of work (Renton, 2008). By the end of the 20th century, the Government Office for the North East (GONE, 2008: 7) was reporting a decades-long trend of outmigration. However, the trend began to reverse around 2008, as shown by the 2011 Census, which found that the population had risen by around 3.2 per cent since 2001.
Historically, the North East was always the site of population flows and exchanges, and archaeological artefacts bear witness to the diverse origins of troops sent to defend the Roman wall from across the Roman Empire, including Belgians, Dutch and even Syrian cohorts. The growing number of Christian foundations across Dark Age and medieval Northumbria embedded the importance of the region within wider European scholarship and exchanges, while invaders from what is now Scandinavia changed the population and influenced place names from the 8th century onwards.
The region has been a major centre for migration in two modern periods: the first was from 1820 to 1920, when it saw mass migration from Scotland and Ireland, mainly attracted by the high wages and abundance of work in the region; the second period has taken place since 1987 as a result of the government’s dispersal scheme, which has sought to distribute refugee communities across the country to moderate the impact of international migration on London and the South East (Renton, 2008). Academic studies have connected recent arrivals with the history of the region’s migration flows, while illustrating that their experience has varied with the type of community they have joined and the prevailing economic conditions (for example, Olsover, 1981; Lawless, 1995; Buckler, 2011).
Industry
The national image of the North East has undoubtedly been shaped by its past economic and industrial strengths in coal, steel, shipbuilding, heavy engineering and armaments, and indeed as one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. It was economically important from around the middle of the 19th century until the last quarter of the 20th century. With the emergence of a global industrial system, the North East fell behind newly industrialising countries with abundant primary resources and a cheaper labour force. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the region’s economic role in the UK had significantly declined, a decline accelerated by the withdrawal of government subsidies to heavy industry in the 1980s.
In general terms, the region has been riven with internal inequalities throughout its history and its industry also participated in generating inequalities elsewhere, having been imposed on other nations through the political power of the British Empire (Hudson, 2005). This history of severe and visible inequalities (McCord, 1979) had its counterpart in influential thinkers challenging the status quo, including the historical North Eastern reformers and activists Thomas Spence, Josephine Butler, W.T. Stead, Emily Wilding Davison and Ellen Wilkinson (‘Red Ellen’). Spence was an early champion of rights for all, Butler and, fatally, Davison fought for women’s rights, while Butler and W.T. Stead also worked to combat child prostitution. Wilkinson was a politician and journalist who became the first female Education Secretary in 1945, introducing free milk and school meals. Notably, the region has a prominent link with the civil rights movement that stretches from Earl Grey (Foreign Secretary in 1806), who introduced the Act that abolished the slave trade, to Newcastle University awarding Martin Luther King an honorary doctorate in 1967. Between these periods, the important visitor Frederick Douglass (an abolitionist and former slave) lived for a time in Newcastle, where sisters-in-law Anna and Ellen Richardson raised the £150 to secure his freedom (Hodgson, 2016). The Richardsons also campaigned to refuse goods from slavery, to educate the poor and for teetotalism (Hodgson, 2016).
Deindustrialisation has resulted in improvements in air quality, healthier cities and a rural area that is increasingly attractive to ex-urban migrants, particularly in County Durham. The growing public sector and services economy that replaced industry created jobs that were accessible to, or even targeted, women workers (Hudson, 2005: 587). The range and quality of the region’s educational institutions has led to its growth as a ‘knowledge economy’. The low cost of property and land relative to the England average can provide a draw for in-migration and business relocation, and has allowed the development of a more outward-looking, multicultural region. The region’s long and often strife-riven industrial history has left a legacy of successful workplace organisation and campaigning; today, the North East region is notable for having the highest number of workplaces with a trades union presence in England, with over a quarter of the workforce belonging to a union (DBEIS, 2017).
Environment
In spite of its industrial reputation, around two thirds of the North East region is rural, with half of the rural area either designated as a national park (Northumberland and North York Moors) or as an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) (GONE, 2009). Although the imaginary of the North East in national policy continued to be centred around work and productivity, some awareness of its cultural and environmental assets emerged in the latter part of the century, when radio and television disseminated its traditions more widely (see later section on cultural regeneration) and tourism rose in prominence as part of its economy. In terms of environmental assets, the North East has been described as having ‘some of the UK’s finest high-quality and diverse countryside, and natural and built heritage, including a varied coastline ranging from extensive sandy beaches, dunes and inter-tidal flats, to spectacular cliffs, islands and rocky outcrops’ (GONE, 2008: 6). The region was awarded two world heritage sites in the mid-1980s: Durham Castle and Cathedral from 1986; and Hadrian’s Wall from 1987 – shared with the North West of England and part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire international sites (GONE, 2008: 6).
Regarding its rural areas, the agriculturally productive land is mainly found along the coastal plain (particularly in Northumberland), while higher ground to the west provides large acreages of pasture (Faulkner and Gregory, 2010: 10). Along the line dividing the pasturage from arable land are located the region’s main historic market towns – due to their origins as places for exchange between the different products of each type of farming. While the rising role of coal in the region’s economy came to reduce their relative prominence, many of these towns retain regional significance as rural ‘hub’ towns and visitor destinations (Roberts, cited in Green and Pollard, 2007: 10).
There is a trend for the rural areas to increase in population at a higher rate than the urban ones, influenced by those from the urbanised parts of the region moving out to the rural west, as well as through in-migration from other regions by those in mid- to later life, who are particularly attracted to Northumberland and County Durham (Midgley et al, 2005: 6). At the 2001 Census, 16.9 per cent of the North East’s population lived in a rural ward (Midgley et al, 2005: 4). By the 2011 Census, this proportion had increased to 18.4 per cent of the population, while 81.4 per cent were classed as urban dwellers (ONS, 2013).
Governance
