Region’s soul-searching on Yorkshire Day as uncertain future looms - Jayne Dowle

This year, it seems especially fitting to remind ourselves. As we face the first day of August knee-deep in welly-wanging, black pudding eating competitions, flat cap fashion shows and other ‘typical’ Tyke activities enthusiastically cheered on by TV crews to make an amusing teatime news item, we might spare a minute to reflect. Sorry to put a dampener on the festivities, but here we are. The largest geographical county in the UK, with a population, at 5.4m, larger than Scotland and an economy bigger than Wales, and we have serious challenges to our identity, both at home and within the nation. I hope that today will be the perfect opportunity to consider our position.

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After all, what is Yorkshire? Your response of course will depend first and foremost on whereabouts you live. The Yorkshire of a Dales sheep farmer will be a very different place to that of a teenager on a council estate in Halifax or Sheffield. The Yorkshire of award-winning restaurants and luxurious country house hotels is light years away from the Yorkshire of boarded-up leisure centres and shuttered shopping malls.

Under the banner of One Yorkshire, I would like to see our mini-country join forces and share resources, for there to be much more dialogue between the different slices of society and less division.

This is especially pertinent as we look towards the next few years, when the very notion of what the UK is and what it stands for will also be examined with the closest of scrutiny. If we are to take our rightful place, we must forge a new and forward-thinking approach instead of falling back on traditional divisions of industry vs farming, rural vs urban, the rich man in his castle and the poor man at the gate – which belong way back in the past.

Whilst every Yorkshireman – and woman – I know will stand up for themselves with pride regardless of social class, our society in general is drifting ever further into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. Earlier this year, the End Child Poverty charity found that 1.2 million people across Yorkshire – almost a quarter of the population – are living in relative poverty, according to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions. And children are hardest hit; one in three are growing up in breadline families.

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We should celebrate hard work and enterprise, but those who benefit from it should be careful not to pull up the drawbridge after themselves. I’d like to see more philanthropy, and more role models in education and business to encourage our young people to have confidence in themselves. Sadly, the controversy surrounding Sir Gary Verity’s tenure in charge of Welcome to Yorkshire did nothing but underline this damaging ‘them and us’ mentality. His flamboyant lifestyle and apparently cavalier attitude towards his expense account has left a bitter taste. The new Welcome to Yorkshire set-up would do well to focus on healing some rifts and throwing itself wholeheartedly into reflecting all that is positive, with a mindful eye on the bigger political picture.

The strong Yorkshire Leave vote in the EU Referendum suggested an overwhelming percentage of the population were both frustrated with the high-handed attitude of Westminster and angered by lack of control over our own affairs. However, it also indicated a nasty sense of suspicion and intolerance that does us no favours. Whilst our diversity is a strength and makes our identity difficult to pinpoint, it also seems to pose a threat to some.

I’d like this to change; but it requires some serious social engineering, not just a lapel badge saying ‘Northern Powerhouse’. It is all very well the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, merrily promising £3.6bn to a ‘towns fund’, some of which must surely fall Yorkshire’s way. Anyone who has had anything to do with regeneration in our region will tell you that throwing money at things doesn’t work – or last. What’s needed is steady growth, consistent gains in confidence and a central government realisation that private enterprise cannot thrive when a quarter of the population is living in poverty.

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Appropriately, at 11.45am today in York, the Yorkshire Ridings Society will walk all four of York’s Bars to read a Declaration of Integrity. Written in Latin, Old English, Old Norse and modern English, the declaration represents the four languages spoken in York since the Romans decided it was a decent place to set up camp. It is a reminder that above all, Yorkshire’s greatest strength is the many people who live here. And we should tell ourselves that every day, not just on August 1.