The county with nowt taken owt

West Yorkshire has long been the economic engine room of the white rose region, but for all its urbanised modernity it remains but a sum of a greater whole – there have always been but three Ridings

There’s nowhere quite like Yorkshire. Famed for its cricket, its pudding, and its rivalry with them Lancastrians on t’other side o’ t’Pennines, Tykes tend towards a stubborn patriotism some might consider unseemly for the residents of a ‘mere’ county.

But there’s nothing ‘mere’ about it. Yorkshire as a whole is the country’s largest county – indeed it is effectively a region unto itself – and for all the administrative changes overlaid on the historic map, it remains remarkably true to the geography of its bygone shaping.

That rivalry with its Westerly neighbours harks back to the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic feud that put the Tudors on the throne of England, but in some respects, Yorkshire is older than its host nation. That may go some way to explaining something of the local patriotism the county is renowned for.

Eboracum – as York was then known – enjoyed some significance on the stage of Imperial intrigue and power-play. For two years until his death, the Emperor Septimus Severus effectively ran the Empire out of York. After the Romans departed, there emerged the Kingdom of Ebrauc in the Northern part and the Kingdom of Elmet in the area of West Yorkshire.

Later the Vikings came, conquered and settled, creating the Kingdom of Jorvik in 866AD. The kingdom lasted little more than a century, ending with the bloodthirsty reign of Eric Bloodaxe, but they left behind the Ridings and had essentially founded the county. The word is derived from the Danish word ‘thridding’, meaning a third, and each thridding sent representatives to the Danish kings. Though the origins and purpose faded into history, the county’s sub-division into three distinct parts of the whole remained.

In a roundabout way that brings us to West Yorkshire. Today, it isn’t quite the original Riding, since a good portion of its territory was hived off with the creation of the modern administrative territory of South Yorkshire. But for all the modern borders and lines of authority established by modern local government organisation, those Ridings remain very much on the map – the cultural one as much as the geographic kind. The Ridings are as stubborn as the Yorkshire folk themselves.

The West Riding was – and is – a heavily urbanised region as you’d expect from an old industrial heartland. In its modern form, established as a metropolitan county in 1974, it consists of five metropolitan boroughs: the cities of Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield along with the Kirklees and Calderdale local authorities. The county council was abolished in 1986, leaving these metropolitan boroughs to function as unitary authorities, though it remains as a geographic reference.

At the heart of the West Yorkshire conurbation are the cities of Bradford and Leeds. Both cities reflect the social and economic changes that the former engine rooms of industrialism have experienced over the course of the last few decades. Indeed, in a sense they are the flipsides of the regeneration coin: heads you win, tails you’re done.

Once, Bradford was a dominant city in the region – and beyond. A global city, it was known as ‘Worstedopolis’ and the wool capital of the world. The city was shaped by immigrants, from Ireland, Germany, Poland, the Ukraine, the Indian sub-continent, and drew merchants from all over the world to create a curiously cosmopolitan place, but as the city lived by globalisation – long before the word was in vogue – so by globalisation did it dwindle.

The bigger they are the harder they fall and like many former industrial heartlands it has struggled to overcome the social and economic impacts of its traditional textile industries that were the basis of its fortunes.

Despite some bold regeneration plans, and plenty of efforts to challenge the city’s decline, Bradford has never quite managed to hit the critical mass that might see transformation take place; weighted down by a host of deprivational issues, low skills, and high levels of unemployment.

Perhaps the cruel irony in all of this is that the city is seen as having great potential, from its architectural gems such as the former Odeon cinema, the Little Germany district, the Wool Exchange; its museums and theatres, such as the National Media Museum; its proximity to attractions such as the Yorkshire Dales, Salts Mill in Saltaire (a world heritage site); its regeneration successes such as the renovation of the Wool Exchange and Urban Vision’s transformation of Lister’s Mill in Manningham. It also has a young population, with 22.5 per cent of its people under the age of 16. The city has much going for it and yet all the same it has somehow failed to quite drag itself out of the doldrums.

Leeds, by contrast has long since stepped out of the shadow of its neighbour, to become the regional capital. The city has transformed itself following the decline of its own traditional industries, to become recognised as a centre for the financial industry. Inward investment has brought forth the kind of regeneration familiar in centres such as Manchester, Sheffield and elsewhere as the city reinvented itself.

In fact, one might say that Leeds has led the reclamation of the Old West Riding territory carved out to make South Yorkshire, not to mention brought more to the fold from the North, creating its own little ‘Elmet’ that is the Leeds City Region (LCR). In addition to the authorities in West Yorkshire, the partnership takes in Barnsley, Craven, Harrogate, Selby and York, together with North Yorkshire County Council, to create a £49 billion economic region with a population of some three million people.

By any measure, Yorkshire is big hitter – and by ‘eck don’t those Tykes know it.

Snippets on a postcard

Leeds: The primary city in the West Yorkshire conurbation, Leeds successfully reinvented itself as a successful centre for financial services after the decline of its traditional industries. The city covers some 552 square kilometres and is the second largest metropolitan district in England with a population of 802,000. Some 427,800 people work in the city.

· GVA in 2008 was £17.8 billion
· In 2009 there were 24,315 active businesses
· Leeds has 16 per cent of the region’s employment and 14 per cent of its businesses
· 30 per cent of the region’s finance and business services employment
· 35 per cent of employment in legal services
· Over the next decade, it expects to create 39,500 jobs
· Median gross weekly earnings was £404 in 2010
· To date, £4.3 billion of property schemes (valued at over £1 million) were completed between 2001 and 2010; £638 million are under construction and £5.9 billion are proposed or on hold

Bradford: Once a city of global repute, it was known as the wool capital of the world not just in terms of textile processing and manufacturing but also in terms of commerce and trade. It wasn’t all textiles, however, for the city had a hand in the emergence of the automotive industry courtesy of the Jowett Motor Company as well as the film industry – recognised by its honorific status as a UNESCO City of Film.

· Bradford is the fourth largest metropolitan district in England and the third largest economy in the region, producing 10 per cent of the region’s wealth
· Its population is 506,800 – and growing – with 22.5 per cent aged under 16 and 28.7 per cent are from BME communities
· GVA is £7.8 billion and it has a £6.3 billion household income
· There are 15,180 businesses and 192,200 employees while 27,200 residents are selfemployed. Today, 1,700 people work in textiles compared to 73,000 in 1961
· There are 25,600 unemployed and 28 per cent of JSA claimants are aged 18-24
· It is the 26th most-deprived local authority in England and the 2nd in the Yorkshire and Humber region. It also has the widest gap between the most and the least deprived areas of all local authorities in England

Wakefield: Once the administrative centre for the West R iding Council (and later the West Yorkshire County Council, until it was abolished) this has left its mark in the city’s civic architecture.

· The city’s population was put at 323,900 as of March 2011 Of these, 200,600 were of working
age
· Major economic sectors include: manufacturing (10.6 per cent), construction (4.7 per cent), retail (13 per cent), health (14.3 per cent),wholesale (5.4 per cent), public administration (7.5)
· GVA per head is £15,772 while the average household income in 2010 was £30,798
· Average house prices stand at £113, 217 Calderdale: Takes in the Pennine towns of Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd (birthplace of the poet Ted Hughes), Sowerby Bridge, Halifax, E lland and Brighouse. In 2009, the population was around 201,600. E mployment sectors (2008) include: manufacturing (18.8 per cent); distribution, hotels and restaurants (21.8 per cent); banking, finance and insurance (25.2 per cent); public administration, education and health (21.5 per cent). I n 2010, major employers included: Calderdale Council (9,900), Lloyds Banking Group (6,000), NHS Trust (2,500).

Kirklees: The authority takes in a number of towns and settlements including Huddersfield, Holmfirth, Dewsbury, Heckmondwike, Liversedge and others. In population terms, it is ranked 11 out of 348 districts and in 2009 its population was around 406,800 people. B y 2022, its population is projected to rise to 448,300.

Sources: Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Calerdale and Kirklees councils