The North South Divide

On a day that our Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg has talked about rebalancing the North South economic divide my friend and fellow blogger Michael Anderson has very kindly posted a joint article about the Wall.

Mike Anderson's Ancient History Blog looks at the ancient world in terms of what the past teaches us about the present. I rather stole Michael’s thunder and wrote about Geography of the North South divide, and it’s resonance through history.

" . .Emasculating the north and overburdening the south .. . “

Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg.

Recent history is still at bit raw,  but going back a bit,  if the North had revolted following the death of Trajan, [117], then by the time Hadrian’s engineers had constructed his Wall [122], there may not have been a lot of people left to complain. My understanding of Hadrian’s Wall, as a purely military enterprise, might be seen alongside William the Conqueror’s ethnic cleansing and genocide as a solution to the North-South divide.

In this context Margret Thatcher’s systematically closing those industries that the North relied on seems like good natured gerrymandering.   

After all, who needs engineers when you can have commodity traders?