Lancashire
Michael Henderson
FIRST, it is important to recognise what Lancashire is. Despite the worst efforts of local government reorganisation in 1974, which created the metropolitan counties and yoked together such different places as Herefordshire and Worcestershire, the County Palatine of Lancaster remains in the minds of all true Lancastrians. The southern boundary separated it from Cheshire, and the northern territory stretched as far as Ambleside. In other words, Lancashire includes most of Greater Manchester, much of Merseyside and a mighty chunk of the southern Lakes. That part has gone for ever, alas, submerged in 'Cumbria', while poor old Westmorland was done away with altogether.
So Lancashire contains two major cities, linked by a famous waterway which made them prosperous in the 19th century. Liverpool still has a faded grandeur, boasting, as it frequently does, of having more listed buildings than any other English city. Otherwise it is an unlovely place, and Manchester, `Cottonopolis' itself, is no more attractive. Groaning under the weight of new money and teeming with distracted young people, it has become a symbol of modern England that not all its sons would wish to celebrate.
Strictly speaking, Liverpool is not really Lancashire at all, and Lancastrians have been quite happy with that arrangement. It has always been more of an independent city state, with laws and customs of its own. When Alan Bennett, from the other side of the Pennines, wrote that 'every Liverpudlian seems a comedian, fitted out with smart answers, ready with the chat and anxious to do his little verbal dance', he struck a gong that resonates far beyond the Mersey. 'They are more like cockneys than Lancashire people, and it gets me down.'
It's a useful distinction because Lancashire folk are funny, indeed the funniest in England, but not in a self-advertising way; they are not easily deceived, either, but they are less likely to parade their practicality than their neighbours to the east. Yorkshire has more land, more money and a greater sense of self-importance, but those qualities are not always universally admired. Lancashire people, to put it plainly, are widely liked for fairly obvious reasons. 'Gradely folk' may be a cliché, but it is true for all that.
While Londoners laughed at Max Miller, whose routines now seem less than riotous, northern audiences headed for Blackpool, and `Randle's Scandals'. Frank Randle, pickled in ale, was the forerunner of a Lancashire entertainer that has become a national breed. George Formby ('it's turned out fine again') and Gracie Fields, belting out 'Sing As We Go' as she charged down some cobbled street, bolstered morale during the war. Their brilliant successors — such as Eric Morecambe, Les Dawson and Ken Dodd (we'll conscript Doddy as a Lancashire lad on this occasion) — are the three finest funny men of the past 40 years. If any man warrants a statue in his honour, it is surely Dodd.
Humour is important in any consideration of Lancashire, not because it is exclusive to its people, but because it emphasises the common experience of shared life. The county was the crucible of the Industrial Revolution, and witnessed the emergence of authentic working-class life, rooted in old Liberal and Labour politics, trade unions, religious variety and, if you like, the birth of professional football. The Co-operative movement was founded in Rochdale, and the magnificent Victorian town halls of Rochdale and Bolton reflect the high civic ideals of the men who presided over that age of prosperity. It's not always easy to see those ideals now.
This was, if no longer is, a land of friendly societies, brass bands, amateur theatre groups, choirs and other musical associations rooted in the workplace. Kathleen Ferrier, the late, great Kate, bounded on to the stages of London, Vienna and New York from the streets of Blackburn. John Tomlinson, who has spent the past decade dominating the great European opera houses with his Wagnerian bass, came from Oswaldtwistle. There have been dozens of singers in-between, and scores of actors. Now, as the industrial landscape has changed, so have social habits.
That landscape, it must be admitted, is not pretty. Lancashire has few areas of outstanding beauty. There simply aren't the rolling dales and glorious churches that distinguish Yorkshire. The coastline is unremarkable until you get to Morecambe Bay, and the towns are plain at best and, at worst, downright ugly. Oldham may be the most horrible place in England, and not even the natives can pretend that Blackburn is anything but grim. As for mucky old Blackpool. . . .
Walking up Yorkshire Street in Rochdale recently, having just returned from a visit to Saxony, it was tempting to wonder who had won the war, and who the peace. The major shopping street of a town of some 200,000 people had such a pitiful range of shops and restaurants that a German visitor might well think, 'How do people here live?' As for any form of cultural provision — heavens no, we're English, we don't do that sort of thing any more. But we do fly the Pakistan flag from the town hall. At such times, one thinks that Larkin was bang-on: we live in 'the first slum of Europe'.
The problems seen last year in Oldham and Burnley, and the less widely reported fact that Asian youths smashed the windows of a Catholic church in Rochdale and stoned worshippers, have also been seen elsewhere. In Lancashire, which has traditionally absorbed newcomers amicably, it was an indication of how things had changed. When Sir Learie Constantine, the West Indian cricketer and statesman, took his peerage in the House of Lords, he insisted on Lord Constantine not only of Trinidad and Tobago, from whence he came, but also of Nelson, the town where he had played his club cricket and where he had been loved — much as Clive Lloyd, another great West Indian cricketer, was to be loved in Haslingden 40 years later. Now the streets of north-east Lancashire resound to the clatter of broken glass, drug deals and racial insults, the most authentic soundtrack of urban England.
Things have changed, all right. Fish-andchip shops are run, as often as not, by Chinese families. Moorland inns that once offered tripe and onions now serve Thai fare, though the ale remains the best in England, and Lancashire has some of the best pubs, too. But deep down this remains a traditional place, tolerant but never indulgent, with few traces of 'fashion', and less disfigured than most places by the misplaced liberalism that has dislocated so many English lives.
'Home,' said Anthony Burgess, a Lancastrian who made his in Monaco and Italy, 'is the most emotive word in the language', for its associations with the past. An Irish Catholic from a Manchester slum, Burgess never really left the ground where his soul was forged. In fact, his attitude hardened when he left England. The north will never come to terms with the south,' he wrote late in life. 'The children of industrialism and the scions of land . have little to say to each other.'
He was not entirely right. Lancashire folk are not chippy, and any county that can supply Jimmy Clitheroe and Harrison Birtwistle from neighbouring parishes clearly has a lot to commend it. Birtwistle, like Burgess, spent years abroad, and is none the worse for exposure to a southern landscape, though one might not nominate him as the most typical Lancastrian.
It's not an 'obvious' or a fashionable county. People who take their holidays in Umbria and Perigord would feel terribly Out of place under Pendle Hill in winter, or riding a Fleetwood tram. But within its diminished boundaries Lancashire contains the most decent, warm-hearted and generous folk in the kingdom.
Previous page
