UK North - South Divide

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's always been a North/South divide of some kind - there was even before the Industrial Revolution, which 'merely' changed the character of the division - and it's always had more to it than just economic patterns; landscape and land-use patterns, urban geography, culture, language, religion, and all that.

But, yeah, while a North/South divide was a visible feature of electoral geography before the Thatcher government, it wasn't as stark. Ancient traditions of Tory support in some very working class parts of Lancashire survived up until the 1970s and Labour were far stronger in (for instance) Kent than has been the case since. Essentially as the North/South divide became more pronounced in economic terms (as Thatcherite economic policies shifted economic power further and further south), so it became more pronounced in electoral terms.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The observed effect is largely an urban-rural divide.

Yet the South East (in a functional sense, including London, most of Essex, etc) is the most thoroughly urbanised region of the country. Of course many of its inhabitants would dispute this (despite throughly urban lifestyles, occupations... and many people actually working in the centre of London for Christssake etc) but then there's a very strong national delusion about such things in Britain.

The key thing isn't so much urban/rural, but industrial/non-industrial.

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Though the reason for this has changed; in the 19th century the most important electoral cleavage was religion, and so solidly Anglican counties in the South East were also solidly Tory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Scotland was once not only a respectable region for the Tories, it was dominated by the old Unionist Tories until the 1960s.

Its more complicated than that. Scotland has always had more volatile politics than England or Wales. It was - usually and for the most part - dominated by the Liberals until the First World War, when the Liberals split and collapsed. In the interwar years, Scottish politics was very dramatic with a strong and unusually radical Labour movement (Red Clydeside and all that), and a strong reaction against that leading to solid support for the Unionists (who were linked to anti-socialist political machines in municipal government). The swing in 1945 was lower than the rest of the UK, but it was still strong. The Unionists benefited greatly from postwar prosperity and sense of stability in the 1950s, but things were already on the slide for them by the late 50s (when it became clear that the West of Scotland was not benefiting - for structural economic reasons - from the postwar boom as much as the rest of Britain) and in the 60s they basically fell off a cliff.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The north includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland plus most (but not all) of the midlands region (Google image it for a better visual reference point).

"Peripheral" would be a better definition.

Except that it wouldn't, because any sane reading of 'peripheral' into British political geography would have to include the West Country, which is... er... politically quite different again...