When the news broke that Melvyn Bragg was standing down after presenting over a thousand episodes of In Our Time, I instantly recalled one of my favourite moments on the show. When a guest explained that Bragg’s fellow Northerner George Stephenson had been mocked in the courts for his strong Geordie accent, Melvyn audibly bristled, and declared: “Well, London has a lot to answer for.”

I had similar feelings when I heard that Reform UK plans to cancel Northern Powerhouse Rail if the party wins the next general election. Leaving aside the short-sightedness of spurning potential voters in the Red Wall running through Northern England, the most striking part of this is how the old London-centric outlook and assumptions of the governing class persist within new insurgent forces as well as the traditional parties.

Back in the 1820s, Geordie Stephenson had been down in London to argue for railway-building in the North. This was the very same infrastructure he had pioneered in the coalfields of Northumbria, and which then unlocked miraculous economic growth when the Cottonopolis of Manchester was connected by rail to the mighty entrepôt of Liverpool.

As the leading voice of an assertive Northern school of economics, Tom Forth has argued persuasively that the great railway companies of the 19th century, together with the municipal corporations, were the region’s key economic institutions. Working together, these helped to nurture the Industrial Revolution to the point where travel within England became so easy “that the North could be governed in absence from the South”. Yet from the First World War onwards — when they were put under national direction to ensure the smooth transport of munitions to the front — control of the railways was steadily centralised. That first came from the headquartering of the four great railway companies in London in 1921, and then finally by full nationalisation in 1947.

The municipal corporations were similarly emasculated by the coming of the welfare state, steadily divested of core economic responsibilities and local tax-raising powers. Thus, an increasingly imperial Whitehall was established, which has developed such blind spots that it sees nothing unnatural in having some of the largest cities in Europe — such as Manchester and Birmingham — without a metro system, while London-based parliamentarians and civil servants glide to work in luxurious comfort on the staggeringly expensive Thameslink and Crossrail.

Additionally, there is huge demand for railway capacity right across the country. My own mother proudly told me recently that she had just got the train from Seaton Delaval to Newcastle for the first time in 60 years. For the Northumberland Line has just reopened after being culled by British Railways chairman Richard Beeching in 1964. It is now connected to the Tyne and Wear Metro — a network which itself is based on one of the world’s very first electrified suburban railways, established in Tyneside’s prosperous Edwardian heyday.

Northumberland County Council faced much naysaying in its commitment to the Line, but its has been totally vindicated, with passenger numbers five times higher than anticipated. With plans afoot next to connect the Metro to key industrial sites south of the Tyne, railway infrastructure could be the key to unlocking the desperately needed Northern economic growth that has been so elusive for so long.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham certainly thinks so. With admirable chutzpah, he recently announced plans for a new underground network. Manchester Piccadilly Station would become the “Kings Cross of the North of England”, with the Mayor declaring that “this isn’t a pipe dream — we will not accept anything else.” As usual, whether it’s in the 1820s or 2020s, Manchester eventually catches up to railway innovation that we take for granted in the North East. Burnham is surely right that the North needs to stop just accepting whatever the capital decides. Just don’t bet on those in Westminster catching on any time soon.

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Dan Jackson is the author of the best-selling book The Northumbrians: The North East of England and its People. A New History, published by Hurst (2019)

 

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