LibDem Councillor Chris Abbott says it’s Yorkshire Day today and time we recognised our real counties still existYorkshire Day was created in 1975. It is celebrated annually on 1 August, which is the anniversary of the Battle of Minden in 1759 when Yorkshire soldiers laid white roses alongside their fallen comrades.
Events are taking place all over Yorkshire and in a number of special places we read the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity, this year at 1133am precisely. The time 1133am represents 1133 years since the earliest known written reference to the Ridings of York in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles of the year 876AD.
In York the readings have taken place every year since 1975 around the three Bars of York (that’s gates to southerners) to represent the three Ridings and once inside the walls to represent the City of York. It is read in the four languages used in Yorkshire since 876. Latin, Old Norse, Old English and Modern English.
This year it will take place with people carrying the newly standardised Yorkshire flag (pictured) that was registered with the Flag Institute UK on Friday. The flag has been around for donkey's years but it had not been registered.
Though many people are unaware of it, it is a fact that the Ridings of Yorkshire were not actually abolished by local government changes.
The County Councils were but not the geographic counties that they were placed upon as part of the 1888 Local Government Act.
The Parliamentary Acts of 1973 and 1992 had no effect on them either. Governments, legal experts and many other reputable bodies all agree. This is not an accident. Parliament has repeatedly decided over the last two centuries to separate local government and the traditional counties.
For example, the 1972 Act abolished the North Riding County Council but it did not abolish the North Riding of Yorkshire. But the 1992 Act abolished both Cleveland County Council and the County of Cleveland. This allowed John Major to make the following statement in 1992: “This re-organisation of Local Government is an opportunity for people to reclaim the Ridings of Yorkshire.” It was the same for the likes of Humberside and Avon.
The counties developed in different ways in different parts of Britain. The Ridings of Yorkshire are amongst the earliest. The first recorded reference to the Ridings appears in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles of 876, nine years after the Viking conquest of the area. But some parts of the boundaries can be traced to 735 and may go back to Roman times. Riding is probably derived from a Norse word meaning a third part. It may come from an Old English origin meaning a thirding. Actually, Yorkshire has four parts since the ancient City of York (within the walls) is in no Riding.
There is much confusion about the status of Counties. This never need happen if you accept the truth that the Ridings and all of England's 39 counties still exist because they were never abolished. It would not happen if people understood the statements made by Government every time Local Government re-organisation has taken place:
“These changes are for Local Government purposes only for all other purposes Yorkshire is still Yorkshire.”
Re-organising local government from time to time is necessary but it does not have to destroy our heritage and identity.
The answer is to accept that our traditional counties remain for all cultural, ceremonial, sporting and postal purposes. They should be sign posted and shown on maps alongside the ever-changing local government areas. Unitary Councils and the 1974 plastic counties (those that still exist) are not real counties and should not be called counties. They are administrative areas.
This way we get a stable geography, easily identified by clear natural boundaries and forever afterwards if the bureaucrats at Whitehall decide that we need to alter LG boundaries nobody feels they have lost their identity.
36 comments:
I don't think I'll ever forgive the people who moved my boyhood home out of the wonderful Co. Durham and into the execrable Tyne and Wear. It may be for 'administrative purposes only' but there don't seem to be many other purposes!
As well to note that several areas were removed from Yorkshire in the 1974 changes - Sedbergh to Cumbria, Startforth Rural District to Durham, Forest of Bowland to Lancashire etc.
But what about the long-forgotten detached parts of counties? Like the sliver of Wiltshire that was locally situated in Berkshire east of Reading? And can anyone remember the nine separate parts of Cromartyshire that were all forgotten when it was merged with Ross-shire?
Also if we are respecting traditional counties we should also respect their subdivisions, the hundreds/wapentakes/lathes/rapes/wards etc.
High time we recognised that our country (ENGLAND!) still exists too - much as the Labour Party and our EU masters might prefer otherwise.
The situation in Wales is even stranger. Here the pre 1972 counties were abolished leading to a situation where some of our post 1990 Local Authorities carry the names of historical counties although they have entirely different borders.
The worst of these is Monmouthshire. The current "Monmouthshire" conisist of less than a half of the old county and less than a sixth of its population. Denbighshire and Flintshire too have little relationship to their historic borders.
Making things even more complex, while the pre-1972 counties WERE abolished the post 1972 ones WEREN'T when local government was last reorganised. So in our case the eight "preserved counties" are the ones that were created in the Seventies. Some of these such as Gwynedd and Gwent command huge local affection as they are ancient Welsh Kingdoms, predating the counties, others such as South Glamorgan or Clwyd are meaningless.
'appen
and never mentioned the bleedin' Dales once.
Boringfartnote: you've studied the language, did you know Dale shares roots with Tal?
Scumbria is an administrative area not a county. The Royal Mail will still deliver to e.g. Barrow in Furness, Lancashire. It knows the County Palatine extends North of the bay.
The Association of British Counties
http://www.abcounties.co.uk/
includes the Friends of Real Lancashire.
http://www.forl.co.uk/
Don't know what happens on the wrong side of the pennines. Not sure I want to.
I completely agree. I'm very proud of my county (Worcestershire) and would love to see a renewed affection for local, county identity, reflected in a government policy that realigns local government along old county lines.
Perhaps elections to the upper House of Parliament (if they ever happen) could be based on the real counties. Living, as I do, in Ealing, I'd love to be able to vote for a representative for Middlesex.
Just one more thing to blame Ted Heath for.
When the post-war reorganisation of English local government started, the local authorities of all Yorkshire got together and sent their most senior official to present Yorkshire's view to the relevant Commission. What they asked for was one Yorkshire County Council centred in York, and for that County Council to be empowered to organise whatever lower tier authorities it thought fit. I reckon that is still the best proposition on the table for all the administrative farradiddle, local and regional.
I have known the flag since my schooldays in the 1950s. Where can we buy it?
I still think the old County of Avon was brilliant. And it worked properly too - not like the six piffling new unitary authorities which replaced it and are still quarrelling, 14 years later and countless rises in local taxation. How about we scrap them and, you know, merge them back into....
Don't the Scottish counties deserve a mention then? Long live Roxburghshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Clackmannanshire!
The child's game that every one of us has played - and in my case it went 'Chattisham, East Suffolk, East Anglia, England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, Earth, Galaxy ...'- reinforces our place and identity in the great scheme of things. People have an excellent understanding of their geographical (tribal) identity.
Estate agents, too, know to within a millimetre where one neighbourhood ends and another begins.
Yet ask anyone where their council ward boundaries run and you will be rewarded by a look of blank incomprehension. Try Euro constituency boundaries and it will be even worse. The greatest degree of recognition is of parliamentary constituencies, as these have been slowest to change and therefore closest to the boundaries of natural recognition. All else are areas of administrative convenience; unnatural, imposed and unrecognised.
Yet these boundaries are of critical importance to the extent to which we 'engage' in the trite phraseology; the 1972 Act was an abomination. As was the 1964 Police Act. Both were Whitehall ordure; ignorant and obtuse civil servants drawing lines on maps of central administrative convenience, men replete with smug narcissistic ideological pieties never doubting they could be in grievous error.
Yes, the time is high to reclaim our boundaries. Let's start with parishes and wards and work up from there - ourselves. The counties will fall into place.
By 'eck Lad, tha's reet hit nail on t'head there.
I allus use "Yorkshireman" when asked my ethnicity. Reet buggers up statistics that do.
I could give you a big kiss for this post, Chris.
You are so right. I am sick to death of this government and the EU's undemocratic petty dictators and jobsworth's creating Mickey Mouse jobs and empires for themselves our of destroying our heritage and identity.
I love Essex, my beautiful county and Yorkshire and each and every one of our Island's lovely traditional counties.
We need a campaign to oust these wretches who've stolen our counties, our heritage and so much else besides.
I bought a Yorkshire flag off 't internet last year, and had it on 't car when we went to France - Yorkshire on 't driver's side and Welsh on 't passenger's. It certainly confused people, which is one of the functions of being a Tyke. I'm reet glad it's now official, though.
The post office and big business are doing their best to abolish counties. You must have had many letters (as I have) where the town and the post code suffice. How many forms do you fill in where, again, there is no space for a county, just the post code?
I suggest a personal crusade to AWAYS write your county on the envelope and the form.
I live in Forest Gate. I have never seen any sign of this being part of some traditional Essex.
Oh dear, "Traditional Counties" nonsense. I can't take any organisation seriously that has Russell Grant for its leader.
In a strange way the eventual demise of the Labour party and the return of perhaps a LibDem/Tory duopoly in England and the Nats in Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales might create a climate in which Government might work better with a return to old county boundries.
Labour is a spent force in the old industrial cities and the opposition to getting rid of the abomination of Metropolitan Boroughs/Counties and Unitary Authorities might be reversible.
In my view Leeds has always been in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is not a separate thing called a Metropolitan Borough that sits inside a thing called a Metropolitan County. Geoffrey Boycott went to Hemsworth Grammar school(near Wakefield/Barnsley)just a mile from where I grew up as a young child. I later moved to a village near York and went to school in Harogate. Both Geoff and I would have no hesitation in saying we grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Bring Back Avon,
Its already back under the guise of Greater Bristol.
The mayor of Bristol was out beating the Bounds a few months back, Apparently they go to Steepholm and Flatholm, no coincidence this was done just after a proposal for the proposed Severn barrage was announced along the line from the two islands in the Channel.
The sooner the people of north Somerset and Bath and N East Somerset are freed from the Bristol Slave masters the better, as there seats ere still vacant in Taunton
Anonymous said...
"The post office and big business are doing their best to abolish counties."
They don't have anything against the counties. It is just that, with the advent of postcodes, the name of the county became surplus to requirements. If it makes people happier they are free to include the county in the address. The Post Office don't object to the county name; they simply ignore it.
What about Kirklees then? Thats old Huddersfield Borough, Dewsbury,Heckmondwike, Cleckheaton,Batley,Mirfield, meltham Holmfirth, Slaithwaite, Marsden, Linthwaite, Milnsbridge, Golcar, or if you like, Huddersfield and the Colne and Holme Valleys, and Dewsbury and Spen Valley.
Its a mish mash whatever.
Anon 1047 - Flatholm belongs to Wales doesn't it?
People used to talk about 'Merseyside' long before it became a short-lived administrative division, and I don't think anyone ever thought of Liverpool as really being part of Lancashire, but generally you're right, preserve our counties.
Tim Roll-Pickering said...
I live in Forest Gate. I have never seen any sign of this being part of some traditional Essex.
It was, Tim, a century or two ago. But whether places within counties are traditional places or not isn't the issue.
Counties are a very long held tradition in these islands. If a majority of us want to retain the identity and boundaries of our counties, why the heck should we? What right has some EU or nulab apparatchik jobsworth got to destroy those counties and their boundaries?
As I said in my blog after being priveleged to be part of the magnificent Yorkshire Day parade at Guisbrough "I think it is good to celebrate, and having a sense of identity and firm roots is part of a mature society. Confident people and places are good at welcoming and reaching out to others."
Suzanne Fletcher
http://www.readmyday.co.uk/suzannefletcher
"The answer is to accept that our traditional counties remain for all cultural, ceremonial, sporting and postal purposes."
What was the question?
The Post Office don't object to the county name; they simply ignore it.
My point exactly, use it, or lose it.
Love Yorkshire ("God's Country") and the beer.
Fact is though, Yorkshire has a fifth column - "Yorkshire First" and the collection of prolapsed haemorrhoidial QANGOs that feast around it.
Long live Yorkshire the County, death to Yorkshire the RDA!
An old Lancashire saying:
"The finest sight an Englishman can see is the road out of Yorkshire"
For some reason the BBC can't bring itself to use the word 'county' in the headline, and they have attributed Yorkshire Day's creation to an economic downturn when that simply isn't the case.
Many thanks for this. 'Yorkshire is Yorkshire' - see www.yorksview.co.uk/trivia
Dynamite,
I would agree that Flatholm is on the Welsh side of the Channel, I was only stating what the Mayor of Brisol did on Board a Royal Navy Mine Sweeper, some months back.
Good post Chris (and thanks Iain) - I live a mile from the North Yokshire/Cleveland border and I know that many to the north still hanker after a Yorkshire address. Our post town is across the border in Teeside and people complain that the TS postcode puts the insurance up :)
In Hinderwell and Runswick Bay there were more Yorkshire flags flying than last year. It's catching on Chris.
On a political related note, here in Hinderwel we are governed by the Parish Council, Scarbrough Borough COuncil, North Yorkshire County Council, we have a Tory MP (who I saw driving a steam lorry at Pickering today - Robert Goodwill) a few MEPs (who apear to b a waste of food), North Yorkshire Moors National Parks and a few guanos, I mean quangos. Are we properly governed yet?
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