Plans are now finalised to celebrate Yorkshire’s national Day on 1 August, when every true Yorkshireman and Yorkshirewoman will be celebrating the richly unique landscape, history and culture of this wonderful region of England.
This year the Yorkshire Society’s main civic celebrations will be in the East Riding town and inland port of Goole, which this year also celebrates its 200th anniversary.
But there will also be the first ever Yorkshire Proms concert in Bradford, with a rich mixture of popular choral and orchestral classical music, including a new work by Skipton composer Ben Crick celebrating Yorkshire’s rich heritage of folksong, with no doubt reference to our unofficial anthem Ilka’ Mooar Baht ‘At. This will be followed by ThriddingsFest – a week-long festival of the Ridings, in which community groups all over Yorkshire’s historic three Ridings will be encouraged to take part in community-led events – music, dance, poetry, song, all celebrating Yorkshire.
Yorkshire Day with a purpose
However, behind the fun is serious purpose. We have a new prime minister – Andy Burnham – who has promised to put real devolution centre stage and even move some crucial centres of government to his hometown of Manchester.
While the idea of No 10 on the Irwell may sound attractive to Mancunians, people in Yorkshire have real concern that the hopelessly over-centralised state that is now modern Britain might simply continue its neocolonial rule from Manchester rather than London.
What is urgently needed for Yorkshire is a fundamental shift of power away from the dominant central body: the treasury, which uses London-biased assessment measures for almost all major investment.
One example is transport: when the treasury favours one region of Britain over others when allocating funds for rail, roads and buses, it allows that region to become ever more financially and politically dominant. For decades, the lion’s share of major transport investment has flowed to London and the South East, leaving northern regions to compete for what remains. This is something that Burnham, of all major English politicians, understands. But will once again the siren voice of the southern hegemony prevail?
The case for One Yorkshire
In 2018, One Yorkshire, a group formed by the Yorkshire Leaders Board, produced a powerful report: The economic rationale for devolving to Yorkshire. It illustrated how the economy of Yorkshire, a region of 5.4 million people – comparable in population size to Finland, Norway or Denmark – was 27% poorer in terms of GDP than the UK average, well below regions and nations of similar size in Europe.
Decades of de-industrialisation and asset-stripping has robbed Yorkshire of the mighty industries that powered the British economy and created the great northern cities. These are now deprived of power and resources, while London prospers.
Many smaller industrial towns and even cities in the north, in particular in both South and West Yorkshire, are now ghosts of what they were a century ago, with civic power reduced and areas of poverty and dereliction in which extremist politics flourishes.
One Yorkshire or four?
It was in response to this decline that in 2018 One Yorkshire, backed by the Archbishop of York, proposed a single, combined regional authority with an elected mayor and assembly covering the whole of Yorkshire.
However, the then Conservative government of Theresa May rejected the proposal, largely, it can be assumed, because a powerful region of 5.4 million people could be a challenge to unquestioned central government authority. Instead, they provided divide and rule, with the region split into four mayoral combined authorities, each competing for crumbs off the Whitehall table.
But in so many crucial areas – transport, tourism, higher education, the arts, the economy, the environment, and especially mitigating the impact of the climate crisis, such divisions based on arbitrary political boundaries are not only meaningless but actually damaging.
Already the attempts of the Labour mayors of West, South, and North Yorkshire to create a White Rose Pact of collaboration and co-operation have been destroyed by the Hull & East Riding mayor, primarily because his Reform Party rejects the reality of human-induced climate change or any attempts to achieve climate net zero.
A stronger voice for the region
But an excellent new report from consultants Neil Bennett, Andy Mycock and Paul Hayes of the University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University, on behalf of Y-PERN (Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network), suggests a need for far closer collaboration between local government and mayoral authorities in the region, and also with regional NGOs.
Key recommendations are to:
- Build on existing networks and partnerships to further strengthen collaboration across the Yorkshire & Humber Region
- Amplify a collective regional voice in Westminster and Whitehall to deepen devolution and secure sustained investment
- Encourage regionwide frameworks and initiatives to enhance policy learning, transfer, and scaling within and between strategic and local authorities
- Work with region’s universities to create an evidence-informed approach to devolution.
The case for a Yorkshire Parliament
But many campaigners for Yorkshire devolution feel this doesn’t go nearly far enough. John Hall, Director of Alliance for Yorkshire, comments:
This Y-PERN report strengthens the case for a One-Yorkshire regional parliament. The report is valuable because it confirms that Yorkshire & Humber is already functioning as a regional political space, but only in an incomplete and uneven way. It shows that collaboration exists, but that it is still dependent on fragile relationships, bespoke deals, and a lack of clear regional authority.
That is exactly where the case for a Regional Parliament becomes stronger. The report demonstrates that Yorkshire has outgrown a piecemeal devolution model and now needs a democratic institution with the authority to coordinate strategy, represent the region, and settle the blurred relationship between local and strategic government.
A Regional Parliament would directly respond to four weaknesses the report identifies:
- The absence of a clear, unified Yorkshire voice in Westminster and Whitehall.
- The patchwork nature of devolution, with different powers and arrangements across the region.
- The uncertainty over who should lead on strategy, funding, and accountability.
- The tension between local councils and strategic authorities over where powers should sit.
Alliance for Yorkshire is preparing its own powerful case for a single Yorkshire mayor and parliament, elected by proportional representation, to land on Andy Burnham’s desk within a few days of him taking office.
English devolution issues are also high on the agenda of the Green Party and will form a motion at their autumn conference in Brighton in October, with Yorkshire and Cornwall potentially the English regions with priority for full devolution.
Why devolution matters
The case for devolution is proven. England’s most prosperous region – Greater London – has its own elected mayor and an assembly to whom the mayor is answerable. In terms of transport, economic growth, regional development and cultural facilities, London far outstrips all other UK cities and regions and gets ever more investment.
Yorkshire could have had two versions of its long-delayed mass transit system for the price of one Elizabeth line, while HS2 – whose escalating costs are starving northern regions of government cash – has been transformed into a grotesquely expensive long-distance commuter line into London.
Regional development funding – including a regional bank through which Yorkshire people could invest in their local industry – can only come with strong, united regional devolution.
So while we celebrate Yorkshire Day, with music, words, flags and fun, let’s not forget the serious need for radical change, the creation of what most other European countries enjoy: a semi-autonomous region in which the people of Yorkshire, no longer a subservient colony, are given opportunity to shape their own destiny after decades of Whitehall-led failure.
Full details of all Yorkshire Day events are available on the Yorkshire Society’s website.
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