Psiman I cannot believe I didn't note that, one of those things where it didn't jump out as necessary but of course now you say it that absolutely needs to be in there.

The North Will Rise Again: Alex Niven fails to break new ground The North Will Rise Again: Alex Niven fails to break new ground

Definitely, but MES was also interested in the US civil war, and so there's also obviously an allusion there too. We welcome applications to contribute to UnHerd – please fill out the form below including examples of your previously published work. Alex Niven has taken The Fall frontman Mark E Smith’s chorus for the title of his latest book. In his earlier New Model Island, Niven outlined the case for a new regionalism that spliced leftist anti-nationalism and anti-imperialism, populism and communitarianism. The new book continues the argument. Niven makes no claims to being an economist or political historian, offering instead “a book about the cultural and imaginative life” of the North, informed by recent history and peopled by writers, artists, musicians and others whose work projected a more hopeful, fair and inspiring region. It’s a diverse band that includes Alan Hull of Lindisfarne fame, modernist poet Basil Bunting*, Kevin Keegan, Oasis and Newcastle politician T Dan Smith. The great industrial and mercantile developments of the North East all had their basis in the coal industry. The prosperity that brought underpinned the other commercial enterprises. Any enterprise involves risk and without a basis of prosperity men are generally unwilling to take the risk. My great grandfather was involved in offering a scheme to share the profits of the mines with the workers but it foundered on the perfectly understandable reluctance of the workers to take on the risk of sharing in losses.The contrast between Britain’s brief social democratic, popular-modernist interlude and the neoliberal era that followed was stark. As the rot of deindustrialization set in, little was left of the progressive dreams of the 1960s bar some half-remembered remnants in the cultural fabric of the North. It is the sad story of Andrea Dunbar who seems to represent this decline best for Niven. It sounds like either here, but the version from Tut's has "I've been in cabaret." But the next line is different too, although I can't make it out--"I ain't seen....today" More about Roman Totale, from "The Prestwich Horror and Other Strange Stories", interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds magazine, 31 January 1981: But despite the various reverses of the 20th century and the decline of the industries, it seems that a lot of the damage can be laid at the feet of Thatcher and her cronies who spent much of their time in office deliberately dismantling the industries of the area together with people’s livelihoods, showing a rank distaste and disdain for anyone working class and/or Northern. That damage has never really been repaired – so what can be done to help the North rise again?

The North Will Rise Again | Music in Manchester | Creative The North Will Rise Again | Music in Manchester | Creative

Like the West German government bringing over yellow trains, when apparently the Metro trains were manufactured in Birmingham, this could be another case where a real-world inspiration is adapted in the writing of the text. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother arrived at Royal Air Force Turnhouse this morning in an aircraft of The Queen's Flight and drove to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The North… is a very personal book, and all the better for it; the narrative is laced with Niven’s memories of, and experiences from, his life in the North which add a fascinating extra perspective. Born in the North, a founding member of the band Everything Everything, exiled down South for a number of years, and finally returning home to take a new direction in academia, Niven clearly has a strong attachment to his homeland, using the Welsh word hiraeth to describe that longing for return. It’s a feeling with which I can strongly identify, being subject to it myself when it comes to Scotland, and this adds power to his narrative. The book by necessity often focuses on the Newcastle area, from where Niven hails and where he currently teaches at the University; but he explores broadly, pulling in particularly Liverpool and Manchester as well as the wider North generally.If we are looking for historical precedent from the British Isles, then we could do worse than resurrect the title of Sheriff. Historically, sheriffs presided over counties, while mayors presided over towns and cities, so there’s an obvious synergy there. The argument that this would cause confusion with the ceremonial role of the High Sheriff isn’t really convincing, given that we don’t have a problem with there being both an elected Mayor of London and a ceremonial Lord Mayor of London. Most people can, most of the time, tell the difference. An elected Sheriff would be different to a High Sheriff, and both can coexist. I always imagined that 'buisiness friend' was based on Tony Wilson (co-founder of Factory Records and manager of the Manchester nightclub The Hacienda). I don't know if Wilson and Smith had any kind of relationship, but the confident and condescending tone of the character in the song does remind me of Wilson. Throughout The North Will Rise Again, Niven is fond of quoting the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin as a progressive ally. Yet Benjamin was no mere modernist, as Niven seems to insist. There was a deep and abiding romanticism to his work as well. A native Northerner himself, having returned to his home city of Newcastle with his family in the last few years, Alex also includes elements of memoir and stories from his own family history to reflect some of the key arguments of his book.

North Consciousness raising, if you like - Big Issue North

In November 1569, hundreds of rebels assembled in this Market Place with the aim of re-establishing Catholic worship in the North. They swiftly captured Barnard Castle on the River Tees and widely reinstated the Mass, but by January the rebellion had failed and great numbers had been hanged here and elsewhere as traitors. This was a sort of English devolution, avant la lettre, and meant that by the 17th century, County Durham was the only part of England which returned no members of parliament. The first MPs for Durham were elected in 1675, a full 410 years after a comparable cathedral city such as Lincoln; the Prince Bishop only returned his powers to the crown in 1836. So there is a sense that the governance of the North East was only settled around the same time as the United Kingdom itself was forming. Some excitable Northumbrian patriots (probably including me) might even consider us to be the fifth nation in the union. Her short life, as documented in Clio Barnard’s almost painfully moving film The Arbor, was marred by alcoholism and abuse, as so many others are in the postindustrial North. As Niven perceptively writes, her life and work are “a grim archetype of a collective trauma which disproportionately ravages northern homes.” Alex Niven's elegant, heartfelt book is the best I have read about the North's subordination by the South in modern England, and about how visionary northern culture of all kinds has defied that imbalance. Little is said, though, about that other great northern tradition: solidarity. As the historian Raphael Samuel wrote of the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike — the longest national dispute in British industrial history and a pivotal moment in northern history that gets little airing in Niven’s work — it was solidarity and community, often as not created amidst the struggle, that were key to the strike.Joe Totale, in the Totale mythos, is in indeed Roman Totale's son. He appears in sleevenotes etc post-Roman's death. Indeed, the lyric tells us who Joe is.