the villages, the local communities. That is the reason why on 1 April a small group of people stood in the rain by an oak tree near York Castle to read a declaration urging all Yorkshire people to work together to ensure the Westminster government, of whatever future political colour, proceeds with genuine English regional devolution.
This needs to be far more than, as we have been offered in Yorkshire, four divide-and-rule metro mayors. This simply reinforces divisions including the harmful rural-urban divide that so damages our region. If Greater London enjoys the many benefits of an elected assembly and a single mayor, by any sensible and just calculation, Yorkshire’s 5.4 million population deserve equal treatment.
The Yorkshire Heritage Summit
The Yorkshire Society is not any way a political body. It exists solely to celebrate all that is good and worthwhile about Yorkshire and its people, and the Heritage Summit is not in any way connected with any devolution campaign. But by bringing together the 50-member strong Heritage Guardians’ network, still only a small percentage of the voluntary groups active in the region, it has awakened a deepening sense of personal and community identity. This itself, as history shows, is a powerful instrument of economic and political change.
Knowledge is power. Celebrating Yorkshire’s Heritage and the Heritage Guardians’ network as we will be doing on 11 May in Hull, is an important step forward in that process of change.
For details of the Yorkshire Heritage Summit on 11 May see 2024 Yorkshire Heritage Summit – The Yorkshire Society
