the North East compares with similar regions in England and Europe. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of what the future may hold for the region.
The idea of a North East region
Although it may seem to have always been with us, the idea of a North East region is a relatively new one. Soon after its emergence as a nation, England was split up into counties for the purpose of governance, a division that is reflected in today’s local government structure. Although regional terms such as ‘The North’ were in common usage, they were generally ill defined and subject to interpretation. The North East only began to be viewed separately from the North West during the mid-18th to early 19th century (Green and Pollard, 2007: 12–20), at which point academic interpretation, industrial specialisation and, mainly as a consequence of this, political interests clustered around the distinctive characteristics of the area, in particular, the varied commerce and industry based on the ready supply of energy from the Great Northern Coalfield. The recognition of a North East region in England has subsequently waxed and waned, along with periodic attempts to address regional economic problems and create regional governance that have met with only temporary or partial success (Elcock, 2014). For this reason, studies and detailed analysis at the North East region level, though relating to a wide historical period, date mainly to the recent period of regional governance (1994–2010/12), with a number of notable exceptions outside of this period (for example, McCord, 1979; Jackson, 2019).
While the region continues to exist culturally and in official statistics, various decentralisation drives since 2009 have resulted in many supra- and subregional governance bodies, differently defined by economic, health and combined authorities, explored later in the section on governance; this has resulted in fragmented and overlapping governance structures, with consequences for transparency and accountability. Nevertheless, consideration of the historical path and current challenges of the constituent parts of the region suggests continued value in considering the region as a whole, as will emerge from the following sections.
A thumbnail portrait of the North East
The North East region of England covers a varied urban, rural and coastal landscape, with diverse communities and 12 local authorities (municipalities) situated in the region (see Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: North East England and its constituent local authorities
Source: Wikimedia Commons (available under the Creative Commons CC0 License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License)
Population
The North East is the smallest English region outside of London, extending over an area of approximately 850,000 hectares. In the 2012 mid-year estimates, the region also accounted for only 4 per cent of the UK population (2.6 million), giving it the lowest population of any of the English regions, and one smaller than Scotland and Wales, though still larger than Northern Ireland. Over much of the 20th century, the North East suffered from population decrease, mainly due to net outmigration. Even as early as the years between 1927 and 1938, a national scheme to relocate people living in poor mining areas moved around 100,000 people out of the North East. In the 1950s, the population of the region fell by around 70,000, largely due to people relocating to other regions in pursuit of work (Renton, 2008). By the end of the 20th century, the Government Office for the North East (GONE, 2008: 7) was reporting a decades-long trend of outmigration. However, the trend began to reverse around 2008, as shown by the 2011 Census, which found that the population had risen by around 3.2 per cent since 2001.
Historically, the North East was always the site of population flows and exchanges, and archaeological artefacts bear witness to the diverse origins of troops sent to defend the Roman wall from across the Roman Empire, including Belgians, Dutch and even Syrian cohorts. The growing number of Christian foundations across Dark Age and medieval Northumbria embedded the importance of the region within wider European scholarship and exchanges, while invaders from what is now Scandinavia changed the population and influenced place names from the 8th century onwards.
The region has been a major centre for migration in two modern periods: the first was from 1820 to 1920, when it saw mass migration from Scotland and Ireland, mainly attracted by the high wages and abundance of work in the region; the second period has taken place since 1987 as a result of the government’s dispersal scheme, which has sought to distribute refugee communities across the country to moderate the impact of international migration on London and the South East (Renton, 2008). Academic studies have connected recent arrivals with the history of the region’s migration flows, while illustrating that their experience has varied with the type of community they have joined and the prevailing economic conditions (for example, Olsover, 1981; Lawless, 1995; Buckler, 2011).
Industry
The national image of the North East has undoubtedly been shaped by its past economic and industrial strengths in coal, steel, shipbuilding, heavy engineering and armaments, and indeed as one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. It was economically important from around the middle of the 19th century until the last quarter of the 20th century. With the emergence of a global industrial system, the North East fell behind newly industrialising countries with abundant primary resources and a cheaper labour force. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the region’s economic role in the UK had significantly declined, a decline accelerated by the withdrawal of government subsidies to heavy industry in the 1980s.
In general terms, the region has been riven with internal inequalities throughout its history and its industry also participated in generating inequalities elsewhere, having been imposed on other nations through the political power of the British Empire (Hudson, 2005). This history of severe and visible inequalities (McCord, 1979) had its counterpart in influential thinkers challenging the status quo, including the historical North Eastern reformers and activists Thomas Spence, Josephine Butler, W.T. Stead, Emily Wilding Davison and Ellen Wilkinson (‘Red Ellen’). Spence was an early champion of rights for all, Butler and, fatally, Davison fought for women’s rights, while Butler and W.T. Stead also worked to combat child prostitution. Wilkinson was a politician and journalist who became the first female Education Secretary in 1945, introducing free milk and school meals. Notably, the region has a prominent link with the civil rights movement that stretches from Earl Grey (Foreign Secretary in 1806), who introduced the Act that abolished the slave trade, to Newcastle University awarding Martin Luther King an honorary doctorate in 1967. Between these periods, the important visitor Frederick Douglass (an abolitionist and former slave) lived for a time in Newcastle, where sisters-in-law Anna and Ellen Richardson raised the £150 to secure his freedom (Hodgson, 2016). The Richardsons also campaigned to refuse goods from slavery, to educate the poor and for teetotalism (Hodgson, 2016).
Deindustrialisation has resulted in improvements in air quality, healthier cities and a rural area that is increasingly attractive to ex-urban