wild greens

Well-known member
The hypothetical "North" is based around a legitimate political identity. I can understand the cynicism here

Agreed with all of this, but don't pretend northerners don't also love playing into this so-called mythical north. From football to music, they try to elevate themselves above southerners, even though they are all the same nationality and most of these northerner lefties moaning would recoil from living in a house in green lanes 700£ pm with a boiler not working and fungi growing out of the kitchen.

But really the concept of "pretend" is a hard one to discuss as London is an anomaly down south. You only need to jump on Southeastern from London towards Dartford/Gravesend or head towards Basildon or Canvey to see that there is no defined identity once you get out of the real inner cities. It's mostly about money really I think. And the tories are easy to find.

I could understand how you could view "Northern" as being a fallacy but I don't think Mancs or Scousers would look at the rest of the country and think they are the same nationality per se. Scouse not English, People's Republic of Manchester

These are not fake concepts.

But- the NIP is shit. Just read their twitter. Awful. It isn't authentic.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
That's absurd. How on earth would scousers constitute themselves into another nation, and if they are not English, why are they so tightly tied to English trade? Not all the royalty (if we're going by the definition of only the Etonians are truly English) is southern is it?

It's worse than Scots saying they are not British, which of course they are, just not English.

But even Ulster unionists are British. They see no contradiction between being N. Irish and British.

I've lived up north, and whilst that is not the same as being born there, which i will readily admit, Bradford, Leeds and Manchester are full of enormous mansions. Perhaps the NIP is inauthentic because an authentic northernness based on class is impossible?
 
Last edited:

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Just because it's a real concept does not mean it must be offered any credulity, historical or otherwise.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
there are also more insidious implications that can be derived from this line of reasoning, as if northerners and southerners were not united in the 1960s and 1970s in wanting the 'wogs' and the 'coons' out. Noone doubts gradations per se, but scousers and mancs benefit from being A) English and B) British citizens. Those American oppressed nations vs oppressor analyses are very unconvincing in the UK context.
 

wild greens

Well-known member
It might seem absurd to you but that's the reality of it. There's an emotional and political disconnect from the rest of the country from parts of the North West that is becoming more, not less, strained.

It's nothing to do with fiscal ideas of class.

When you look at things like this happening in Liverpool can you blame them?

Labour is attempting a political whitewash up there under guise of separating itself from the Joe Anderson farrago and is attempting to remove any concept of "corbynism" from its representation. By removing a black woman from its shortlist, and succeeding. I don't really think Yip has any chance of getting in but the idea of a Chinese independence candidate given the community's historical ties to Labour are unheard of.

Manchester is less hardcore about political affiliation- there are Tory councillors in the South- but they're all pretty critical of current government regardless. Its real sentiment and its loud and public. Look at Burnhams stance on refusing the tier system-that open rebellion was shared by all representatives from him region, not just good old Andy.

As for credulity nothing should ever be readily dismissed without discussion. Your point about the 1960s and 70s again sees you reaching to the past and assuming that this speaks to the current present. A slur about "w*gs and c**ns" only serves to illuminate your lack of understand of the current mentality in the city-

& ignores the fact that Squadism etc originated directly from the Mancs in this country

There's about as much chance as Boris publicly acknowledging his dozens of children as "northern" or scouse independence happening but the sentiment is real and growing. We're hardly talking Catalonian levels here but why would anyone from the North West feel like they're mentally part of this country?

It's nothing to do with oppression, it's a mindset and shared ideology. That's what NIP are trying to buy into but they're just shit.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It looks like the NIP are going to try the ludicrous SNP trick of claiming that Northerners are nicer people than those horrible South Easterners who have contrived to oppress them and ruin their lives with their Tory party.

Disgusting, rancid, illiterate, parochial, hypocritical, toxic, cynical positioning, in other words.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's absurd. How on earth would scousers constitute themselves into another nation, and if they are not English, why are they so tightly tied to English trade?
Well a huge part of the population there has Irish roots, and there's a big Welsh strain, too. Lot of Catholics. I strongly doubt there's any serious movement to establish an independent city-state, but it's not hard to see why a lot of people there might consider themselves somewhat apart from the rest of England.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
tbf the forced migration of post-colonial labour which has inherently ruined organic and traditional communities has done more to kill off revanchism in this country than any antifascist action ever could have. But antifascism as a practice can never truly kill off fascist dirigism and the militarisation of daily life, only its overt racist aspects. Perhaps a very accelerationist thing for me to say, but that is a reality. Which is exactly my point re: using those slurs in an ironically disparaging way. Labour has never been a fan of this economic trend, right from the Harold Wilson era (I struggle to understand why you are against referring to history in political discussions when your appeal in itself is to a historical compact between labour and northern communities.

Here's a contemporary, Paul Gilroy, making this point, that the work of those bastardly neoliberals cannot just be seen as always racist or White Supremacist. Hopefully not too historical.

PG: Their commitment to the Conservative electoral option, and the neofascist common sense that is now entangled with it, cannot be dismissed as a passing result of the lies and distortions that follow from carefully targeted psychographic interventions. There are forms of vernacular neoliberalism alive in our Black cultures. They’ve been there for ages, largely unchallenged. The bootstrapping, self-reliance and something-for-nothing mythologies might even appear, in a certain light, to offer an answer to how people manage the impact of racism in their lives.
Think back 40 years to the old Conservative election poster that said: “Labour say he’s Black, Conservatives say he’s British.” Four decades later, the compost from that intervention has fostered new right-wing life. The hyper-individuation of neoliberal life might resonate with the idea that racism never lets Blacks be individuals.

 
Last edited:

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Dude, the Scousers fucking hate the Tories and the Southerners, they do see themselves as having a different identity. Particularly since Thatcher which is when the whole Harry Enfield CALM DOWn signing on pastiche started. Being a scouser was very different before she declared war on 'em.

Exactly, since the 80s. A manufactured identity, in other words.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
It's a bit like how we adopt the slur asiretciler that western affluent Turks and Kurds use against us in the South East. They hate our guts in regular social life, but we're still under the national umbrella. We have more in common than we have differences, insofar as the nation is concerned.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Otherwise I'm not ignorant about the tensions between the north and the south, but they are hardly exclusive to England and its superiority complexes. In fact, they are quite mild here, no bloodfeuds and no guns. Whereas in the ancestral lands the cops are eager to beat us up and torture us based on regional location.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Otherwise I'm not ignorant about the tensions between the north and the south, but they are hardly exclusive to England and its superiority complexes. In fact, they are quite mild here, no bloodfeuds and no guns. Whereas in the ancestral lands the cops are eager to beat us up and torture us based on regional location.
Well yes, I'm sure you get a much better class of police brutality in Turkey, just like everything else.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Otherwise I'm not ignorant about the tensions between the north and the south, but they are hardly exclusive to England and its superiority complexes. In fact, they are quite mild here, no bloodfeuds and no guns. Whereas in the ancestral lands the cops are eager to beat us up and torture us based on regional location.
Not that mild if you look at things like Hillsborough and the subsequent smearing of Scousers by the press. There were riots in Toxeth a few years into the Thatcher premiership and I'm sure they've been others since....
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
anyway, was just having a shower and in the name of science I thought of a way to prove which one of us is right. My train trip to Liverpool is funded by the forum, I set a sample size of 50, each participant is asked will they support hanging the royals and the burning of the union jack. Then I go home. not only do we have a sample size to infer from (for science) but you lots pasty skin is saved from the joys of inter-pasty civilised fighting.
 

wild greens

Well-known member
There was a tory council in Liverpool in the very early seventies, quite easy to dig out. It's been a "left" city with a couple of anomalies for most of the last century though.

As Craner said- sorry for paraphrasing- the NIP are trying to coerce a conceptual divide here without really understanding the nuances I think.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
anyway, was just having a shower and in the name of science I thought of a way to prove which one of us is right. My train trip to Liverpool is funded by the forum, I set a sample size of 50, each participant is asked will they support hanging the royals and the burning of the union jack. Then I go home. not only do we have a sample size to infer from (for science) but you lots pasty skin is saved from the joys of inter-pasty civilised fighting.
I support this. I propose you act as a salesman for The Sun and try get subscribers for their new online platform in a range of pubs.
 
Top