The Cultural Divide Between North and South England

Here are some articles I found about the division between the North and South of England.

Copyright New York Times Company Oct 19, 1998

To the Editor:

Re ''Has England Lost Its Identity?'' (London Journal, Oct. 14): With regional legislatures poised to take over their affairs from Parliament, you report, English traditionalists begin to sense a snub and to fear for what made England England -- a devotion to privacy, sense of honor and respect for eccentricity. There is even talk of a separate assembly for England.

But the establishment of such a body -- only a subject of Conservative musing so far -- would soon be followed, I would bet, by an even greater cultural division -- the demand for parliamentary partition, North versus South. In fact, most of the traditional Englishness about which you write is far more characteristic of Southern rural values than of traditional North-of-England values.

The major cultural divide within England -- predating 19th-century class formations -- is that of North versus South. The culture and ancient dialects of the North are more like those of Scotland and Ulster than southern England in many ways. One could structure a history of this cultural fact focusing on the ancient Northumbrian kingdom and its capital at York.

ROBERT ST CYR
Greenlawn, N.Y., Oct. 15, 1998


North-South divide puzzles nation
Britain's so-called north-south divide should actually be redrawn as a diagonal line, new research suggests.
A new map defining north and south by socio-economic data suggests the dividing line runs diagonally from Gloucester, ending just below Grimsby.

The divide puts Hereford in the north while Lincoln - actually 155 miles to the north east - is in the south.

The research comes after an exhibition asked visitors to plot the divide and found no-one had the same answer.

North? South?

The Lowry art gallery in Salford, Greater Manchester, asked visitors to mark the North-South boundary on an interactive map at its Myth of the North exhibition.

After they found virtually no-one agreed, they raised the idea of research into people's perceptions of North and South to an expert in human mapping at the University of Sheffield.

Professor Danny Dorling and his team threw a series of statistical, social, cultural and economic factors at the problem.

They included variants in house prices, visual changes in the built environment, physical and historic boundaries, cultural and political differences and different life expectancy rates.

They discovered the North and South were often as socially and economically defined as they were by geography.

Cheshire in particular had many "southern" characteristics, they found.

Professor Dorling also found the dividing line between North and South shifted depending on social and economic factors.

His team also claimed there was very little middle ground - or social Midlands, if you were - between the South and the North.

Bill Longshaw, curator of Myth of The North, said: "I'm not sure I agree that culturally people in parts of Gloucester, Coventry or Birmingham are really northerners but Danny's analysis really does make you think about where The North begins.

"But no one who has visited the exhibition seems to be able to agree where the boundary is either, so at least this exercise has brought some academic and scientific reason to the debate."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7061201.stm

Design Cross sectional study using data from the 2001 national census.

Setting Great Britain.

Participants Adults aged between 25 and 64 in Great Britain and enumerated in the 2001 population census (n = 25.6 million).

Main outcome measures European age standardised rates of self rated general health, for men and women classified by the government social class scheme.

Results In each of the seven social classes, Wales and the North East and North West regions of England had high rates of poor health. There were large social class inequalities in self rated health, with rates of poor health generally increasing from class 1 (higher professional occupations) to class 7 (routine occupations). The size of the health divide varied between regions: the largest rate ratios for routine versus higher professional classes were for Scotland (2.9 for men; 2.8 for women) and London (2.9 for men; 2.4 for women). Women had higher rates of poor health compared to men in the same social class, except in class 6 (semi-routine occupations).

Conclusions A northwest-southeast divide in social class inequalities existed in Great Britain at the start of the 21st century, with each of the seven social classes having higher rates of poor health in Wales, the North East and North West regions of England than elsewhere. The widest health gap between social classes, however, was in Scotland and London, adding another dimension to the policy debate on resource allocation and targets to tackle the health divide.