Paul N. Balchin - Regional Policy in Britain: The North-south Divide

Figure 1.1 The north-south division of Britain

While undoubtedly the north became disproportionately disadvantaged by the depression of the 1930s, most of the northern regions have always been the poorest parts of Britain. Even during the Industrial Revolution and its immediate aftermath when the staple industries of the north (coal, cotton textiles and shipbuilding) achieved their highest outputs both the level of unemployment and incomes per capita in the north generally compared unfavourably with those in the south. While employers in many parts of the north were dependent both upon labour-intensive methods of production and unstable export markets, industrial activity in the south was geared more to the home market, and London dominated the nations mercantile activity, banking and finance. Research has recently shown that the highest rates of unemployment in Victorian and Edwardian Britain were primarily found in northern Britain rather than in the south (Southall, 1988); and it has also been revealed that, whereas the northern regions generally had below-average incomes per capita in, for example, 1859-69, 1879-80 and 1911-12 (with Yorkshire & Humberside, the North, Scotland and Wales having the lowest per-capita incomes in these periods), the South East had the highest per-capita incomes throughout the late-nineteenth/early twentieth century, with East Anglia (in the period 1859-69 and 1879-80) and the South West (in the period 1911-12) similarly having above-average per-capita incomes (Lee, 1986; Martin, 1988). Clearly, the instability of the industrial north and the comparatively advantageous position of the southern economy were established features of the British space economy well before the inter-war period (Martin, 1988, p. 394). A revaluation of the pound in 1924, however, and the world depression of the early 1930s, hastened the collapse of the industries of the north, left the south largely unscathed and consolidated the north-south divide.