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The 1979 election heralded a political sea change in the UK, as Thatcherite 'Two Nation' politics regarded inequality as evidence of a vibrant capitalism. As a result, inter-regional inequalities were exacerbated as the effects of deindustrialisation, capacity reductions and job losses fell most heavily in the 'North'. The lifting of restrictions on capital export precipitated the overseas relocation of private sector manufacturing, with job losses concentrated in the 'North'. Cuts to nationalised industries were also concentrated in the 'North'. Meanwhile the 'South' benefitted because of the primacy given to banking and financial services in economic policy priorities and the spatially selective concentration of Government spending on R& D and infrastructure. However, there were also widening intraregional inequalities within both 'North' and 'South', not least because of housing policies. Crucially, post-Thatcher the neoliberal emphases on private sector growth and commodification were adopted by New Labour and Conservative-Liberal coalition governments so that socio-spatial inequality became more deeply embedded in a Divided Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article suggests that the major factors that determined the level and pattern of wages in northern England in the early modern era was the demand and supply of labor. Wage-rate movements in different parts of the country conformed to the pattern established for the south of England. The overall picture was one of substantial stability in nominal rates punctuated by short periods of turbulence when they edged upwards. No doubt local influences, often hidden from the historian, combined to shape the particular wage profiles of different places, but the broad similarity of movements indicates that larger forces were at work. During the early decades of the sixteenth century rates of pay were broadly similar in most of the towns of northern England, but by the end of the seventeenth century two clearly differentiated groups had emerged. The division was largely evident by the Restoration but it became more apparent by 1700 as wage rates in some of the high wage towns edged upwards and those in some of the low wage towns drifted downwards.

In recent years, economic geographers have turned their attention to the growing geographical reach and complexity of economic networks to focus on the increasing integration of economies, the geographical organization of economic activity and the social, economic and political relationships within these networks. Within this work, particular attention has been paid to the corporation, allowing for corporate geographies to be rethought using new approaches and new methodologies. Building on these approaches, we seek to develop a holistic economic geography which embeds the globalizing corporation within a broad array of economic, social, political and cultural settings shaped by multiple social agents. We do this in the con- text of the European steel industry. We argue that refocusing attention on the steel industry is important for two reasons. First, the industry itself has radically changed in the last decade. Persistent global overcapacity and cycles of profitability, ongoing consolidation and privatization, the emergence of new steel regions and of more 'globalized' steel producers have all altered the industry's anatomy. Second, the tools of economic geography have changed. New approaches enable us to look again at the steel industry and to rethink its corporate geographies. This article develops these arguments by using an innovative approach, integrating the narratives of two steel corporations and two European steel regions, and focusing on issues of corporate geography, financialization, government and governance, labour and community. In this way, we seek to continue the strong tradition within economic geography of conceptualizing the spatial contexts and consequences of economic change through accounts of the continuous remaking of steel geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an analysis of the article `Small Business Development in Remote Rural Areas: The Example of Mature Manufacturing Firms in Northern England,' by D. North and D. Smallbone. Analysis of the performance of mature manufacturing firms; Number of London-based enterprises surveyed for the purpose of the study.

Presents the summary of a dissertation that uses infant mortality as an indicator of living standards for nine industrial parishes in northern England in the first half of the 19th-century. Debate over the standard of living of British workers during the Industrial Revolution; Economic and biological measures; Rising infant mortality during the period; Living standards not improving until circa 1850.

Editorial guidelines are presented for the submission of articles to "Northern History" which request articles on topics of history from the Roman period to c. 1800 related to England's counties of: Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire.

Retail markets were a notable feature of urban England in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, particularly in the midlands and north. Market halls were the most visible manifestation of this, and were important public buildings. This article looks beyond the imposing architecture to take a more critical view of their function and justification. It argues that while most were well‐managed and earned income in excess of current expenditure, very substantial investment in large and elaborate buildings was hard to justify in purely financial terms. The return on capital was often negligible. Food and drink traders were the largest group in almost all markets, but there were significant numbers of traders selling clothing, textiles, and household goods. There was some justification to complaints that local authorities were providing publicly financed miscellaneous shops in competition with rent‐ and rate‐paying shopkeepers. Most retailers supplying basic necessities operated from shops rather than markets. Saturday night markets were important in working‐class culture and as a source of cheap food, but most day‐to‐day necessities were purchased from local shops or street traders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apparent time analysis has revealed that the Tyneside FACE vowel is the site of two intersecting trends: levelling towards the supra-northern monophthong as well as the gradual incursion of the southern standard closing diphthong. This article investigates the participation of individual speakers across their life-span in these ongoing changes in the FACE vowel. We report on a small-scale panel sample of six speakers who were recorded in 1971 and again, 42 years later, in 2013. The analysis probes the stability of individual speakers' grammars, relying on longitudinal ethnographic analysis in the community as well as insights gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews about the speakers' socio-demographic trajectory and their presentations of self. The article contributes to the growing body of panel research that aims to determine the scope and the limits of linguistic malleability across speakers' life histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late nineteenth century several projects for the publication of county and regional history have envisaged a series with complete national coverage (referring here to England only). They have met with varying degrees of success, both in terms of completeness and of quality. Their inspiration has been variously academic or commercial, sometimes ambitiously seeking to satisfy both aspirations, and they have been aimed at different markets. This paper reviews these various series insofar as they have concerned the seven northern counties, seeking to assess their value and to consider both contemporary responses and retrospective appraisals of their merits and defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the nature and development of a grassroots popular culture of countryside appreciation, based on rural walking and access to unenclosed land, in northern England, covering the period between the emergence of footpath preservation societies in the 1820s and the controversies over access to Kinder Scout in the 1930s. It has particular reference to Lancashire and the 'Dark Peak' in north Derbyshire, where activities of this sort were particularly widespread, especially on the upland moors. It examines the relationships between rural walking, enjoyment of open spaces and the freedom of the 'open air popular science, political meetings and traditions, and campaigns to safeguard and extend access to uncultivated land. These themes are set in the context of the Lancashire 'cotton towns especially but not exclusively, as the 'first industrial society' and the birthplace of modern commercial leisure, and the article pulls together evidence from a variety of primary and secondary sources to develop an overview and reinterpretation of these important and often neglected social and political phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the variety of ways in which the history of the North has been studied since the growth of interest in regional and local history from the 1960s onwards. It notes changing fashions and the ending of the university extramural tradition, and it approves the eclectic approach which has demonstrated the variety of experience in the many localities that comprise the North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists the standard abbreviations relevant to the study of history of northern England which includes the abbreviation of Agricultural History Review, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, and Chetham Society.

A review of articles, pamphlets, and booklets on topics of the history of Northern England published in 2011 is presented which includes the articles "The English cotton spinning industry 1780–1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette," by P. M. Solar and J. S. Lyons, "The early modern port of Chester," by M. L. Reid, and "Attitudes to marital cruelty in England, 1945–60," by M. Williamson, appearing respectively in the periodicals "Business History," "Chester Archaeological Society," and "Cultural & Social History."

An annotated bibliography of articles, booklets, and pamphlets on the history of Northern England is presented which includes the articles "The Rise and Decline of Medieval York," by P. Nightingale, "From Whitehall to Jedburgh," by A. Groundwater, and "The Early Administration of the Old Poor Law in Leyland Hundred, Lancashire," by C. Watson.

An annotated bibliography on the history of Northern England is presented which includes the books "Christmas in Nineteenth-Century England," by Neil Armstrong, "Death in War and Peace," by Pat Jalland, and "The Northern Veto," by Mark Sandford.

The article presents a list of standard abbreviations used for reference works.

The article presents a list of standard abbreviations used in the March 2006 issue of the journal "Northern History."

A list of journal articles published in 2009 relevant to the history of northern England is presented, including ones from "Agricultural History Review," "Anglo-Norman Studies," "Antiquaries Journal," and many others.

The article presents a list of periodical literature published in 2008 that contains material relating to the history of Northern England including, "Where was Gildas born?" by A. Breeze, "Witchcraft and evidence in early modern England," by M. Gaskill, and "The decline of the Cumbrian 'yeoman' revisited," by D. Uttley.

The abortive Wakefield Plot of March 1541 against Henry VIII was followed by a massive — and armed — royal progress to the North that summer. Historians have, however, tended to see the progress as being more concerned with a projected meeting between Henry and James V of Scotland at York. This article re-examines both the Wakefield Plot and the progress. It argues the Plot did indeed present great danger to Henry VIII. It was well planned, involved unprecedented inter-class collaboration, and envisaged a bloody conflict to overthrow the 'tyrant' Henry. It also envisaged aid from the Scots, with whom the conspirators may have had links. The Plot is set in the context of serious discontent about taxation in early 1541, and severe local economic problems in Yorkshire. The progress bound the northern elites to the King through a succession of choreographed supplications from the northern gentry and yeomen. Despite serious fears that the progress might meet trouble in the North, it succeeded in pacifying the region. Meanwhile, the possibility of a meeting with James at York emerged only during the progress, and James's failure to appear was of little importance in the slide to war between England and Scotland in 1542. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demands and effects of warfare have not been one of the traditional concerns of historians of early modern English towns. This essay looks at the way in which the townsmen of York, Hull and Beverley responded to the demands of war. It explores the level of urban involvement in the king's wars, mainly but not exclusively against the Scots, and the way in which the pressure of war acted to transform relations within towns and relations between towns and their neighbours. In a period when towns were experiencing rapid economic, social and religious change, war provided one means of renegotiating power relations and allowed urban elites to expand their authority, through partnership with the Crown, vis-à-vis their fellow citizens and non-urban elites. The balance between profiting from war and being ruined by its demands was a fine one, however, exemplified by the experience of Hull in the 1540s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the rivalry between industrial towns in northern England from 1500 to 1974. Evolution of the region's urban system; Economic competition and civic rivalry within the region; Contemporaries' perception of the near-northern region as a serious rival to the metropolitan south-east's ancient demographic, commercial and political primacy within Great Britain; Towns and industrialization; Identity and rivalry; Factors that contributed in humanizing industrialization.

This paper describes and analyses the wider mechanisms, processes and contexts of the riots that took place in Northern UK cities and towns in the Summer of 2001. It examines these events and the imagined fears that aided the hardening of boundaries between violently opposed groups. It is noted that a long-term entrenchment of various forms of racial discrimination and racist violence in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley areas was connected to the long-term economic decline of the textile industry. Localised deindustrialisation, it is argued, generated a community discourse of nostalgia and cultural decline that was articulated via twin motors of race and ethnicity. As a result geographical concentrations of fear, risk and insecurity aided the likelihood and intensity of racist violence and disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of industrialization on literacy and education in Northern England. The first systematic study of literacy in northwest England was completed only recently, and covers the period 1560-1630, when northern England was allegedly still in an economically and commercially primitive state. The low levels of literacy found there, compared with elsewhere in England, have been explained by the supposedly backward and culturally impoverished nature of the society and economy. Nothing is known of 1650-1750, a period before major industrialization, but nevertheless one that experienced pronounced commercial growth associated mainly with the coastal trade plus an important expansion in the scale and intensity of coal-mining and related industries. Yet, by the late eighteenth century, the northeast was one of the most literate areas of England. Study of the intervening period might reveal how long the north continued to lag behind the rest of the country, and when it began to advance to its prominent position. Examination of the occupational profile of illiteracy, of differences between the sexes and between urban and rural areas, and of change over time in these aspects may help to reveal some of the likely relationships between literacy and economic change.

The article focuses on the aim of the journal to publish work on the history of the historic northern counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire in Northern England. It also aims to publish papers that examine topics in different parts of the North and make comparisons between different areas.