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| "Sssh!" is the likeliest epitaph for my quarter of a century's work for the Guardian in the north of England, a rebuke I have often been given, followed by: "Pipe down, or they'll all want to move here." | "Sssh!" is the likeliest epitaph for my quarter of a century's work for the Guardian in the north of England, a rebuke I have often been given, followed by: "Pipe down, or they'll all want to move here." |
| It was put most memorably by the people of Linton colliery in Northumberland after their pit closed and the whole village was mistakenly removed from local maps, to their great delight. | It was put most memorably by the people of Linton colliery in Northumberland after their pit closed and the whole village was mistakenly removed from local maps, to their great delight. |
| My job has been to disagree robustly, because the north needs the new blood and the talking-up that have led to profound improvements since 1987. But you can see why we feel protective about our quality of life; and the fondness is so much more appealing than supposedly northern chip-and-whine. | My job has been to disagree robustly, because the north needs the new blood and the talking-up that have led to profound improvements since 1987. But you can see why we feel protective about our quality of life; and the fondness is so much more appealing than supposedly northern chip-and-whine. |
| There has been little cause for the latter in my time, which actually began with a week back south in the company of cheerful Bradford linesmen, repairing rural Essex's telephones after the Great Storm. They expected to meet snobs, and the villagers anticipated visitors like Catherine Tate's northern nanny (the sketch of the middle-class family in panic at the idea of someone from Sunderland). The reality was good for both sides. | There has been little cause for the latter in my time, which actually began with a week back south in the company of cheerful Bradford linesmen, repairing rural Essex's telephones after the Great Storm. They expected to meet snobs, and the villagers anticipated visitors like Catherine Tate's northern nanny (the sketch of the middle-class family in panic at the idea of someone from Sunderland). The reality was good for both sides. |
| Things went on as they had begun. Parts of the north were raw from the collapse of King Coal and had lost jobs in steel, shipbuilding, textiles and the docks, but repair work was in hand, like the Bradford linesmen's on a vastly greater scale. The detested Margaret Thatcher's reluctance to visit the north was providential for those Tories who knew that something had to be done. Thanks to Michael Heseltine, the government regional offices were working effectively long before their official naming by John Major in 1994. | Things went on as they had begun. Parts of the north were raw from the collapse of King Coal and had lost jobs in steel, shipbuilding, textiles and the docks, but repair work was in hand, like the Bradford linesmen's on a vastly greater scale. The detested Margaret Thatcher's reluctance to visit the north was providential for those Tories who knew that something had to be done. Thanks to Michael Heseltine, the government regional offices were working effectively long before their official naming by John Major in 1994. |
| The offices were not the same as regional government – whose failure to win public support has been one of the north's missed opportunities – but they were effective at getting EU section 1 status for South Yorkshire, which provided extra funding for the poorest regions; and at helping the Humber estuary ports to overtake the Thames as the busiest in the UK. | The offices were not the same as regional government – whose failure to win public support has been one of the north's missed opportunities – but they were effective at getting EU section 1 status for South Yorkshire, which provided extra funding for the poorest regions; and at helping the Humber estuary ports to overtake the Thames as the busiest in the UK. |
| This fostered a sense of initiative that has lasted in places worst-hit in the Thatcher era. Grimethorpe, near Barnsley, where the colliery did not close until 1993, has now revived remarkably, thanks to the ASOS online fashion warehouse, which employs 1500 people. In an echo of the deal-making heyday of the government regional offices, it pays £40 business rates a square metre – compared with £1,080 for a shop in Rochdale town centre. | This fostered a sense of initiative that has lasted in places worst-hit in the Thatcher era. Grimethorpe, near Barnsley, where the colliery did not close until 1993, has now revived remarkably, thanks to the ASOS online fashion warehouse, which employs 1500 people. In an echo of the deal-making heyday of the government regional offices, it pays £40 business rates a square metre – compared with £1,080 for a shop in Rochdale town centre. |
| The government offices also had the clout to spur on city councils with the help of development corporations whose mere existence as rivals brought defeatist or dormant local authorities back to life. Very different events became landmarks in the transformation of northern cities – 1996 saw both the arrival of Harvey Nichols in Leeds and the Manchester bomb, one apparently trivial and the other apparently devastating, but both vital to regeneration. | The government offices also had the clout to spur on city councils with the help of development corporations whose mere existence as rivals brought defeatist or dormant local authorities back to life. Very different events became landmarks in the transformation of northern cities – 1996 saw both the arrival of Harvey Nichols in Leeds and the Manchester bomb, one apparently trivial and the other apparently devastating, but both vital to regeneration. |
| Significant partners emerged in the new universities, which disproved the adage "what's in a name?" on their transfer from polytechnic status in 1992. Their shoals of lively young people brought a buoyant optimism and opened eyes outside the region to the brightness, especially in music-making, of "Madchester", Sheffield, Sunderland and, of course, Liverpool. This had not been a secret, but the notion of northern cities as "party places" was revolutionary. When Headingley was described as the country's leading Shangri-la for students in a 1999 Economic and Social Research Council paper, even the most seasoned local triumphalists had to go for a lie down. | Significant partners emerged in the new universities, which disproved the adage "what's in a name?" on their transfer from polytechnic status in 1992. Their shoals of lively young people brought a buoyant optimism and opened eyes outside the region to the brightness, especially in music-making, of "Madchester", Sheffield, Sunderland and, of course, Liverpool. This had not been a secret, but the notion of northern cities as "party places" was revolutionary. When Headingley was described as the country's leading Shangri-la for students in a 1999 Economic and Social Research Council paper, even the most seasoned local triumphalists had to go for a lie down. |
| Academic expertise flourished with this expansion, especially through practical links with economic revival, which made the fortune of Sir Alan Wilson, Leeds University's vice-chancellor in the 1990s. He co-founded the spin-off company GMAP to apply academic mapping theory to socio-economic data. At Manchester University, professors Sir Andre Geim and Sir Konstantin Novoselov produced the world's thinnest and strongest material, graphene, in 2004 and shared a Nobel prize. | Academic expertise flourished with this expansion, especially through practical links with economic revival, which made the fortune of Sir Alan Wilson, Leeds University's vice-chancellor in the 1990s. He co-founded the spin-off company GMAP to apply academic mapping theory to socio-economic data. At Manchester University, professors Sir Andre Geim and Sir Konstantin Novoselov produced the world's thinnest and strongest material, graphene, in 2004 and shared a Nobel prize. |
| Both enterprises benefited from the sense of independence and self-sufficiency that characterises northern universities, in a manner familiar with the region's hospitals, including relatively modest ones. Oldham General's Patrick Steptoe produced the world's first test tube baby in 1978 and Sir John Charnley, the pioneer of hip-joint operations, would not allow any surgeon to use his prostheses until they had done a course at Wrightington hospital in Wigan, which some Harley Street eminences found tricky to locate. | Both enterprises benefited from the sense of independence and self-sufficiency that characterises northern universities, in a manner familiar with the region's hospitals, including relatively modest ones. Oldham General's Patrick Steptoe produced the world's first test tube baby in 1978 and Sir John Charnley, the pioneer of hip-joint operations, would not allow any surgeon to use his prostheses until they had done a course at Wrightington hospital in Wigan, which some Harley Street eminences found tricky to locate. |
| By contrast, the draining of self-confidence and clout from other sectors, notably local authorities and businesses, has seriously damaged the northern economy in the last 25 years. Dark days include the Leeds Permanent Building Society's loss of independence, the withdrawal of the Halifax from the town that gave it its name, and the abolition by that renegade Bradfordian Eric Pickles of both the government regional offices and the regional development agencies that had extended their work. | By contrast, the draining of self-confidence and clout from other sectors, notably local authorities and businesses, has seriously damaged the northern economy in the last 25 years. Dark days include the Leeds Permanent Building Society's loss of independence, the withdrawal of the Halifax from the town that gave it its name, and the abolition by that renegade Bradfordian Eric Pickles of both the government regional offices and the regional development agencies that had extended their work. |
| Each blow chipped at a localism now left to far too few national players; notably Morrisons, which remains loyally based in Bradford, and the Co-operative in Manchester, especially its bank. Raising capital locally was important to great enterprises in the days when the Hardy Spicer universal joint, which revolutionised car engines, was financed in Leeds, and foreign governments could buy an entire battleship, including a tailored financial package, in one day in Sheffield. | Each blow chipped at a localism now left to far too few national players; notably Morrisons, which remains loyally based in Bradford, and the Co-operative in Manchester, especially its bank. Raising capital locally was important to great enterprises in the days when the Hardy Spicer universal joint, which revolutionised car engines, was financed in Leeds, and foreign governments could buy an entire battleship, including a tailored financial package, in one day in Sheffield. |
| Remedying this is perhaps the most important economic challenge for the north and easier said than done, but there is one encouraging force that the Manchester Nobel laureates also represent. Both are Russian-born, with important parts of their lives spent studying in the Netherlands. They take their place in a long-standing northern success story: the journey of immigrants from "problem" status to acknowledged drivers of progress. | Remedying this is perhaps the most important economic challenge for the north and easier said than done, but there is one encouraging force that the Manchester Nobel laureates also represent. Both are Russian-born, with important parts of their lives spent studying in the Netherlands. They take their place in a long-standing northern success story: the journey of immigrants from "problem" status to acknowledged drivers of progress. |
| It is a hard and sometimes violent transformation, undergone in the past by the Irish and eastern European Jews, with episodes of violence, right-wing rabble-rousing and persistent racism as nasty as post-second world war immigrants have had to bear. But its importance to the north's wellbeing cannot be overstated: witness the roll-call from giants such as Burton, M&S and Coats Viyella to the three Jewish refugee families who gave west Cumbria's scuppered economy in the 1930s Sekers silk (and the Rosehill theatre at Whitehaven), Marchon detergents and Kangol, makers of berets and seatbelts. | It is a hard and sometimes violent transformation, undergone in the past by the Irish and eastern European Jews, with episodes of violence, right-wing rabble-rousing and persistent racism as nasty as post-second world war immigrants have had to bear. But its importance to the north's wellbeing cannot be overstated: witness the roll-call from giants such as Burton, M&S and Coats Viyella to the three Jewish refugee families who gave west Cumbria's scuppered economy in the 1930s Sekers silk (and the Rosehill theatre at Whitehaven), Marchon detergents and Kangol, makers of berets and seatbelts. |
| If I was to take you on a tour of the north, we would start at Huddersfield's Centre for Textile Excellence, which can teach you to weave anything, including racing car panels, body armour and DNA into suiting to counter cheap imitations. Thence to Nelson, Colne, Blackburn and Burnley, where the lovely countryside, cheap housing and excellent transport cry out for relocators to invest, especially in aeronautics and precision engineering whose short runs Chinese mass production cannot match. | If I was to take you on a tour of the north, we would start at Huddersfield's Centre for Textile Excellence, which can teach you to weave anything, including racing car panels, body armour and DNA into suiting to counter cheap imitations. Thence to Nelson, Colne, Blackburn and Burnley, where the lovely countryside, cheap housing and excellent transport cry out for relocators to invest, especially in aeronautics and precision engineering whose short runs Chinese mass production cannot match. |
| From there to tea at Rivington services on the M61, voted the worst in the UK in 2009 but revitalised by Euro-garages, which was founded in Bury in 2001 by two brothers from Blackburn: Mohsin and Zuber Issa. They bought a single petrol station that has expanded to be the country's largest forecourt operation. And so back across the Pennines for supper at one of the Mumtaz restaurants of Mumtaz Khan Akbar, who started work in a Bradford textile mill aged 17 and now supervises an annual turnover of £85m. | From there to tea at Rivington services on the M61, voted the worst in the UK in 2009 but revitalised by Euro-garages, which was founded in Bury in 2001 by two brothers from Blackburn: Mohsin and Zuber Issa. They bought a single petrol station that has expanded to be the country's largest forecourt operation. And so back across the Pennines for supper at one of the Mumtaz restaurants of Mumtaz Khan Akbar, who started work in a Bradford textile mill aged 17 and now supervises an annual turnover of £85m. |
| Like northern cloth, this expedition would see a third northern virtue entwine with innovative thinking and cosmopolitan people: the extraordinary beauty of the countryside and the way it reaches so close to our places of work. The "industrial" towns are all examples of this, as travellers on the M1 past Barnsley can see for themselves: two great mansions built by the Fitzwilliam dynasty, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wentworth Castle, with the Elmhirst family's deer herd on the edge of parkland so vast and uninhabited – but publicly accessible – that it forms a great black hole between the lights of Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield at night. | Like northern cloth, this expedition would see a third northern virtue entwine with innovative thinking and cosmopolitan people: the extraordinary beauty of the countryside and the way it reaches so close to our places of work. The "industrial" towns are all examples of this, as travellers on the M1 past Barnsley can see for themselves: two great mansions built by the Fitzwilliam dynasty, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wentworth Castle, with the Elmhirst family's deer herd on the edge of parkland so vast and uninhabited – but publicly accessible – that it forms a great black hole between the lights of Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield at night. |
| This is before you consider the five national parks; and they too retain a place for manufacturing amid some of the most heavily protected landscapes in the world. Honister mine in the Lake District still produces slate, Systagenix at Gargrave runs the cotton mill (a rarity in wool-dominated Yorkshire) that attracted Johnson & Johnson to relocate to the Dales from crowded, expensive Slough in 1934. | This is before you consider the five national parks; and they too retain a place for manufacturing amid some of the most heavily protected landscapes in the world. Honister mine in the Lake District still produces slate, Systagenix at Gargrave runs the cotton mill (a rarity in wool-dominated Yorkshire) that attracted Johnson & Johnson to relocate to the Dales from crowded, expensive Slough in 1934. |
| Best of all is the factory at Kirkbymoorside, on the edge of the North York moors, which makes the midget submarines that finally sorted out the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. The trickiest part of their 8,000km journey was the tight junction where the lane from the former Slingsby aircraft factory joins the Scarborough-Helmsley A171. The company never has a problem recruiting super-qualified staff to work in an area that resembles most people's idea of paradise. | Best of all is the factory at Kirkbymoorside, on the edge of the North York moors, which makes the midget submarines that finally sorted out the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. The trickiest part of their 8,000km journey was the tight junction where the lane from the former Slingsby aircraft factory joins the Scarborough-Helmsley A171. The company never has a problem recruiting super-qualified staff to work in an area that resembles most people's idea of paradise. |
| Those who come find other reasons for loving the north. Manchester's graphene experts enjoy the city's buzz, just as their compatriot Yevgeny Zamyatin did Newcastle, where he designed some of the world's best icebreakers while nurturing his career as a writer in Jesmond during the first world war. The DNA pioneer at Leeds University, Professor William Astbury, gave joint talks on the molecular structure of hair with Muriel Smith, owner of a ladies' hairdressing salon in Harehills and prizewinner at the 1930s International Permanent Wave Championships in San Francisco. | Those who come find other reasons for loving the north. Manchester's graphene experts enjoy the city's buzz, just as their compatriot Yevgeny Zamyatin did Newcastle, where he designed some of the world's best icebreakers while nurturing his career as a writer in Jesmond during the first world war. The DNA pioneer at Leeds University, Professor William Astbury, gave joint talks on the molecular structure of hair with Muriel Smith, owner of a ladies' hairdressing salon in Harehills and prizewinner at the 1930s International Permanent Wave Championships in San Francisco. |
| Now as then, the social set-up in the north is much more subtle than often portrayed and imagined by outsiders. The finding by Barclays in 2004 that Sheffield's Hallam constituency – Nick Clegg's – was the wealthiest outside central London should not have come as a surprise. The fact that it did is not a result of southern ignorance or prejudice. It is thanks to the last, and perhaps the greatest, of the modern north's assets. | Now as then, the social set-up in the north is much more subtle than often portrayed and imagined by outsiders. The finding by Barclays in 2004 that Sheffield's Hallam constituency – Nick Clegg's – was the wealthiest outside central London should not have come as a surprise. The fact that it did is not a result of southern ignorance or prejudice. It is thanks to the last, and perhaps the greatest, of the modern north's assets. |
| A conference at York University in June is debating north-south divisions in culture, but not from the chippy viewpoint that London gets far too much of everything. The call for papers echoes the self-confidence of Morrisons or Sir John Charnley in saying that in England "the south has owed a debt to the cultural cachet of the north, for authenticity, patronage and enlightenment". | A conference at York University in June is debating north-south divisions in culture, but not from the chippy viewpoint that London gets far too much of everything. The call for papers echoes the self-confidence of Morrisons or Sir John Charnley in saying that in England "the south has owed a debt to the cultural cachet of the north, for authenticity, patronage and enlightenment". |
| Who could disagree? My tenure began with one northern poet laureate and ends with another, has seen the world's two most performed playwrights after Shakespeare anchored here, and watched the most popular living British artist bring the sunlight of LA's swimming pools to colour-saturated pictures of Bridlington. "Why do you live here, Mr Hockney?" puffed an American interviewer with pockets stuffed with First Trans-Pennine Trains and East Yorkshire Motor Services bus timetables on top of his flight coupons. There wasn't really any need to reply. | Who could disagree? My tenure began with one northern poet laureate and ends with another, has seen the world's two most performed playwrights after Shakespeare anchored here, and watched the most popular living British artist bring the sunlight of LA's swimming pools to colour-saturated pictures of Bridlington. "Why do you live here, Mr Hockney?" puffed an American interviewer with pockets stuffed with First Trans-Pennine Trains and East Yorkshire Motor Services bus timetables on top of his flight coupons. There wasn't really any need to reply. |
| The same question must often occur for different reasons to readers of the north's predominant modern literature which has ploughed a grimy furrow since John Braine's Room at the Top. Promoted on the original Penguin as the story of a man brought up in "poverty and squalor in an ugly Northern town," the classic set a lasting tone, although Bingley, where Braine was a librarian while writing the novel, has not been poor or squalid for years. | The same question must often occur for different reasons to readers of the north's predominant modern literature which has ploughed a grimy furrow since John Braine's Room at the Top. Promoted on the original Penguin as the story of a man brought up in "poverty and squalor in an ugly Northern town," the classic set a lasting tone, although Bingley, where Braine was a librarian while writing the novel, has not been poor or squalid for years. |
| Neither is West Yorkshire as noir as in David Peace's novels, nor its elderly women as dysfunctional as Alan Bennett's. But these are all writers of the first rank, serving a market with firm ideas of what the north should be and also governed by Tolstoy's dictum that happiness is uninteresting. | Neither is West Yorkshire as noir as in David Peace's novels, nor its elderly women as dysfunctional as Alan Bennett's. But these are all writers of the first rank, serving a market with firm ideas of what the north should be and also governed by Tolstoy's dictum that happiness is uninteresting. |
| That may be true for literature but should not be for journalism, and some of my most interesting days have been spent in the north's dark places and discovering how brightness shines there too. I prefer the end of Middlemarch to the beginning of Anna Karenina. But I must stop, or Margaret Nolan from Meadow Well on Tyneside, Maggie Chapman on the Lower Grange estate in Bradford or Julie Bushby from Dewsbury Moor will be on the phone or email: "Ssssh!" they'll be saying. "Pipe down or they'll all want to move here." | That may be true for literature but should not be for journalism, and some of my most interesting days have been spent in the north's dark places and discovering how brightness shines there too. I prefer the end of Middlemarch to the beginning of Anna Karenina. But I must stop, or Margaret Nolan from Meadow Well on Tyneside, Maggie Chapman on the Lower Grange estate in Bradford or Julie Bushby from Dewsbury Moor will be on the phone or email: "Ssssh!" they'll be saying. "Pipe down or they'll all want to move here." |
| • True North by Martin Wainwright is available at the Guardian bookshop price £6.99. Read the blog here | • True North by Martin Wainwright is available at the Guardian bookshop price £6.99. Read the blog here |
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