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The North East of England: place, economy and people
Elizabeth Brooks and Mel Steer
Introduction: a portrait of the North East
This chapter introduces the North East of England: its people, industries, how it is governed, how it compares to other regions and its future outlook. Before this account, the origin of the idea of the North East is considered, bearing in mind that, at least in England, regions are both historically recent and fragile entities, their integrity challenged by a raft of devolution initiatives at sub- and supra-regional level. This sets the scene for the next section, a thumbnail portrait of the North East’s geography, industry, heritage and culture. The section further explores the challenges of deindustrialisation and of governance and economic restructuring. A final section explores how the North East compares with similar regions in England and Europe. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of what the future may hold for the region.
The idea of a North East region
Although it may seem to have always been with us, the idea of a North East region is a relatively new one. Soon after its emergence as a nation, England was split up into counties for the purpose of governance, a division that is reflected in today’s local government structure. Although regional terms such as ‘The North’ were in common usage, they were generally ill defined and subject to interpretation. The North East only began to be viewed separately from the North West during the mid-18th to early 19th century (Green and Pollard, 2007: 12–20), at which point academic interpretation, industrial specialisation and, mainly as a consequence of this, political interests clustered around the distinctive characteristics of the area, in particular, the varied commerce and industry based on the ready supply of energy from the Great Northern Coalfield. The recognition of a North East region in England has subsequently waxed and waned, along with periodic attempts to address regional economic problems and create regional governance that have met with only temporary or partial success (Elcock, 2014). For this reason, studies and detailed analysis at the North East region level, though relating to a wide historical period, date mainly to the recent period of regional governance (1994–2010/12), with a number of notable exceptions outside of this period (for example, McCord, 1979; Jackson, 2019).
While the region continues to exist culturally and in official statistics, various decentralisation drives since 2009 have resulted in many supra- and subregional governance bodies, differently defined by economic, health and combined authorities, explored later in the section on governance; this has resulted in fragmented and overlapping governance structures, with consequences for transparency and accountability. Nevertheless, consideration of the historical path and current challenges of the constituent parts of the region suggests continued value in considering the region as a whole, as will emerge from the following sections.
A thumbnail portrait of the North East
The North East region of England covers a varied urban, rural and coastal landscape, with diverse communities and 12 local authorities (municipalities) situated in the region (see Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: North East England and its constituent local authorities
Source: Wikimedia Commons (available under the Creative Commons CC0 License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License)
Population
The North East is the smallest English region outside of London, extending over an area of approximately 850,000 hectares. In the 2012 mid-year estimates, the region also accounted for only 4 per cent of the UK population (2.6 million), giving it the lowest population of any of the English regions, and one smaller than Scotland and Wales, though still larger than Northern Ireland. Over much of the 20th century, the North East suffered from population decrease, mainly due to net outmigration. Even as early as the years between 1927 and 1938, a national scheme to relocate people living in poor mining areas moved around 100,000 people out of the North East. In the 1950s, the population of the region fell by around 70,000, largely due to people
