Recent History
The region was created in 1994 and was originally defined as Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Cleveland. A reform of local government abolished Cleveland and created several unitary districts. The region is now considered to consist of four distinct 'sub-regions':
- County Durham, plus Darlington
- Northumberland
- Tyne and Wear
- Teesside, which was formerly part of Cleveland but is now associated with North Yorkshire and County Durham
A November 2004 referendum on whether a directly elected regional assembly should be set up for North East England resulted in a decisive "no" vote. The number of people who voted against the plans was 696,519 (78%), while 197,310 (22%) voted in favour. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister of the time, admitted that his plans for regional devolution had suffered an "emphatic defeat". Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative spokesman for the regions, said the vote would mean the end of plans for a North East Assembly. He told the BBC: "The whole idea of regional government has been blown out of the water by this vote".
Read more about this topic: North East England
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)