The north-south divide (and how devolution bridged it)
Divided no more: The north east unites behind the "Cardiff" Assembly
“THE South Walians get everything”: a relentless and depressing cry from parochial politicians and pundits since before devolution began. In the years immediately after devolution, it intensified as the region’s two daily papers – the Daily Post and Wrexham Leader – vied with each other to highlight the latest slight by the “Cardiff” Assembly.
Finding a scapegoat in a crisis is always useful and the Assembly, despite being less powerful and more accessible than the UK Parliament, did the trick just fine. Never mind that plenty of people in the south, including Butetown right next to the Senedd itself, felt as alienated and unrepresented in the Assembly as anyone in Holyhead or Prestatyn.
Of course there are ancient divides caused by Wales’s distinctive geography, colonial history and industrial development that cannot be ignored. The exploitation of raw materials and goods saw movement to market east-to-west, whether as drovers or by the new roads and railways. The barren hills and moors of mid Wales were not conducive to communication between north and south, as anyone who’s tried to commute along the A470 or A483 can testify. The north looked to Liverpool as a place of work, trade, emigration and export in the same way as the Valleys looked to Cardiff and Bristol.
In Welsh much is made of the “Gogs” vs “Hwntws” and the distinctive accents of northerners as compared to southerners. But we have thankfully moved on from the days when some liked to claim that the two accents were mutually incomprehensible. And some people also now realise that there’s more to Welsh accents than Valleys and Gwynedd, whether it’s Kerdiff, Montgomery or Flintshire.
But these often over-emphasised divides of accent can’t mask the commonality of our experiences, both north and south.
Whether English or Welsh speaking, our communities have been forged on the land, in the mine or the ironworks. They have traded in market towns such as Mold, Denbigh and Wrexham just as they have in Pontypridd, Cowbridge and Carmarthen. They were, and are, overwhelmingly working class with a middle class that was more teacher and shopkeeper than accountant and broker. North and south, we also glory in our parochialism and sense of community.
But the truth is we had little opportunity or reason to mingle. True, some Hwntws climbed Snowdon but southerners mainly holidayed in Trecco Bay or Tenby, Northerners in Barmouth or Rhyl. We trekked down to Cardiff for the rugby and more recently the football. Fleeting visits.
Perhaps the greatest exception were the Welsh speakers, or at least those who went to either the Urdd or National Eisteddfod. These peripatetic festivals meant that kids who got through the local eisteddfodau progressed to the Urdd national stage and ended up staying in strangers’ houses (these were pre-paedophile panic days) at the other end of the country. My first visit to Swansea was as a 10-year-old who couldn’t understand why the woman who took us in asked us if we wanted a wee for breakfast. She meant “wy” (egg). Perhaps the accents were mutually incomprehensible at that age.
Later, the National Eisteddfod allowed generations of youngsters to get drunk and cop off in a variety of tents, caravans and fields across north and south, and perhaps that has softened the divide for some. But for those who had no need to venture south, watched Granada not HTV, supported Liverpool or Man U not Wrexham, the south could seem like another country.
So it was not surprising that some people decided to play the north-south divide card for all it was worth when devolution changed the political game in Wales. Anti-devolutionist voices were quick to emphasise the cross-border “dependency”, as they would have it, of the north with the north-west of England. This would be particularly true of health care, with world-class medical centres in Liverpool and Manchester to which many Welsh patients would happily travel.
The undertone was that we couldn’t do without these links, that any further move towards independence would prevent us from using English hospitals became far more insistent when Edwina Hart proposed centralising neurosurgery in Swansea. It was a spectacularly ill-judged call. The north-south divide ruptured like the San Andreas fault at the prospect of people travelling from the north to Swansea rather than Liverpool’s Walton centre.
The outcry on this was part of a wider concern about closing local hospitals and perhaps emphasises one issue in which the north is very different from the south – there are no big cities and the population is far more sparse. Just 30% of the Welsh population lives in the North and it’s far more sparsely populated, which means that closing Llandudno hospital is a real issue when the next one is 20 miles away. Perhaps the politicians used to flitting from city to city on motorways and high-speed rail links didn’t quite make that link from looking at a map.
The Tories promised to “bridge the north-south divide” prior to the 2007 Assembly elections – although the only distinctive northern pledge was to open a Museum of Celtic Civilisation somewhere in the north.
But times change. Devolution has bedded in, albeit with a few sleepless nights. Carwyn Jones’s new cabinet reshuffle now sees four AMs from the North – Alun Ffred Jones and Ieuan Wyn Jones already established but significantly now joined by Alyn and Deeside’s Carl Sergeant and Wrexham AM Lesley Griffiths as a deputy minister. Voices from the under-represented north-east will bring a different perspective, although Lesley Griffiths has already made clear that she doesn’t share the anti-devolutionist perspective of some of her party regarding cross-border cooperation.
Ten years ago, there were 21 train services a day leaving Wrexham station and getting anywhere in Wales beyond Shrewsbury or Chester meant a change of train and a long wait over a depressingly expensive cup of tea. Little surprise that the trains from north to south were quiet affairs. Fast forward to today and that number has doubled to 42 with direct trains to Cardiff and Holyhead as well as to London. The devolution dividend has delivered in a surprising way – WAG grants have enabled rail companies to offer more services and the passengers have responded – trains from Holyhead to Cardiff are now full and Wrexham station is now buzzing again. Central Cardiff is now two-and-a-half hours away from Wrexham – it doesn’t seem so far away now.
Local politicians will sometimes try to revive the old rupture for their own political and parochial reasons but the evidence contradicts the rhetoric. Yes, the south will get more money than us – not surprising with 70% of the population and many of them living in poverty. Yes, Cardiff will get the Millennium Centre and Stadium and Assembly – if we believe Wales is a nation then we now have a capital fit for purpose. Yes, the north needs more resources but hopefully without resorting to the parochial narrow-mindedness of citing “the divide”.
The greatest symbolic bridging of the divide came just before Christmas when the Wrexham Leader, a daily paper that has led the charge in emphasising the north-south divide in the past, published an astounding front page that reflected local people’s desires to give the Assembly some real teeth: “Make us a real nation… just like the Scots”. Times really have changed when the paper that serves the border areas of Flintshire and Wrexham starts making noises like that.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flickr
A refreshing perspective, Marc Jones! Certainly, the Welsh capital should have been better located in Aberystwyth, more easily accessible to the north and south. Yet, perhaps its location in the south has also reinforced a distinctive Welsh identity to South Walians, and their numbers may mean something. Perhaps Cardiff can bridge the north-south divide in ways that may not have been clear when it was first designated the capital.
Marc’s article is interesting as he address the problem of Wales being a pseudo-nation. In my working life I have probably visited every city, town and village or at sometime or other passed through them. The advantage of visiting a place on business is that you get to talk to the people living there. The thing that struck me forceably is how different the people are by origin, by accent and by attitude. It was obvious that not only were the people separated by the geography and differences in language, but by spheres of economic interest and origin. The people living in Wales are not homogenous and that Welshness is a different thing to different groups of people. It is realistic to accept that some of the population is historic and form a distinctive cultural group. It is also realistic to accept that the people living in North East Wales have a strong origin and cultural connection to Cheshire and Liverpool. It is realistic to accept that people in South Pembrokeshire are different to people in the Prescelli Hills. And that differences exist in the population of South Wales who have as large an origin from the border counties as they do from historic Wales. Arguments about who are the true Welsh, based on DNA and language and Medevial history are frankly irrelevant. The Welsh are the people living in Wales today.
South Africa have this range of differences to a greater degree and have accepted that it is a rainbow nation. Wales, the modern day Welsh, has differences based on history and economic practices. Inventing a One Nation identity is artificial. People in Flint will shop in Chester and will fly to their Turkish package holiday from John Lennon or Manchester Airport. People in the South will fly to their Costa apartment from Cardiff or increasingly Bristol. People in Mid-Wales will fly to their villa in Cyprus from Birmingham. And ne’er the twain will meet.
I never have understood why people need to have a political system to give them identity. I’m from the South, as someone commented in Penygroes, Caernarvonshire, but I always regarded people from the other parts of Wales, with all their diferences, as being Welsh. I never allow anyone to describe me as being English, though I accept Bristish and readily admit to being from the UK. I regularly regale, especially Americans who think England is the UK, with stories of great people from Wales who have done amazing things. The peak of which is having Everest named after a Welshman. You can’t get higher than that.
My comment to Marc is, we are Welsh, complete with our differences. Being Welsh is, well, what more do you want than that!
Len: You appear to be making the point that Welsh people are Welsh whether they are from the North or the South. This is implicit in Marc’s article. Marc is making a point about the North / South divide and how devolution has helped bring an end to that. He’s not making a point about what it means to be Welsh. Would you care to comment on the relevant issue in the article?
As David says, nice to look at the country ever so slightly differently. It made me remember, many moons ago, when I was writing a piece about something or other, I came across a military analysis that argued (convincingly, in my view) that Wales was always the easier country to conquer than Scotland because its rivers ran East-West, against it and in favour of the invaders.
Add to that the unfortunate geographical dotting of its mountain ranges (Fortress Gwynedd and the Beacons, between Brecon and Merthyr) and I think it is a real testament to the culture of this nation that it has held itself together, survived and thrived (please, please don’t start arguing as to what degree) next to a country that was to dominate much of the globe and usher in the modern world.
Sometimes it helps to look at the positives. Diolch, Marc.
A pseudo-nation? (according to the well-travelled Len Gibbs). I’d rather describe Wales as an imagined community (insofar as all nations are – particularly the “British nation”) and I’m with Gwyn Alf Williams* in that Wales has to reinvent itself constantly in order to survive. This past decade has been one such period of reinvention, as was the late Victorian era.
To that extent, I’d also agree with Duncan that the most amazing thing about Wales is that we are actually talking about it as a national entity at all. Objectively we should be West Anglia after military conquest, political annexation and cultural discrimination, but we persist and endure.
Stubborness or perhaps defiance – is that a national characteristic?
* “Wales…. the Welsh make and remake Wales.. if they want to”
Sounds like the basis for your next piece for us, mate…
I think that the North East should have a national institution. There are several in the South East. A few in the south west, one on Aberystwyth and even a national museum in the north west. If we ever have enough cash to create another such institution, then Wrexham should be the target.
I just thought that I would get that one off my chest, for national unity. Having our national gallery in Wrexham would also give the South Wales Echo a fit. It has to be worth it, just for their headline!
Rob: You ask about the relevance.
The emphasis I made is that I see the ‘divide’ to be much less than Marc’s article. Whether there is a ’state’ or not, the people in Wales are Welsh and although there are ‘divides’ they are not as important as might first appear. Being Welsh is better than becoming Welsh by ’state’. One of the advantages of being Welsh is that because there aren’t to many of us, we can know people from all over Wales. I do and I can meet them at national events. My basis for ’state’ is we are Welsh, and if we want a state, let’s agree on it, rather than we need a state to become Welsh.
Marc: “A pseudo-nation? ” Almost as soon as I pushed the submit button I thought, “I should have changed
that.” I would have changed it to “hybrid nation” because it matched the thrust of the comment.
“Talking about it as a national entity ” Your article took a more legal standpoint than my comment, but we are making the same point with different emphasis. It is remarkable that a small population next to a huge nation has maintaind a self-identity. It is all the more remarkable because much of the population of Wales has strong historic links to England and yet, they have a Welsh identity. The identity may be different in North East Wales to that in South Pembroke and so on, but the remarkable thing is that all groups subscribe to a Welsh identity.
“Well-travelled” It has been one of the privileges of my working life to have travelled all over Wales, meeting people. I have seen it in all of the seasons, in winter when the visitors aren’t there to packed roads in summer. I’ve seen it in the spring when it is fresh and in the autumn when the trees take on their hues. I’ve seen it from the sea, sailing from Deganwy to Porthcawl. I paint it. I have an exhibition in the Washington Gallery, Penarth, in late March of some of those paintings, the coast from Penarth to Aberaeron. If you really want to get to know Wales and its people, get a job that pays you to travel around it and when you retire, paint it!
An addendum:
My experience of Welsh diversity came in the early 1970’s when I was in a position to determine how customer accounts were serviced. Traditionally, for geographical reasons, North Wales is managed by someone from Liverpool/Manchester, Mid-Wales from Birmingham and South Wales from Bristol. I made the decision to manage all the accounts in Wales as a single management entity. To do this the mileage is high and time consuming. I decided among my other duties to service the accounts myself. Many of the customers in the North had never had a commercial representative from someone from the South. I was received well and was asked to continue visiting them BECAUSE I was from the South. Although there were many differences between us, they were of lesser importance than the fact that we both had a Welsh indentity. The friendly reception and good will of these people has had a lasting impact on my view of the what and who is Welsh. As an aside…we also offered, for those who wanted too, to conduct correspondance between the two companies in Welsh. As I have pointed out earlier, being Welsh is better than becoming Welsh.
While i’d agree that devolution may have to an extent helped bridge the (exaggerated) north-south divide, I neverthless find myself concerned about what is perhaps a more salient division between east and west, particularly in relation to the North East: are we perhaps in some sense in danger of “losing” the North East in the long term, despite devolution? I’m aware, for example, that Marc Jones and his collegues have been very active on the issue the Mersey/Dee alliance and the North-East Wales/West Cheshire sub-regional strategy and its possible implications for the Welsh identity of that part of the country.
How do we go about perhaps “anchoring” Wrexham and Flinshire within Wales in the face of the sheer gravitational pull of an emergent Greater Merseyside? And more generally, how do advocates of increased self government/ independence propose that we manage the intimate and complex social and economic linkages which span our long and porous border with England in a less “colonial” form?
@RTG You are quite right about the issues relating to North East Wales, and the fine work Mr Jones and others have been doing in Wrexham. There will be a piece by me on Wales Home in the next couple of weeks discussing this very issue – so watch out for it!
Good article. Marc. However, I dont think that you can down play the feeling among voters in the North that there is a divide in Wales. Devolution has played a role. However, there are still undercurrents, particularly in North East Wales, of bias towards the south.
The recent press release by Mark Isherwood AM regarding the “sifting” process in determining the shortlist for the recent Strategic Capital Investment Fund bids makes very interesting reading.
…. “I’m with Gwyn Alf Williams”…
And me. Good article Marc.
PS It’s a shame that Gwyn Alf’s masterwork “When Was Wales” is out of print.