Chapter 1
Devvy
Donor
Chapter 1:
Much of the history of Yorkshire, and indeed the north, sees a great deal of devolution from the English central government in London - a practical necessity due to the distance in the centuries prior. Yorkshire, a county which dwarfed other English counties, was so large it was historically subdivided in to 3 Ridings, from the old Norse word þriðing - meaning a part of something divided in three, a legacy of the Norse history of the area. The 19th and earlier 20th century history saw a great deal of industrialisation in Yorkshire, and consequent growth in cities and towns, which saw many achieve County Borough status, effectively becoming autonomous from the county itself - or more accurately the Ridings which performed much of the county administration in their areas.
Things began to evolve in the Yorkshire we know today in 1968, as the Redcliffe-Maud report on the future of local Government in England was published. The commission spent time considering the future of local government outside of Greater London which had already seen the introduction of the Greater London Council. The report advocated for a new slate of local government, allowing for a combination of provincial councils, unitary authorities, and metropolitan areas, districts and councils. It took a lot of digesting, with the governing Labour party's White Paper on local government reform arriving in early 1969. There were many debates about the reform, not least about the amalgamation in to unitary authorities, as well as the size and definition of the new English provinces. In the end, legislation for just one province passed; Yorkshire. This was largely due to the largely uncontroversial borders of the province to be - although some debate did still occur, and ended up being the only province passed in to law by the time Parliament closed for the 1970 election. (*1)
Post-election saw a new Conservative government formed, which whilst recognising the need for local government reform also was not minded to the conclusions of the Redcliffe-Maud report. However, a unified Yorkshire entity continued and was renamed to the "County of Yorkshire" (instead of province), and it's constituents were shifted to closer resemble historic local authorities - now renamed Yorkshire Boroughs, similar to London. The single entity did provide for potential economies of scale, and was a useful test case. South Humberside, which had been included in Yorkshire for economic reasons was then removed from the county, and reattached to Lincolnshire given the level of animosity towards Yorkshire by the residents of places like Grimsby, whilst in the north, the area around Whitby was brought in to Yorkshire. Middlesbrough, and the Teesside area, continued to be left out, and would later form their own county - Cleveland. This harmonised Yorkshire with the Conservative approach for the rest of England - a two-tier system, with an upper county council, and lower borough or district council, just that Yorkshire was a huge county in comparison to others. So large, that even with the police reforms from the late 1960s, and refined in the early 1970s, the police were subdivided in to 3 forces, one for Riding; the West Riding (predominately urban areas), North Riding (very rural with a few small towns), and the East Riding (mixed between the two). A similar set of reorganisation was applied to the ambulance and fire & rescue services, whilst ceremonial appointments such as the Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff were now county-wide positions.
The first Yorkshire wide election for the new county council was held in 1973, resulting in the county chamber of 63 councillors: CON: 19, LAB: 32, LIB: 5, OTH: 7 - or a wafer thin & narrow majority control for Labour. Work started immediately within the realm of powers obtained by the county council; predominately strategic planning and public transport, undertaking a "mission to improve the lives of Yorkshire residents". A new motorway scheme for Yorkshire - rapidly completed to fit in with the growing motorway network across the United Kingdom was released in 1975, and was promptly nicknamed the "Yorkshire Gridways", mimicking the infamous London Ringways project for large scale road building, whilst also recognising the grid format for Yorkshire distributed cities. Although many motorways proposed would not get off the drawing board - notably the Sheffield to Manchester motorway, the plan was more successful at making sure the motorways were not cut short. The M62 transpennine route was built as far as the Humber Bridge, allowing motorway access to the suburbs of Hull and, via the bridge, the areas south of the Humber via the North Lincolnshire dual carriageway. The M18 motorway would eventually head up towards North Yorkshire, connecting to the bottom of the new A1(M) motorway, providing a motorway route to the North East which bypassed the busy areas of the West Riding; motorway redesignation in the 1990s now brought the M18 as far as Darlington (just over the border in to County Durham!), with the A1 label retaining the older (usually adjacent) road.
Similarly, the Yorkshire council worked on more public transit affairs. The Beeching Cuts had triggered several local councils in to action to retain rail links, and elsewhere in Northern England local authorities were building plans for more local mass transit solutions using British Rail tracks - most famously in Liverpool where the local councils were advocating for a new cross-city "Merseyrail" system. The Yorkshire authorities had already managed to agree funding to keep several Yorkshire routes open and operational, but attention was turning to creating a new transit system in West Yorkshire which was independent of British Rail. Attempts for a new "Yorkshire Metro", centred on Leeds and taking over many British Rail routes were published in 1976, but declined by Parliament for financial reasons despite it's shoestring budge. The fact that Merseyside and Tyne & Wear both received funding for transit systems in the 1970s and 1980s frustrated many people in Yorkshire, but the combination of outrage over the original Beeching Cuts and the failure to pass the metro system did at least ensure that the vast majority of former rail routes received planning protection and help to fund maintenance of structures, to ensure they could reopen at a later date.
Schemes were authorised elsewhere to cover the wide extent of Yorkshire. Assistance with housing reconstruction in Sheffield (which, whilst prohibited by law from operating in the field of housing, Yorkshire could help fund the local authority for housing works), whilst swathes of North Yorkshire - an enormous area with one of the highest road mileages (as the North Riding) against any English county - saw road improvements such as bypasses for Skipton and Harrogate, whilst works for a York orbital road progressed. A new airport, using the remnants of RAF Church Fenton was included in the Governments 1978 airports white paper to serve Yorkshire, given it's proximity to Leeds, rail transport, motorway links and countryside location - all things which Leeds-Bradford Airport had struggled with due to limited operating hours, poor transport links and a short runway. In what turned out to be one of the last major projects undertaken by the County of Yorkshire, a joint project with the Department of Energy in the years after the oil crises of the 1970s saw the installation of a district heating system in Hull in order to heat many of the city centre civic buildings in the first phase and commercial buildings in the second phase. The project began pumping hot water in the late 1980s, and with the start of the 1990s began to expand to residential estates. (*2)
This was all a reflection of how much could be achieved by a strategic authority operating across the entire, small-but-dense, county. Elsewhere, by the 1970s nationalism within the UK itself had been beginning to grow. This raised demands for home rule, or greater, in Scotland and to a lesser extent in Wales, and brought forth a Royal Commission on the future of the United Kingdom and options for how devolution could work in the United Kingdom. The commission spent a significant amount of time looking at how federalism worked in Canada and Australia - both Commonwealth realms - as well as Germany, assessing how federalism worked or not, as well as New Zealand for a counter view of a unitary Commonwealth realm. The Commission reported back in 1972, and wholeheartedly endorsed the concept of a devolved administration for Scotland. This would see the creation of a directly elected Scottish Assembly, with a Scottish Government headed by a Scottish Premier, with a suite of powers included responsibility over education, environment, health, home affairs, legal affairs and social services. Members would be elected by Scots by a single transferable vote in what would later be decided to be 3-member constituencies, which appeared to be an attempt to keep the devolved administration out of the hands of a single party, such as the nationalist Scottish National Party. A majority of Commission members also backed an identical concept for Wales, headed by a Welsh Premier, although lacking responsibility for legal affairs given the shared English/Welsh legal system as opposed to the discrete Scottish system. (*3)
Opinions were mixed on how to handle England, with most seeking some form of regional administration, with powers ranging from little more then glorified county councils to those suggesting powers largely on a par with Wales. The concept of some form of English provinces was widely popular, although nobody could agree on the criteria for what a province should do, how large it should be or any kind of rough concept of demarcating England in to some provinces. The only exception was Yorkshire, which was already a large culturally unified body, with a population larger than that of Northern Ireland or Wales, and only just shy of Scotland. 1977 saw support for the Government ebb away, with Callaghan dependant on Scottish and Welsh nationalist politicians, and forced his hand with the Scotland & Wales Act of 1978, enacting much of what had been suggested in the Royal Commission as the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. The assemblies were partly modelled on the Yorkshire model - a largely super glorified county council, but enhanced with other powers (ie. Welsh culture and language in Wales, legal affairs in Scotland). Attempts to derail the legislation were avoided, and a late attempt to insert a threshold against the electorate for a "yes" vote to be valid was avoided by the narrowest of margins, with only 5 more MPs voting it down then agreeing with it. The Scottish devolution referendum of 1977 was duly held, resulting in a 53% "Yes" vote, which duly affirmed the legislative actions in creating a Scottish Assembly. However, in Wales, the electorate declined the proposed Welsh Assembly by a considerable margin - almost 3 to 1 against.
All these adventures in devolution came crashing down in the 1980s however as a new Conservative government came to power. County councils, particularly in Liverpool and London, but to a lesser extent elsewhere - including Yorkshire - clashed heavily with the Conservative government on pretty much everything whether local or national in scope of power. Reforms in 1986 saw many English county councils - particularly in the urban cities - removed from power and disbanded, with residual powers either shifting back to Westminster or usually down to the remaining local authorities. The County of Yorkshire was duly disbanded in 1986, with the remaining Yorkshire Boroughs taking almost all residual powers, although a "Yorkshire Board" group of leaders of councils for the Yorkshire Boroughs continued to look after a few county wide affairs. The referendum result in Scotland protected the Scottish assembly, but it found itself increasingly unable to oppose Westminster with it's budget under heavy oversight and power de facto limited with regards to Westminster policies. (*4)
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Notes:
(*1) This is at the heart of the PoD for this; the outcome of the Redcliffe-Maud report sees the establishment of the "Province of Yorkshire".
(*2) The UK Department of Energy did some trials apparently in OTL in the early 1980s (resulting in the OTL Southampton scheme) - here they've done trials in Hull as the area has even better possibilities then the OTL Southampton/Wessex scheme, in part thanks to Yorkshire lobbying.
(*3) Scottish devolution goes through, further culturally entrenching the concepts of devolution.
(*4) The 1980s still sees a reduction/elimination in devolution. Although Scottish devolution went through, meaning Callaghan likely survived the no-confidence motions, an election was due the same year anyway, so I'm just assuming Thatcher comes in almost as per OTL anyway.
