Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Sept 27, 2023 13:07:35 GMT
It might be useful to remind people of the area covered by the old county of Monmouthshire, because it is a much larger one than the local authority that (rather stupidly) bears its name:  If you wish to argue that Ebbw Vale is actually part of England, well, fine, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. The idea that Monmouthshire was not part of Wales was, in any case, largely a combination of aristocratic pretense and the usual incompetence of 18th and 19th century Antiquarians. Even the rather silly 'Wales and Monmouthshire' formulation (which largely existed to flatter the former) acknowledged this implicitly. |
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Post by carlton43 on Sept 27, 2023 13:29:33 GMT
It might be useful to remind people of the area covered by the old county of Monmouthshire, because it is a much larger one than the local authority that (rather stupidly) bears its name: If you wish to argue that Ebbw Vale is actually part of England, well, fine, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. The idea that Monmouthshire was not part of Wales was, in any case, largely a combination of aristocratic pretense and the usual incompetence of 18th and 19th century Antiquarians. Even the rather silly 'Wales and Monmouthshire' formulation (which largely existed to flatter the former) acknowledged this implicitly. No contest on much of that. The far west parts given over to mining and industry and with specific political and societal tendencies to match should be shorn away to be retained in Wales of course. But the central and eastern part is demographically quite different, less Welsh, more English and far more to the right. It would sit far better as part of England. |
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Post by islington on Sept 27, 2023 13:54:58 GMT
It might be useful to remind people of the area covered by the old county of Monmouthshire, because it is a much larger one than the local authority that (rather stupidly) bears its name: If you wish to argue that Ebbw Vale is actually part of England, well, fine, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. The idea that Monmouthshire was not part of Wales was, in any case, largely a combination of aristocratic pretense and the usual incompetence of 18th and 19th century Antiquarians. Even the rather silly 'Wales and Monmouthshire' formulation (which largely existed to flatter the former) acknowledged this implicitly. Was it as clearcut as that, though? Looking at political representation, which is the area I'm interested in, I'd say that until 1832 Monmouthshire's treatment was ambiguous: its boroughs were grouped and shared a single MP and this is characteristic of Wales; on the other hand the county had two MPs and this made it look very English since no Welsh county had a second seat prior to 1832. Even in 1885, Mons seems to have been thought of as more English than Welsh. There were discussions about the importance of ensuring that Wales retained its 30 seats (and this was done) - but it has to mean Wales without Monmouthshire because if Mons was included Wales had 33 going into the 1885 redistribution. So I don't think the distribution of seats in 1885 makes sense unless Mons was thought of as English. Of course I take the point about Ebbw Vale and I accept that Mons was always Welsh in a cultural sense - but legally, I'm not so sure (until it was put beyond doubt in 1974).
And here's the pre-1974 Mons County Council coat of arms, carefully preserving the ambiguity with an English lion and Welsh dragon, brandishing respectively a rose and a leek, with a motto that translates as 'Faithful to both'.
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Post by islington on Sept 27, 2023 15:14:30 GMT
Here's a detail from an OS 1" map published as late as 1972 showing Monmouthshire as unequivocally English, Ebbw Vale and all. (Note the different marking signifying a national boundary as opposed to a mere county boundary.)  |
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nyx
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Post by nyx on Sept 27, 2023 16:37:48 GMT
I think it's safe to say that even if all of historic Monmouthshire was once sometimes considered English, nowadays the only part of it which would have any chance of considering a return to England would be the area covered by the current local authority.
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Sept 27, 2023 18:08:08 GMT
Here's a detail from an OS 1" map published as late as 1972 showing Monmouthshire as unequivocally English, Ebbw Vale and all. (Note the different marking signifying a national boundary as opposed to a mere county boundary.) The idea that Neil Kinnock is an English windbag is ridiculous. |
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Sept 27, 2023 18:09:32 GMT
Derbyshire could be given to Yorkshire: it really isn't "East Midlands". Derby is definitely East Midlands. Buxton isn't. Such are the ways of boundaries. Derbyshire should just have its boundaries redrawn to include Burton, but not Buxton. |
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Sept 27, 2023 18:16:50 GMT
Derby is definitely East Midlands. Buxton isn't. Such are the ways of boundaries. Derbyshire should just have its boundaries redrawn to include Burton, but not Buxton.  |
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Khunanup
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Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
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Post by Khunanup on Sept 27, 2023 18:56:22 GMT
Derby is definitely East Midlands. Buxton isn't. Such are the ways of boundaries. Derbyshire should just have its boundaries redrawn to include Burton, but not Buxton. But Buxton is very Derbyshire. You need boundaries somewhere, the fact is that they are never perfect, not least because of changes of development and travel connections. |
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nyx
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Post by nyx on Sept 27, 2023 19:47:30 GMT
Derbyshire should just have its boundaries redrawn to include Burton, but not Buxton. But Buxton is very Derbyshire. You need boundaries somewhere, the fact is that they are never perfect, not least because of changes of development and travel connections. The issue is that regional links and local identity don't match (see North Lincolnshire, the northernmost bits of Yorkshire near Teesside, etc) It would be possible to split off High Peak and move it into the North West England region, just as you could do the same with the former Craven authority area from Yorkshire. The question is what the local opinion of that would be. |
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Post by mattb on Sept 27, 2023 19:48:10 GMT
Derbyshire could be given to Yorkshire: it really isn't "East Midlands". My grandparents in the High Peak never forgave the transfer of Dore & Totley |
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Post by carlton43 on Sept 27, 2023 20:38:06 GMT
Shall we go to a pub in Monmouthshire during the England v Wales match in next year's Six Nations and see who the locals are supporting? Yes if I may choose the location of the pub. |
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Sept 27, 2023 22:44:53 GMT
Was it as clearcut as that, though? Given that everywhere in Wales was legally part of England until the 20th century and that there was technically no border at all, then all that really matters is how people saw themselves, and as to that there really isn't any question: the Nonconformist churches that organized in the county were Welsh ones, the emergent miners unions of the late 19th century organized on the basis that Monmouthshire was Welsh and several of the leading figures in the great amalgamated South Wales Miners Federation were from Monmouthshire, and in political terms the county was covered by the South Wales Liberal Federation. When David Lloyd George angrily condemned the 'Newport English' at the SWLF meeting in Newport where the Cymru Fydd movement's attempt to merge the SWLF into its own Welsh National Federation (which in practice only covered the Northern half of Wales) as while the SWLF delegates wanted nothing to do with Cymru Fydd's loosely nationalist programme, they nevertheless believed themselves to be Welsh. What is true is that the gentry in Monmouthshire were primarily of English descent and, unlike the West Country families who poured into the county in their thousands in the 19th century and who became very Welsh very quickly, they retained an English identity.* This shaped a lot of the Antiquarian follies that undeniably did result in weird symbolic genuflections towards a socially non-existent English sentiment, but none of this mattered because (again) there was in a legal sense no 'Wales' and no border (which, of course, is why there was such inconsistency about the matter in terms of e.g. designating parliamentary seats and so on). As soon as Wales started to be treated as an entity distinct from England then there was never any serious dispute as to where the border had to go. *The pronunciation of certain placenames became (and remain, actually) a bit of shibboleth for this locally, including the name of the county itself: the first syllable of the local (and 'Welsh') pronunciation is 'Mon' and never 'Mun'. |
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Sibboleth
Labour
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Post by Sibboleth on Sept 27, 2023 22:56:27 GMT
Anyway, we do actually have national identity figures from the last census and they're fairly telling: 13.9% English for Monmouth, 6.1% for Newport, 5.5% for Torfaen, 4.4% for Blaenau Gwent and 3.9% for Caerphilly (with the figures not being notably different between the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire parts of the council area). The highest figures are all along the border itself (e.g. 20% in Monmouth Town) which, as there's a lot of movement back and forth all the time, suggests that a lot will simply just be people from England. Most of the rest of the border actually has higher proportions selecting English than the Monmouthshire stretch of it.
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Post by bjornhattan on Sept 27, 2023 23:04:32 GMT
Anyway, we do actually have national identity figures from the last census and they're fairly telling: 13.9% English for Monmouth, 6.1% for Newport, 5.5% for Torfaen, 4.4% for Blaenau Gwent and 3.9% for Caerphilly (with the figures not being notably different between the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire parts of the council area). The highest figures are all along the border itself (e.g. 20% in Monmouth Town) which, as there's a lot of movement back and forth all the time, suggests that a lot will simply just be people from England. Most of the rest of the border actually has higher proportions selecting English than the Monmouthshire stretch of it. There are 851 Monmouthshire residents who were born in Wales but identify solely as English (and then another 119 who identify as English and British but not Welsh) - roughly 1%. The converse is actually much more common; 2,630 people were born in England but identify as Welsh. It's not really possible to say whether these are incomers or people who grew up in Wales but were born in maternity units in Hereford (which may serve the north and east of the county). |
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Post by ntyuk1707 on Sept 28, 2023 0:21:59 GMT
I have limited knowledge of England's political and historical landscape, but would it be acceptable to:
* Rename South West to West Country
* Move Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex into South East and rename to Home Counties
* Rename remaining part of East to East Anglia
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
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Post by J.G.Harston on Sept 28, 2023 0:36:32 GMT
* Move Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex into South East and rename to Home Counties Ooo, careful, that could be pitchfork territory. There are so many varied and conflicting definitions of "Home Counties" that everything is bound to annoy somebody. Sussex? *Cambridgeshire*? One thought about the derivation of the term was that they were counties where London top brass could have their home and still be in travelling distance of work in London. So.... that would now include Manchester and Bristol! |
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Post by ntyuk1707 on Sept 28, 2023 1:01:37 GMT
* Move Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex into South East and rename to Home Counties Ooo, careful, that could be pitchfork territory. There are so many varied and conflicting definitions of "Home Counties" that everything is bound to annoy somebody. Sussex? *Cambridgeshire*? One thought about the derivation of the term was that they were counties where London top brass could have their home and still be in travelling distance of work in London. So.... that would now include Manchester and Bristol! YouGov poll (2019)  |
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Post by johnloony on Sept 28, 2023 2:49:04 GMT
The discussions in this thread are all jolly fun and brillig, but for what purpose are these regions being redefined? Are we proposing to set up regional assemblies? Or just for statistical / information purposes?
One reason could be so that we can continue to have regional-based party-list elections every five years, on the same day as elections for the European Parliament. This would be useful
(a) for dim people, who don’t realise that the UK has left the EU, and who will be expecting to vote in the EP elections
(b) for Remoaners, who want to vote in EP elections and who will have the satisfaction of pretending to continue doing so
(c) for us psephologists and statisticians, who will want to have the opportunity to analyse and collect the results. In other words, it’s just a big nationwide opinion poll, but made official and institutionalised.
The Greater Greater London region will be expanded substantially (not just as far as the M25) so that it includes large chunks of commuter territory. Think of it in terms of expanding London to make it have a naturally predominent Conservative plurality, a bit like a second version of expanding the LCC to form the GLC. I am thinking interms of comparing the map of the general election of 1987 with that of 2019, and making sure that the new region has big blue blobs round the edge again.
The reality of the connections of economic infrastructure should be recognised by having a combined region for Bristol, Avon (CUBA), and South Wales - so that the new version of the South West region can have its own proper south-west identity without being dominated by Bristol.
A separate Cornwall, all on its own.
A separate regional assembly for Scilly, all on its own (this recognises the “reality” (i.e the reality which I have just invented) that Silly doesn’t want to be part of Cornwall in the same way that Orkney doesn’t want to be part of Scotland.
Similarly, a new region for Liverpool, Merseyside and North Wales.
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Sept 28, 2023 7:03:49 GMT
"Annexe Monmouthshire", "a new Merseyside/North Wales region"
What has Wales done to deserve this.
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