Peter Jackson column
Feb 10 2005 By Peter Jackson, The Journal
As reported in The Journal last week, the Government is pledging to close the North-South divide in 16 years.
This follows a report revealing 37pc of the region's population live in deprivation - the worst record in the whole country.
In fact, of course, it goes back far longer than that. Indeed, there is one theory that the North never recovered from William the Conqueror, who did a pretty thorough job of laying it waste to punish a rebellion - so thorough a job that there were hardly any North assets worth recording in the Domesday Book.
The real explanation is more fundamental than that and lies in the country's geography.
The South of England is low-lying, fertile land, whereas the North tends to be high rugged moorland, where it's harder to scrape a living.
Add to that the fact that ports giving access to the most important bits of the rest of the world are in the South, and we are saddled with some severe disadvantages.
There was a period of about 150 years during the Industrial Revolution, when natural advantages worked in our favour, but the South was still more prosperous then.
None of this should be taken as an argument for resigning ourselves to second class status or for the Government to do nothing.
On the contrary it is the case that we are handicapped by geography and we won't overcome this without Government action.
In the US, historically it was the North which was the richer and the South, particularly in the first half of the last century, was sunk in a mire of economic stagnation, demoralisation, poverty and racial hatred.
What changed this was the Second World War and then the Cold War, when the US armed herself massively and concentrated much of its armaments pro- gramme and its research and stationed much of its military in the South.
This represented a massive investment, probably not seen by the North of England since the Romans.
The argument we have to make is that investment on that scale today would not only benefit us, but also the South, as our prosperity would relieve pressure on their greenbelt, on their housing stock, on their public services and on their infrastructure.
Appeal not to their better nature, but to their enlightened self-interest.
