English regionalism through the looking glass: Cornwall and the North-East compared

8/14/2019 English regionalism through the looking glass: Cornwall and the North-East compared

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English regionalism through the looking glass: Cornwall and the North-East compared

Mark Sandford The Constitution Unit, University College London,[email protected]

Draft: please do not quote without permission

English regionalism, quoted and requoted as the dog that never barked 1, has begun to makeitself heard. From being a pursuit of the eccentric, it has enjoyed a short childhood as thesubject of small-time grassroots political campaigns, before exploding into an emasculatedform of adulthood in the form of the Labour Governments plans for elected regionalassemblies in 2002. English regionalism could superficially be interpreted as a subdivision of the concerns for economic advancement and the concern (now far more anaemic) forconstitutional reform brought to UK policy by the Labour Party. In this vision regionalgovernment in England is a natural progression from the early devolution of substantial power

to the nations of Scotland and Wales; regional government begins in the North and willgradually seep southwards to cover the currently recalcitrant south-eastern regionssurrounding London; and the powers of regional government, currently proposed to be veryweak in recognition of the weakness of regional identity in England, will gradually strengthenas the public comes to identify with the new institutions.

An alternative reading of regionalism, however, is as a technocratic extension of the grand projet of the Labour Party. The goal of regionalism in England is essentially as an extensionof national policy-making. Regions are a means to add value to centrally-driven policy goalsthrough tailoring a national framework, fairly tightly-drawn, to distinctive regional and localneeds. Most significantly, however, the understatement of the policy owes much to the

political debates of the 1980s and 1990s. The Labour Partys fear of being seen to favouradditional public spending and bureaucracy is characterised by the requirement, in earlypolicy documents, 2 that new regional assemblies be established cost-neutrally; and also, moreimportantly, to the centrality of economic development to the regional policy debate withinEngland. It has become axiomatic that economic development is the core of regional policytoday. 3 Most European regional governments would be surprised at that statement: theirfunctions revolve around education, skills, culture, infrastructure, and sometimes emergencyservices, health and tourism. Economic development is normally a shared competence, 4 if notentirely derogated to the national government as part of the national economic-fiscalframework.

This obsession with economic development as the mainstay of regionalism is neatly displayedby the one part of England which does not fit within the narrative of the previous twoparagraphs. This is Cornwall. This paper argues that the difference in Cornwalls identity,campaign for devolution, and the Government response to that campaign demonstrate thearbitrariness of the assumptions which have formed the boundaries of debate over regionalismin England so far. Those differences also help to shed light on the historical narrative whichcreated those assumptions; to demonstrate why the North-East is ideally placed to benefit the

1 Christopher Harvie, English Regionalism: The Dog That Never Barked? in ed. Bernard Crick, National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom, 1991.2

Jack Straw, A Choice for England and A New Voice for Englands Regions, Labour Party, 1995 and 19963 Labour Party, Ambitions for Britain , 2001 General Election manifesto4 See Hopkins, Devolution in Context , 2002, p. 246&ff

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most from that narrative; and to establish that a different kind of regionalism would beentirely feasible both for Cornwall and for other English regions that desired it.

Cornwall: an introduction

Within England as much as within English regionalism, Cornwall is an anomaly. Firstly, it isnot a standard English region. Administratively it is a county; historically the upper tier of English local government, the equivalent of the provincie, dpartements, or Kreiser. Withinthe English regional structure it forms part of the South-West region. This is a large region byEnglish standards 300 kilometres from end to end. It is relatively diverse both in economyand identity; it is predominantly rural; and it is comparatively isolated both from theeconomic centre of London and the former industrial centres of the English North andMidlands.

Cornwall forms the far south-westerly point of the South-West region. It has a population of 500,000, some 10% of the 5 million in the South-West. If it were a region it would beanomalously small: compared with the European Union, English regions are large inpopulation and small in geographical area (reflecting Englands extremely dense population,denser than the Netherlands). Most are between 10 and 20,000 square kilometres and havepopulations of 4-5 million. Cornwall is also very poor: its GDP is 65-70% of the Britishaverage. It is the poorest county in England. By contrast the remainder of the South-West isrelatively prosperous, with GDP of 80-105% of the English average. The economicdistinction between Cornwall and the rest of the South-West was recognised in the late 1990sby its creation as a NUTS2 region, now one of four in the South-West region, and itssubsequent achievement of Objective 1 status.

Cornwall has almost never been treated as a sub-national division within England. Normally itforms part of a larger South-West region, either with its sole neighbouring county, Devon, orwith all or most of the other counties that make up the South-West. It boasts an unusualsettlement pattern: there are no cities in Cornwall. There are some 12 towns of 20-25,000people, with large villages making up the rest of the county. It has very poor communications:it is further from London than southern Scotland is by train. It has no university. This, and itsperipheral position within the South-West, have contributed to a drain of local administrativefunctions and hence clustering of public-sector jobs. Many local functions, such as police,emergency services, business advice, learning and skills, and health services, are nowadministered for both Devon and Cornwall, with the head offices almost invariably in Devon.Payton claims that the physical distance between Cornwall and the rest of England

exacerbated by the river Tamar, which forms most of the boundary between Cornwall and therest of England permitted Cornwall to suffer from lack of interest from the increasinglyinterventionist governments of the 20th century. Cornwall suffers from many of thesymptoms of peripherality: poor transport links, low skills and education, correspondinglypoor health, creating a vicious circle of underinvestment both from the public and privatesectors.

What marks Cornwall out, however, is a sense of historical identity. Cornwall is one of the sixCeltic nations. It has its own language, Cornish, being revived by a small group of enthusiasts: the language is a close relative of Breton and Welsh. Most place-names inCornwall derive from the language, providing a sense of possession of the language even in

those who do not and have no desire to speak it. Considerable historical research has beendone on Cornish economic history and its relation to identity. There is a sense of

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identification with Cornwall, and a sense of difference from or within England, that has nocounterpart anywhere else in England. A recent survey saw some 33% of respondents citethemselves as Cornish when given the options of Cornish, British, or English. 5 Though thisis a lower proportion than obtained for Scotland and Wales, it indicates a level of distinctidentity unmatched by other English regions.

There can be no doubt that Cornwall has a Celtic heritage that sets it apart from the remainderof England. Stoyle argues that awareness of ethnic markers language being the mostobvious explains Cornish behaviour during the English Civil War in the 1640s. Cornwallfiercely supported the monarchy against Parliament, as it enjoyed a number of charters andconstitutional privileges related to its status as a Duchy (the Duke of Cornwall was and is thesame person as the Prince of Wales). Other privileges included a right to opt out of lawspassed by the central government and control over the legal system. These rights have neverbeen formally abrogated, which encouraged some cultural enthusiasts to unilaterallyreconvene the Cornish Stannary Parliament in 1974. This group has no political power, butforms a bedrock of a wider-ranging identity which can be traced from historical eventsthrough to todays lived reality.

These comparatively recent developments, over the last 30 years, have given renewed impetusto the concept of Cornish difference. Paytons seminal work, The Making of ModernCornwall, begins by asking Why is Cornwall different?, taking the existence and evidenceof difference for granted. The hypothesis of Payton, Stoyle, Deacon and others working in thefield of Cornish history is that Cornwalls character has been determined by two interlinkedstrands: very early industrial decline, taking place in the late 19th century after a period of comparative industrial wealth and innovation, and the historical/ethnic distinction betweenCornwall and the remainder of England.

Cornish identity has been a major motivating force in a history of campaigns in favour of functional autonomy, or for the location of greater decision-making power within the county,that goes back at least 35 years. An increase in the importance of Cornishness had alreadybecome evident during the 1960s, with the rise of Mebyon Kernow (MK - a Cornishnationalist political party). Like its counterpart in Wales, Plaid Cymru, MK had been formedas a cultural pressure group, but began to contest elections in 1970, with little success. Thiswas followed by the Cornwall Conservation Forum, which produced a report in opposition tothe plans of the South-West Regional Planning Council in 1974. This report argued that:

regional aid, through its attendant encouragement of in-migration, would actually

exacerbate problems of employment while the economic activity that it did manage tocreate would be of a fragile and unstable branch factory nature. 6

The theme of branch factories against Cornish-based industries an equivalent of thecurrent debate over indigenous development against inward investment resurfaced in thework of the Cornwall Industrial Development Association, which published a report in 1977advocating indigenous growth, and calling for Cornwall to build on existing industries andstrengths. This theme was repeated by a document published around the same time calledCornish Alternatives to the Structure Plan, which attacked the reliance on tourism and theprioritisation of migration in housing and spatial planning issues.

5 Golley Slater, Cornwall: Image and Brand Development, Cardiff, 20026 Philip Payton, The Making of Modern Cornwall , Dyllansow Truran, Redruth, 1992, p.219

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These groups were followed by the Cornish Social and Economic Research Group(COSERG). This group published a book in 1988 entitled Cornwall At The Crossroads ,arguing that, while urban-based planners believed that Cornwall was too small to be viable,smallness was in fact an advantage in an increasingly market-driven world. Payton states that

these groups, collectively, had absorbed (even eclipsed) the earlier role of the nationalistgroups which had proved organisationally ill-equipped to tackle the necessary specialistresearch This was.. evidence of the extent to which concern for the condition of modernCornwall had spread far beyond the confines of the nationalists. 7

The importance of these groups is not in their specific policies, but that they existed at all. Thefelt identity of Cornwall provides an explanation as to why they came into being. This identityhas proved more durable than a city-region-style economic identity built around Plymouth,the major city in Devon, which is only a few miles from the Cornish border. Unofficial,indigenous groups with proposals which depart radically from customary thinking have nocounterpart in other English regions. The importance of territory in Cornwall is underlined bythe campaigns for a separate Cornish constituency for the European Parliament in 1979, andfor a unitary authority during local government reform in 1994. No other non-standard regioncan show anything like this range of interest in its territorial integrity.

The difference is that Cornwall had, and has, a unique set of motivational resources uponwhich it can draw. A revival of Cornish culture had been under way since the early 20thcentury: language, song, symbols, traditions and industrial history were all appropriated andreinvented as markers of a specific cultural space; the territory of Cornwall was thefoundation of this new/ancient identity. The existence of the later campaigns of the 1960s, andlatterly of the Constitutional Convention, cannot be explained without this reservoir of resources.

It is a commonplace that region, like nations, invent their history. Cornwalls reservoir of resources is quite different from other regions in England. The existence of this resource,Payton argues, is at a level of lived reality. Cornwalls physical, linguistic and economicdistinctiveness reinforces its identity and peripherality. The question of whether there is areal Cornish identity is secondary. The existence of these resources reveals a dialecticrelationship. When motivational resources, and appropriate symbols, exist with which anidentity can be created, that identity can become a political force to the extent that it explains,and/or offers alternatives to, existing life conditions that are unsatisfactory.

In Cornwall, the material conditions of industrial decline, low skills and lack of accessibilityhave become linked to issues of cultural and political difference. Demands for devolution orregionalism are perceived as a solution to both poverty and cultural aspiration. They derivefrom a long line of perceived peripherality and neglect in Cornwall.

Importantly, economic development per se is not a driving force behind the desire forregionalism in Cornwall. Government intervention to promote economic growth has beenperceived as part of a problem rather than a solution for a long time: many of the indigenousdevelopment plans produced in the 1960s and 1970s were a response to the effects of theregional economic planning of the time. Crudely, Cornwall was characterised by branch

7 Ibid., p.222

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plants, almost never by senior offices: this made the new jobs and industries created byeconomic intervention very vulnerable to economic downturns and policy shifts.

Part of the consequence of this long-held antipathy is a suspicion of policy made outsideCornwall, and a sense that outsiders do not understand its problems. This reinforces the sense

that solutions lie within Cornwall, and by extension within Cornishness, rather than fromoutside the territory. Any economic change that takes place should build on existing skills andstrengths (such as environment/water related investment, and such as the unusually highproportion of micro-businesses) instead of attempting wholesale change.

Therefore, the UK Governments vision of elected regional assemblies in Englandconcentrating on driving forward economic growth does not address the culturally-baseddesire within Cornwall for a particular kind of regionalism: one that will address distinctiveCornish needs and, more importantly, permit Cornwall to remain economically and culturallydistinct. A regionalism which is an extension of national policy is still within the urban-modernisation-large scale paradigm of development. Cornwall does not fit this mould.

The Cornish Constitutional Convention has called for a far wider scope of powers to be givento a Cornish Assembly than are on offer in the Governments White Paper. It calls foragriculture and rural development, education, employment, environmental protection, health,housing, local government, policing and emergency services, sport and arts. It does not callfor a codified constitutional relationship, nor for own taxes again reflecting English regionalorthodoxy. It also calls for a civic forum, which will be crucial in enabling all parts of thecommunity to participate in the process of identifying needs and developing future policies. 8

Later publications emphasise the economic case over the cultural case for Cornwall. The firstof a list of Cornish special needs in the Constitutional Conventions response to the WhitePaper relates to the economy: but cultural factors are mentioned in the third, fourth and fifth(of six):

[1] Economic and social issues are unusually prominent in Cornwall, with problemsof seasonal and poor quality employment There is a strong and growing belief thatCornish solutions are required to solve these Cornish problems.

[3] Many people come to Cornwall because they recognise its distinctiveness: there isconsiderable evidence that many new residents become strong supporters of devolution for Cornwall. There is also an increasingly prominent diaspora that is

supportive of political and cultural innovation

[4] Cornwall is a cultural and linguistic region, and is independently recognised assuch. In Cornwall, peoples perceptions are strongly influenced by these factors, evenif they are not themselves involved in cultural or linguistic activities.

[5] The anomalous constitutional position that applies to Cornwall together withhistoric links with European and Celtic regions contribute to the perception of difference: this special relationship is unique to Cornwall. 9

8 Cornish Constitutional Convention, Devolution for One and All , 2002, p.89 Cornish Constitutional Convention, Your Region, Your Choice: The Case for Cornwall, 2000, p.5

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Cornwalls territorial identity, therefore, is the major factor in the form its regional campaignhas taken. There is a background of cultural agitation which forms the framework for thepresentation of historical issues. The CCC has pursued a conscious policy of adding economicdevelopment to the pre-existing cultural-historical oriented demand for devolution toCornwall. Whilst bread and butter issues have been present since the 1960s, the enhancement

of economics is at once a nod to the terms of debate within English regionalism and anacknowledgement of the influence of the Objective 1 programme in Cornwall (which began in2000). An early paper produced by the Convention addresses both the issue of larger regionalunits and emphasises the role of economics:

Devons relative prosperity obscures Cornwalls real poverty, and Cornwallspoverty makes Devon look poorer than it really is which favours Devon in securingpublic investment which should be flowing into Cornwall [The Objective 1programme] is deployed to raise GDP, enhance skills, improve employment, promoteCornish regional distinctiveness and raise international competitiveness. It isnecessary to utilise Cornwalls unique cultural and natural environment In order toattract an intellectual reinvestment in this peripheral region. 10

This explicit linkage between cultural factors and economic development, made in 2000, wasalmost entirely absent from previous campaigns for Cornwall. It reflects a political imperativesensed by the Convention: as regional assemblies moved up the agenda of the centralgovernment, it became doubly important that the Cornish case was re-presented in the currentlanguage of regional orthodoxy. Without an economic case to match the debate overCornish difference, the case in favour of creating a new administrative region in Englandthat was one-fifth the population of the current smallest region (which is, coincidentally, theNorth-East) and is also a county-level territory, would be impossible to make in the currentpolicy climate.

However, there is an explicit focus on the build-up of indigenous high-value niche industries,an aim associated with the creation of Cornwalls first university (itself supported byObjective 1). There is also a strong emphasis on the Cornish brand as an economic resource,and increasing attention is paid to bringing investment and expertise from the Cornishdiaspora. Cornish associations in places such as Australia, South Africa and Wisconsin,deriving from the export of mining expertise in the late 19th century, were perpetuated wellinto the 20 th (the existence of a self-conscious diaspora is another feature of a distinctterritorial identity). These focuses are acts of imagination at present as opposed to fleshed-outpolicies, but they echo the smallness, geographical location and uniqueness of any future

Cornish region.

The North-East

The North-East represents the opposite end of the regional spectrum to that of Cornwall. It fitsinto indeed has played a major role in defining the agenda of English regionalism. AsCornwall approaches the concept of region from an almost ethnonationalist perspective, andhas taken steps towards the orthodoxy of economic development, so the North-East hasapproached the concept from an economic perspective and has taken steps to define adistinctive regional identity. The North-East could not, after all, point to a greatdistinctiveness either economically or culturally between it and the rest of the North. The

10 Bert Biscoe, Peripherality and Devolution : The View from Kernow , unpublished paper, 2000, p.3

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boundaries of the current UK government standard regions were drawn up by centralgovernment during World War II, and have never been politically significant. The North-Eastregion did not even exist in its current form until the mid-1990s: before this, it had been

joined in a Northern region with the county of Cumbria, which was subsequently shifted tothe North-West (a change which actually caused some discontent in both Cumbria and the

North-East).

Historical analysis shows clearly that the North of England today comprising three standardregions, North-East, North-West and Yorkshire & Humber has always been considered tobe a distinctive part of England. It has also always been poorer than the South of England. Ithas always had distinctive dialects and a distinct group of identities. Jewell argues that,historically, the North was always distinct from the South: defining the North approximatelyas what are today the three northern regions: North-East, North-West, and Yorkshire &Humber. Her argument is that these three standard regions form a definable unit: the precisenature of the unit (whether cultural, literary, economic or political) is not certain, and theboundaries are not precisely fixed. But nevertheless, she argues that the distinction wasconsciously felt by individuals and expressed by them in a variety of contexts, and goes back throughout recorded history. 11 Of particular importance was the degree of de facto localcontrol by aristocratic families in the 15 th,16 th and 17 th centuries, when the North still servedas a buffer zone between England proper' and Scotland: this element declined after the Unionof Crowns (between England and Scotland) in 1605.

Any pan-Northern identity, however, has not translated itself into political consciousness inEngland. There are a number of possible explanations for this. Firstly, the traditionalcentralisation of the English (and latterly British) state simply did not permit the expression of regional consciousness. Democratic local government covering all of England was introducedin 1888 on the traditional county boundaries. There are seven traditional counties in theNorth, deriving from the boundaries of feudal baronies. There has therefore never been anymeans to political expression of regional identity. Secondly, economic structures had neverencouraged the formation of intra-regional links in the North: English finance and industryhad become progressively more centralised through the 19 th century, whilst laissez-faireeconomics prevented any countervailing state action.

The absence of any strong or definable resources of territorial identity created a vacuum, in towhich the economy-based case for regionalisation moved. This was facilitated by the fact thatindustrial, working-class identity has always cut across any local identity existing in theNorth. This predates the Industrial Revolution: Rawnsley suggests that there was a general

construction of the northern working class, in which the qualities of independence, dignity of Labour, and solidarity both at work and in the community were key components. 12 Theidentification of Northern with working-class, and hence the trumping of the former by thelatter, has persisted until today.

Sociological studies have concentrated at urban-industrial culture: in the North-Easts case,usually Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Since industrialisation, which disproportionately took place inthe North of England, its identity has been characterised by a series of city and townidentities: there has been no more than a visceral consciousness of the North, certainly

11 Helen Jewell, The North-South Divide: The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England , Manchester

University Press, Manchester, 1994, p.312 Stuart Rawnsley, Constructing The North: space and a sense of place, in ed. Neville Kirk, Northern Identities, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, p.8

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nothing approaching a political consciousness. Descriptions such as the following weretypical:

The towns along its [the Tynes] banks largely share an economic history dominatedby coal-mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering and have had similar experiences

of subsequent economic decline. Closely associated with this shared history areelements of a particular Tyneside culture, perhaps difficult to pin down but stillevident and maintained by Tynesides relative isolation 13

This situation was shifted by the gradual decline of the traditional heavy industries of Northern cities through the 1960s and 1970s and especially through the steepening of thatdecline in the 1980s. It seems likely that the degree to which the centralised UK state, underMargaret Thatcher, permitted the death of many industrial heartlands of the North and theassociated poverty, was a significant factor in converting some parts of the English left to thecause of economic/civic regionalism. Regional government, it was reasoned, would be able, if not to prevent such catastrophes, to at least mitigate their worst effects.

There is no automatic reason why a regional identity must accompany a movement to regionalgovernment. Opponents of regional government in particular explain the absence of regionalconsciousness within England by the lack of regional identity: the presence of both identityand regional government in various parts of Europe are cited as evidence that the two alwayscoexist. In the North-East, identity has historically come a poor second to arguments foreconomic intervention in the region (which have latterly explicitly become economicregionalism). Charles and Benneworth argue that the preponderance of nationalised heavyindustry in the North-East, with its very close links in to national industrial policy and unionbargaining, led to a spatial division of labour within the North: control was centralised awayfrom the regions most dependent upon those industries. Although putatively power lay withina corporatist policy arena, the managers eventual dependence on the government for supportand the national organisation of the unions removed control from the regions. 14 This hasbeen reflected by the majority of campaigning literature: the Campaign for a NorthernAssembly as a body has concentrated on making economic and political arguments, notcultural ones. 15

This reflects the lack of lived regional identity, and the lack of reinventable regional culture,in the North-East. Exceptions such as the furore over the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels(a set of ancient illustrated manuscripts which had been stored in London for hundreds of years) prove the rule. The case for the North-East is based on economic rationales, with

identity as the breeze that moves the ship.

The literature on Northern-ness indicates that the North has, in fact, quite substantialidentificatory and motivational resources to draw upon to construct some form of identity: but

13 Fred Robinson, Post-industrial Tyneside: an economic and social survey of Tyneside in the 1980s , Newcastleupon Tyne City Library, 1988, p.114 David Charles and Paul Benneworth, Situating the North-East in the European Space Economy, in ed. NeilWard and John Tomaney, A Region in Transition: North-East England at the Millennium , Ashgate, Aldershot,2001, p.2615

Chris Lanigan, Region-Building in the North-East; Regional Identity and Regionalist Politics, in ed. NeilWard and John Tomaney, A Region in Transition: North-East England at the Millennium , Ashgate, Aldershot,2001, p.115

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that identity is not based in the territory itself. Elcock argues that the working-class solidaritypart of the North-East identity

has been most decisively weakened by the Thatcher and Major administrations: thecommunity organised in intermediate institutionsThose intermediate institutions

which have political roles and in particular that have opposed the Thatcher and Majorgovernments policies, including the unions and the churches as well as localauthorities, have been weakened by sustained legislative and other attacks byMinisters. 16

Hence, some forces in the North-East may be in the process of codifying an identity the livedreality of which is waning. The fact that the issue did not arise until about 1990, and is evennow a preserve of a small minority, reflects both the importance of the working-classcomponent of Northern-ness and an awareness that heavy industry, and the associatedactivities of trade unions, have long had an influential voice in Parliament (and sometimesgovernment), in the form of the Labour Party. The North-East could always rely on somelevel of representation in UK-wide political parties: the most famous expression of solidarity,the Jarrow March of 1936, was not at all territorial in origin. The correlation between thevirtual end of heavy industry in the North-East, the surprise victory of the Conservatives inthe 1992 General Election, and the beginnings of discussion of regional government in theNorth-East is not likely to be coincidental: similar logic informed the formation of theScottish Constitutional Convention in 1990.

The North-East has traditionally voted very strongly for the Labour party: at present Labourhold 28 of the 30 Parliamentary seats in the region. Labour activists have been closelyinvolved in the CNA and its sister body, the North-East Constitutional Convention. Theinterest in devolution from members of a party, and a movement, which has traditionallyprioritised centralised economic planning can be explained by the Lefts experience underThatcher. In other European countries political parties on the right have been equallysupportive of the devolution of powers, with left-based political parties as often opposed asnot (an example being the divisions over the loi Defferre in early 1980s France). Activistsfrom communities which are still scarred from the economic problems experienced then aremore concerned than national politicians to use constitutional reform as a bulwark against acentral political power which pursues policies to which they are opposed.

Hence the construction of some form of regional identity has always been more self-consciousand instrumental in the North-East than in Cornwall, as the issue of territory has never formed

part of political consciousness in the North-East. Tomaney and Ward state that economichistory. [laid] the foundations for a regionally distinctive working-class culture and politicsbased around Labourism. 17 Indeed, Lanigan suggests that, for North-East left-Labourregional activists, regional or territorial identity has been given a bad name in the 1990s, byevents from the war in the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland to bombings of secondhomes in Wales. Moreover, there are deeper-rooted reasons why left-Labour activists mightshy away from regional identity. As Lanigan says, most active political regionalists tend tobe socialists or liberals first and regionalists second. The old socialist internationalist

16

Howard Elcock, A Choice for the North , University of Northumbria, 1996, p.1017 John Tomaney and Neil Ward, Introduction in ed. Neil Ward and John Tomaney, A Region in Transition: North-East England at the Millennium , Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, p.13

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perspective makes it difficult for such people to lower themselves to appeal to argumentsbased on regional identity. 18

There was an extra aspect of North-East identity which related to a reorientation of regionaleconomic planning in the late 1980s. Faced with the lack of interest in coherent state

intervention by the then Thatcher government, some actors in the region attempted to createan entrepreneurial, hard-working, can-do regional identity for the purpose of attracting inwardinvestment. The heritage of large-scale industry with labouring and skilled manual jobs wasre-presented as an obstacle to economic success. 19 This project cut little ice with the moreexplicit regional campaigners who formed the Campaign for a Northern Assembly in 1992.Lanigan explains:

CNA is full of people who have reasons to attack the market-oriented identityproject: academic researchers who are aware of the gap between the hype of the newNorth-East and the reality and see it as their duty to highlight this; Labour councillorswho mistrust the ideological undercurrent of what their regional leaders agree to withtheir business associates on the Northern Development Corporation board; ordinarypeople who feel that their identity is being taken away from them. 20

Instead, North-East campaigning literature on regional government has been presented as analliance between economic and democratic justifications, with identity granted only a passingreference:

First, there is a growing disenchantment with the way we are governed. This isevidenced by a whole set of indicators Second, there is wide agreement that theNorth-East is a region with a characteristic history and identity and these deserverespect. Moreover, the region has distinctive contemporary needs and aspirations thatare widely felt to be under-represented in our highly centralised political system. Inparticular, too often the North-East finds itself firmly at the bottom of most lists of social and economic indicators. Recent events, for instance, have highlighted theway that the regions relative dependence on manufacturing results in economicconditions distinct from, say, the South-East. 21

The publications of the North-East Constitutional Convention since 1999 stress renewal of democracy and accountability, an issue which has the same implications everywhere inEngland. Whether because of disinterest, or belief that it is potentially divisive, the issue ishardly mentioned in their literature.

Regionalism as central government policy

The unfolding policy of the Labour government towards elected regional assemblies revealscentral thinking that is overwhelmingly in sympathy with the economic/planning nexus of regionalism favoured by the North-East, with almost complete disregard for the territorialidentity aspects favoured by Cornwall. This preference (or bias) reflects the traditional LabourParty concerns for redistribution of wealth and economic development in disadvantaged areas.The interests of the North-East will have fed into those concerns through the regions

18 Chris Lanigan, op.cit., p.116-11719

See Lanigan, op. Cit., p.106-108 for a more detailed description of the market-oriented identity project.20 Lanigan, op. Cit., p.11421 North-East Constitutional Convention, Time For A Change , 1999, p.3

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comparative strength within the Labour Party. (Regions such as Yorkshire & Humber and theNorth-West also influence Labour Party thinking another advantage of economicregionalism which Cornwall lacks.) Territorial identitys lack of significance in the North of England due to its relative weakness as a motivational resource, and the fact that they werecrowded out by economic issues is reflected in its near-total absence from Government

publications.22

The first Labour Party policy papers on regional government, A Choice for England and A New Voice for Englands Regions , published in 1995 and 1996, mention regional identityonly in the context of drawing appropriate boundaries, and do not relate identity to theappropriateness of the functions they propose for regional governments. The papers approachthe issue from the standpoint of enhancing democratic accountability and economic growth:

Englands regional structures are inefficient, poorly co-ordinated, and unaccountable.England is also handicapped by a serious regional economic imbalance. It needs muchbetter regional co-ordination of economic development policy to help tackle this. 23

Instead, these papers focus on co-ordination of economic development and land-use planning,an emphasis reflected in subsequent events. The Regional Development Agencies Act passedthrough Parliament in 1998, merging a number of existing economic development bodies intothe new RDAs. This was the only significant development of the English regional agendaduring the 1997-2001 Labour government. Government announcements and speeches byMinisters rigidly followed the economic-technocratic model of regionalism:

We are entering an era in which national government, instead of directing, enablespowerful regional and local initiatives to work, where Britain becomes as it should be a Britain of nations and regions where there are many and not just one centre of initiative and energy for our country. 24

The 2001 Labour manifesto, though treating regionalism in a perfunctory manner, linked adesire for elected regional assemblies with regional identity. It is likely that this constituted anod to the diffuse idea that regional government requires regional identity as a raison dtre(an idea whose force is strengthened by devolution to Scotland and Wales), and a recognitionof the lack of interest in regional government in most of England:

Some functions are best tackled at the regional level. Economic development is thecore of regional policy today. Regional chambers have been set up to provide some

accountability for regional economic decision-making. For some regions this degreeof political representation will be sufficient. However, in other parts of the country theremay be a stronger sense of regional identity and a desire for a regional political voice. 25

22 The White Paper, Your Region, Your Choice , has only a single reference to identity: international evidenceindicates that it is not necessary for a region to have a strong historic identity in order to create a modern politicalone (paragraph 6.3). This is undoubtedly true where strong identities do not pre-exist, but ignores the fact thatthe vast majority of regional identities in Europe have been respected by regional boundaries, even when this hasled to some very small or oddly-shaped regions. (e.g. Val dAosta, Hamburg, Cantabria, Limousin)23

Jack Straw, A Choice For England , Labour Party, 1995, p.124 Gordon Brown, Enterprise and the Regions : Speech at UMIST, Manchester , January 2001, p.225 Labour Party General Election manifesto, Ambitions for Britain , 2001

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There has been little attempt on the part of the Government to make links between thefunctions proposed for elected regional assemblies, regional identity, and the economicimperatives of regional policy. The proposals for elected assemblies in the White Paper arefor a set of functions which are free-floating: that is, they do not relate in any clear way tothe needs of given regions. This reflects the fact that elected regional assemblies, despite their

notional status as distinct bodies with their own electoral mandate, are conceived as part of national government policy. When this is understood it becomes clear why the Government isuninterested in debates over the relationship between regional boundaries and the possibilityof locally- and regionally- inspired action towards economic development, and why it isdemanding that elected regional assemblies agree a six- to ten-point set of targets with thecentral government. Clearly, boundaries matter less if a national policy is the focus of regionalism.

Lessons for government policy

The similarity between the aims of the Government, and the aims of the ConstitutionalConventions in the North-East and elsewhere, has obscured the arbitrary nature of theGovernments regional policy. The nature of the debate over devolved governance inCornwall shines a light on that arbitrariness.

Firstly, the centrality of economic development to the regional debate in England has noparallel elsewhere in Europe. The manifesto statement that economic development is thecore of regional policy today is reflected in the fact that approximately 50% of any electedregional assemblys budget will be intended for the Regional Development Agency (thoughthe elected assembly will be able to vire money if it wishes). In Germany, economicdevelopment is not even an exclusive competence of the regional level, being shared with thefederal government: exclusive competences are matters such as education, police, culture andmedia. In Spain, regional governments have culture, language, agriculture, railways androads, environmental protection and spatial planning: some of these clearly relate to economicdevelopment but there is no equivalent of the unified funding and promotion agency seen inEngland. Most other regional governments have at least some control over health, culture, andeducation, though frequently these too are shared competences with national government.Hopkins observes that with the exceptions of education and spatial planning it is not easy torecognise any general trends in regional-only policy. Although significant responsibility foreconomic development applies to many regional governments, it is rarely regulatedexclusively by the regional tier. 26

The important point is that an emphasis on economic development characterises the Englishdebate as well as the actual proposals. The purpose of regionalisation in England is permittedto be nothing other than economic. There are complementary explanations of why this mightbe the case although these issues have remained at the level of journalistic speculation ratherthan research evidence. Firstly, the strand of thought that any new level of government mustbe strongly justified is still openly evident in the UK. Evidence for this ranges through theinsistence in Labour Party policy documents in 1995-6 that any move to regional assembliesmust be cost-neutral (a commitment that has since been quietly dropped), to the demand forunitary local government in any region with an elected assembly in the Governmentsproposals. Opinion polls, even those that show a surprisingly high level of support forregional assemblies, continually show a strong suspicion that regional assemblies will

26 John Hopkins, Devolution in Context , Cavendish, London, 2002, p.256

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increase bureaucracy (a phrase that covers up a multitude of realities). Aspects of Thatcherite anti-governmentalism still echo within the English psyche.

Secondly, and relatedly, the case for regionalism within the Labour party relates to a yearningfor greater decentralised power with which to have fought the political battles of the 1980s.

The price of centralisation then was economic degradation: hence the reward of regionalismought to be economic improvement. Such sentiments chime with the managerialist ethoscharacterising the Labour government and the New Labour project generally: if regionalismworks, i.e. it contributes to the goals of improving economic (and social and environmental)improvement, then it is justified. A regionalism that did not prioritise economic improvementwould be mere self-indulgence and would be rejected by the electorate.

By contrast, the Cornish case for regionalism is based on a suspicion of economicdevelopment that is designed and delivered from outside Cornwall, a suspicion rooted in pastexperiences where Cornwall was a passive recipient of programmes designed for urban areas.It is based in part on a feeling that the cultural distinctiveness and the unusual settlementpattern of Cornwall are not sufficiently taken on board by policy-makers in fields as diverseas health, environmental issues, arts and heritage, and education.

The distinction between Cornwall and the North-East is reflected in the steering groups of theConstitutional Conventions. The Cornish one is largely made up of independent councillors,town councillors, activists, and community workers. The North-East steering group containsseveral MPs, representatives of the Chambers of Commerce and the Regional DevelopmentAgency, of ethnic minority organisations, arts and cultural groups, trade unions, alongsidelocal councillors and members of the Campaign for a North-East Assembly. This both reflectsand strengthens the character of the regional debate in either place: the North-East, arguably,has a stronger link to the question of the delivery of the policy, through Labour Party linksand through the channels of civil society in the North-East. The emphasis in Cornwall hasbeen far more about grassroots participation (reflected in the creation of a petition whichamassed 50,000 signatures in favour of a Cornish Assembly), which links in to concernsabout democratic renewal, draws upon traditions of Cornish individualism, and also partlyon a sense of cultural and territorial difference (hence the justification for an assembly isshared in a felt sense, implicitly, by everyone in Cornwall). Cornish difference is central tothe campaign, whereas the emphasis on economic benefits, though dealing with issues that arevery real for Cornwall, has been accentuated for the benefit of the ear of central government.

Conclusion

The focus on economic development within English regionalism develops from the twinconcerns of fastening the policy on to bread and butter issues and keeping its profilerelatively low. Regionalism is presented as a purely technocratic solution to various problemsof governance of certain regions of England. It is not presented as a response to any form of identity politics. For this reason the campaign for a Cornish Assembly has not, so far, beensuccessful in convincing the Government that it has a case: because, in the Governmentsview of the policy, it does not. Quenching a thirst for territorial representation to match aterritorial identity, and meeting a sense of historical injustice rooted in territory, form a centralcomponent of the energy behind the Cornish campaign: neither resonates with theGovernments aims or with the energy behind the elite-focused campaign in the North-East.

Documents

English regionalism through the looking glass: Cornwall and the North-East compared