THE CASE FOR
WESSEX

A
joint response to the White Paper on regional governance by the Wessex
Constitutional Convention, Wessex Society and the Wessex Regionalists
INTERNET EDITION - FOR A HARD COPY, CLICK HERE
Written
by: David Robins and Nick Xylas
Additional
Material: Jim Gunter, Martin Jones
Published
by: Wessex Constitutional
Convention
Flat
1, Edingworth Mansions
2,
Atlantic Road South
Weston-Super-Mare
Somersetshire
Wessex
BS23
2DE
©
Wessex Constitutional Convention 2002
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1: WESSEX FACTS AND FIGURES
CHAPTER
2: THE PLANNING DIMENSION
The
future needs of regional planning
The
Wessex alternative assessed
CHAPTER
3: THE BUSINESS DIMENSION
CHAPTER
4: THE CULTURAL DIMENSION
The
revival of Wessex identity
CHAPTER
5: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION
CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
APPENDIX
B: OTHER ‘SOUTH WEST’ REGIONS
APPENDIX
C: REGIONAL BOUNDARIES SINCE 1945
This
report contends that the regional geography of southern England is not
adequately reflected in the boundaries of the official Government Office
regions, and that this is partially responsible for the relatively low levels
of support for regional government. It
proposes an alternative model of geographically and culturally cohesive
regions which could, given government support, provide a solution to this
problem.
The
changes are summarised as follows: Buckinghamshire to be transferred to the
East of England region; Cornwall to be given its own assembly, as demanded by
its people; Hampshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire to be transferred to the
South West region, which should then be renamed Wessex.
The rest of this study focuses upon the new Wessex region.
Chapter
1 gives a statistical and geographical overview of the new region.
Chapter
2 focuses on planning issues, and the difficulties which are caused by the
present boundary between the South West and South East regions.
Chapter
3 concentrates on economic arguments for the redrawing of the boundaries.
Chapter
4 provides evidence of latent popular identity with Wessex and shows the
essential cultural unity of the Wessex region.
Chapter
5 illustrates the preference for a Wessex region among the region’s
politicians.
Finally,
Appendices review the different regional boundaries that have already existed
within southern England, including examples of many organisations with Wessex
regions.
Ten
years ago, there was no such region as the North East.
It was, and had been for nearly half a century, part of something else:
the Northern region. That
grouping of five counties, including Cumbria, was so well-entrenched that it
seemed to be taken for granted among regional enthusiasts that any future
assembly would cover the whole of the Northern region.
Today,
as the White Paper, Your Region, Your
Choice, is quick to acknowledge, the North East is at the head of the
queue for an elected regional assembly.
Similarly
dramatic reversals of fortune can be expected elsewhere.
Already, there is a growing realisation that the special requirements
of Cornwall cannot be accommodated within the South West region as the White
Paper envisages it. The history
of administrative regionalism should certainly act as a warning against
placing the current map beyond criticism.
The south of England has been divided into regions that are neither
popular nor practical. Among
Ministers in particular there is recognition that the existing arrangements
present many problems.
It
is the purpose of this report to spell out what those problems are and to
propose an alternative: a Wessex region stretching from Devon to Berkshire,
neighbouring Cornwall to the west and the true ‘South-Eastern’ counties to
the east.
‘Wessex’
is a name from the past but it is very much a name with a future.
The oldest of the three organisations presenting this joint response
has for over a quarter of a century sought the establishment of a Wessex
regional government. All are
pleased at the growth in public consciousness of Wessex that has taken place
over that period and which continues apace.
The process is not one that politicians in power have led.
It is not one that they can hinder.
But it is very much one that they can assist.
David
Robins
Convener,
Wessex Constitutional Convention

Nick
Xylas
Chairman,
Wessex Society

Colin
Bex
President,
Wessex Regionalists
“The Bishop of Exeter speaking on the Today
programme last Thursday about the forthcoming conference on a Regional
Assembly for the south west drew attention to the total lack of democracy in
the present arrangements for regional government.
There is an even greater lack of democracy in the way the present
regions were devised. Here in
Hampshire we have always been part of South West England (or Wessex).
Before the 1939/45 war BBC West Region had a station in Southampton.
We were part of the Post Office South West Region and the Western Legal
Circuit. During the war Hampshire
soldiers formed part of the 43rd Wessex Division.
After the war our health services were provided first by the Wessex
Regional Health Authority then by the South and West Regional Health
Authority. Now arbitrarily Hampshire has been put in a South East Region
where we have no historic or cultural affinity and progressively the Health
Authority, English Heritage, NFU, the National Trust, the Territorial Army are
all adjusting their boundaries to come into line. If the Prime Minister now wants the issue discussed perhaps
we could go back to the first principles – what regions?”
- Letter from Jack Sturgess of Lyndhurst,
Hants. to The Times, May 2001
This report represents the joint response of the
three organisations which comprise the Wessex movement to the White Paper on
regional governance, Your Region, Your
Choice: Revitalising the English Regions, which was published on 9th
May 2002.
Whilst we welcome the general thrust of the
White Paper, we have for some time been critical of the boundaries of the
current NUTS-1
[1]
regions, and note with dismay the White Paper’s inflexible
attachment to them. The
boundaries of these regions are unimaginative, driven more by a desire for
regions of equal size – something that is actually quite untypical of
European practice – than by a desire for regions that are economically,
culturally, or even geographically, cohesive.
We note with particular concern the partition of Wessex between the
South West and South East regions, and it is the boundary between these
regions that we propose to address in this report.
The three organisations sponsoring this report
are as follows:
·
The Wessex
Regionalists, founded in 1974 by Alexander Thynne (now Lord Bath), are the
oldest regionalist political party in England, and were advocating regional
devolution for Wessex long before English regionalism entered mainstream
political consciousness. Their
discussion document, The Statute of
Wessex (1982) suggested a Wessex region comprising historic Berkshire,
Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire, with provision for adjacent
territories to join.
·
Wessex Society is a cultural society set up
in 1999 to promote regional identity. It
is officially neutral on the issue of regional self-government, but has noted
the extent to which unsympathetic, centrally-imposed boundaries have hampered
its work, particularly through the creation of the Regional Cultural
Consortia. Its main contribution
to this work is towards Chapter 4, The
Cultural Dimension. The
society’s definition of Wessex is more explicit than the Wessex Regionalist
definition, extending northwards to include Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and
Oxfordshire. This definition
reflects its specialist interests in history and dialect matters.
·
The Wessex
Constitutional Convention was launched on 19th May 2001, and is
an all-party pressure group seeking to achieve the broadest consensus on the
form of self-government appropriate for Wessex. Its region, though smaller than the Wessex Society
definition, as it excludes Herefordshire (though with the proviso that all
regional boundaries should be subject to popular will), is the one that enjoys
the widest measure of support within the Wessex movement.
Except as otherwise indicated, the Wessex Constitutional Convention’s
definition is the one used in this report.
As will be seen from the foregoing, and from the
maps at Appendix A, many different definitions of Wessex are in use.
While at face value this might seem a weakness, compared with the
precision of the existing official boundaries, it is in fact a strength.
A variety of boundaries is a consequence of the varying needs of the
organisations that use them. What
is significant is that a choice has been made to use the name of Wessex. It is also clearly evident that, however deep the zones of
transition may be, there is a substantial Wessex heartland that is of regional
scale. Wessex should never be
abused as simply an alternative name for Dorset.
The definition adopted for this report is one
that is widely respected. At its
core are Dorset and Wiltshire, common to every county-based definition of
Wessex in Appendix A. Many other
definitions then add either Somerset or Hampshire.
The Wessex Tourism Association recognises the validity of drawing in
both. To these four shires, Devon
and Berkshire are added, making the Wessex of Thomas Hardy’s novels and –
in terms of its core network – the area proposed for the Wessex Trains
passenger rail franchise. The
Cotswold shires – Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire – have more ambiguous
loyalties but an affinity with Wessex is manifested in many ways described
below. The eight shires thus
encompassed – including the modern administrative counties of Bristol and
the Isle of Wight – are the Wessex of this report.
While it would certainly be possible to argue
for a smaller, or indeed a larger, Wessex region, there are reasons of
cohesion that point to the eight-shire region as a sensible area.
The nucleus of an administrative Wessex already exists in the form of
the South West region, whose fatal flaw however, in terms of popular
acceptance, is its inclusion of Cornwall.
In losing Cornwall, the South West can move one county-width eastwards
to include those shires which, even during the 20th century, were
still regarded as south-western but which are now grouped with the South East.
The resultant region should then be renamed Wessex.
As the case for a separate Cornish assembly has
been well documented elsewhere
[2]
, The Case for Wessex
will focus on the South West/South East boundary, which is another way of
saying that the key problems lie with the definition of the South East. Not only Wessex will benefit from the redrawing of boundaries
proposed here. So will the South
East: the ‘real South East’ of Surrey, Sussex and Kent. In the shires of eastern Wessex there is much resentment at
inclusion in a South East region. Views
in the real South East are likely to echo this: the inclusion of the Wessex
shires serves only to dilute an otherwise geographically-coherent region,
generating confusion and hostility.
[3]
We also argue for the
transfer of Buckingham-shire to the East of England region, recognising that
the present boundaries disadvantage its largest settlement, the growing new
town of Milton Keynes. In a
recent BBC poll
[4]
, the South East was the only English region not to register a
majority in favour of an elected regional assembly.
It takes only a glance at its shape on the map to understand why.
“In recent years a trend towards regionalism,
as a reaction to overmuch centralisation, has revived the concept of Wessex.
While some of the suggested new regions have had little logical basis
in either history or geography Wessex, based on its historical extent, would
have an immense potential and would be at least as homogenous as Wales or
Ulster.”
-
Ralph Whitlock, Whitlock’s Wessex,
1975
Wessex, as defined in this report, is an area comprising the traditional shires of Berkshire [5] , Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire (including Bristol), Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Oxfordshire, Somerset and Wiltshire. This area covers 10,926 square miles (28,296 sq.km.) and has a population of 7,343,000. At its greatest extent, it measures roughly 160 miles (260 km.) from east to west and 130 miles (210 km.) from north to south (excluding the Isle of Wight). For other regions broadly comparable in terms of area and population, see Table 1 below.
Table 1: Selected regions
for comparison
|
NAME |
COUNTRY |
AREA (sq. mile/sq. km.)
|
POPULATION |
NOTES |
|
Cataluña |
Spain |
12,328/31,930 |
6,090,000 |
NUTS-2 region, part of Este (East) NUTS-1 region; former local
government & regions minister Alan Whitehead described in Roth’s Parliamentary
Profiles as believing in “Catalonia-style regionalism”. |
|
Lombardia |
Italy |
9,211/23,856 |
8,989,000 |
Combines NUTS-1 and NUTS-2 status.
This is fairly common in the EU: 7 regions – Åland, Attica,
Azores, Brussels, Hamburg, Madeira and Madrid – combine NUTS-1,2 and 3
status, much as Cornwall seeks to do.
Luxembourg combines NUTS-0,1,2 and 3 status. |
|
Maryland |
USA |
12,198/31,600 |
5,135,000 |
The capital, Annapolis, has roughly the same population as Winchester,
historic capital of Wessex. |
|
Niedersachsen |
Germany |
18,381/47,606 |
7,832,000 |
The regional capital, Hannover, is twinned with Bristol, Wessex’s
largest city. |
|
WESSEX |
UK |
10,926/28,296 |
7,343,000 |
|
In passing, it can be noted that all of these
regions have a historical/cultural identity and are not defined simply for
administrative or economic convenience.
Wessex is larger than Wales but only one-third
the size of Scotland. At 28,296
sq.km., Wessex is also larger than the South West (23,289 sq.km.) but is
appreciably more compact. From
west to east, it measures 260 km., while the South West mainland, from west
Cornwall to north-east Gloucestershire, measures 350 km., greater than the
distance from Gloucestershire to the Scottish border.
The difference becomes even more marked when it is borne in mind that
the South West also includes the Isles of Scilly, 40 km. west of Land’s End.
In fact, Cornwall, with the Isles of Scilly, accounts for over a third
of the South West’s total length. Wessex
is only two-thirds as long as the South West, notwithstanding the addition of
Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire. It
strikes a balance between treating as one region the corridors of movement
west of London and forming a region where internal distances are short enough
to enable that region to function effectively as a political unit.
Wessex is administered by 7 county councils with a total of 28 district, 13 borough and 4 city councils; 16 un