There is "a long-running, disruptive, psychedelic tradition in modern Northern English culture". Will it help The North rise?
From Louder Than War
We have long been interested in English regionalism, to the extent that it promises a more dynamic relationship between communities and government (something already being explored in Scottish and Welsh devolution, and thus increasingly attractive to English regions).
To those of us familiar with the cultural and historical distinctiveness that buttressed the call for the Send and Holyrood Parliaments, the new book by Alex Niven - The North Will Rise Again: In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands - is a recognisable move. As his blurb puts it:
By telling the story of the North in the last few decades, Alex goes in search of answers to some of the big questions at the forefront of British politics and society today, touching on live issues including the North/South divide, austerity, the impact of Brexit, the collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall', and calls for regional devolution. He concludes with a powerful argument for a revival of northern politics and society by way of what he calls 'radical regionalism'.
A native Northerner himself, having returned to his home city of Newcastle with his family in the last few years, Alex also includes elements of memoir and stories from his own family history to reflect some of the key arguments of his book.
To what extent are the crises of the last ten years partly the result of fundamental divides and inequalities in the geography of England? How did the North become a place of lost potential and broken dreams? And what can be done to make it one of the most dynamic and forward-looking places in the world once again?
One way to address this is to tell a different, more vibrant story of “The North” than the received cliches. In the extract from the book published in The Face, Niven speaks of a tradition called “Acid Northumbria”, which stems from a familiar source:
In the context of the North of England, which contributed disproportionately to the pop music of the late twentieth century, the notion that an imaginative countercultural sensibility might hold the key to social liberation has been a fairly common one.
We might describe this approach as an ‘acid Northumbrian’ one, with Northumbria viewed here in the broadest sense as the whole of northern England – and with due respect to the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher, who coined the term ‘acid communism’ to describe the political potential in remembering the freeing countercultural adventures of the ‘60s and ‘70s (it is also important to emphasise that this ‘psychedelic’ mode is based mainly – like Fisher’s definition of acid communism – on a premise of radical imaginative freedom. It does not – or does not necessarily – derive from the actual experience of taking specific substances.)
Of course, in trying to define acid Northumbria, we must look first of all to the Liverpudlian Beatles, and their popularisation of psychedelic experimentation from around 1965. For our purposes, the really important thing about the Lennon – McCartney acid experiment – endlessly documented in countless books, documentaries and sleeve notes over the years – is that it allowed Liverpool to rise to the surface of the Beatles’ music, where previously it had only been evident in the accents and mannerisms of the band members in public appearances.
To be sure, the first Beatles’ songs written after their initial encounters with LSD are best viewed on a purely aesthetic level, as part of their famous sonic evolution across the major albums of the mid-Sixties. This trajectory is mapped by the mild psychedelia of Nowhere Man, Day Tripper and Norwegian Wood on 1965’s Rubber Soul and its outtakes, and then by the more vigorously modernist She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows on Revolver. But by late 1966, after Paul McCartney had joined his bandmates in the acid adventure, there was a clear turn inwards and backwards on those Beatles’ works which were most directly influenced by LSD.
Recorded in the last weeks of 1966 but released in February 1967, the double A‑side Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane was, among other things, a historic breakthrough in northern English art – and a foundation moment of sorts for acid Northumbria. This was largely because of the manner in which its two lead tracks suggested that the backstreets of the apparently provincial North could be a repository of infinite imaginative potential.
More here. The excerpt goes on to cite bands like Joy Division, Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, or folk outfits like Unthanks (from Ryton) to the Orielles (Halifax). Even the NIP (Northern Independence Party), founded in 2020, is corralled by Niven into this realm of an altered-state:
Through calls to nationalise the Greggs bakery chain, imagery which juxtaposes pictures of the proverbial northern whippet with the lucid yellow-and-red hues of the ancient Northumbrian flag and Twitter posts which narrate hallucinated encounters with Sean Bean on Ilkley Moor, NIP is in a deep sense the culmination of a long-running, disruptive, psychedelic tradition in modern northern culture.
This tendency acknowledges that regional inequality will probably persist for a good while yet. But looking beyond the apparently fixed strictures of the present, it is nonetheless determined to offer provoking glimpses of an alternative northern future in the meantime.
The more conventional politics of a rising North are dealt with in Niven’s Guardian piece.
…Something resembling a fullblown English federalism, which creates Germany-like Länder out of the northern regions, will probably be the only way to lastingly level up the country. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about a single, consolidated northern state governed by a Great North Assembly.
In other words: empowering a capital-N North as a whole – or at least large, inclusive sub-regions like the north-east and north-west – rather than going in for more micro-forms of devolution, which are not ultimately all that different from David Cameron’s “big society” and its emphasis on giving power to local communities.
In an England where regional equality was guaranteed by the existence of large, empowered devolved territories, endless wrangles over which micro-localities were truly deserving of development and regeneration would make way for a more logical approach. This would distribute power and resources towards the periphery as a matter of course.
A citizen in an imagined northern federal state would probably enjoy better, more comprehensive public transport, improved access to the best cultural amenities, higher living standards generally, and the sorts of employment opportunities currently only available to those within commuting distance of central London.
It’s interesting to note that Niven counterposes a “big-society” style of “micro-devolution” to the achievement of a Northern (or two Northern) “states”, under a German-like federal system. The experience under Welsh and Scottish parliaments is that there is an overall drift within these bodies towards empowering localities, advancing land reform and styles of community ownership/power. A further devolution downwards, as cultures and principles of self-determination spread beyond top-down constitutional achievements. This revival of citizenship and civic autonomy raises all boats in each polity.