The Mapping of Tyneside Sir Kingsley Wood announced at Newcastle
on Tuesday the decision of the Government in regard to the reports of the Royal Commission on Tyneside. Broadly, the report of the majority is rejected, and that of the minority accepted. The majority, it will be remembered, recommended a remark- able experiment in . regionalisation—the county of North- umberland, the county boroughs of Newcastle and Gates- head, and the whole congeries of industrial districts on each side of the Tyne, to be federated under one regional authority with a position and powers similar to those of the L.C.C. The minority preferred merely to amalgamate Newcastle, Gateshead, and the smaller Tyneside towns into a single large county borough of the ordinary type. The latter was the line of least resistance, and it is not surprising that the Government have taken it ; though even here they have not gone beyond advising the authorities concerned to form a joint committee and work out a scheme. The majority plan had some attractive aspects, and Sir Kingsley Wood's objec- tion, that none of the local authorities supported it, was by itself far from convincing ; it is not usual for vested interests to support their own supersession. Nevertheless the project did, perhaps, too much violence to local history and tradition in an area where such factors have always been peculiarly strong.
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