ABSTRACT
To be a student of English regions is to live on something of an intellectual rollercoaster. Despite, or perhaps because of, the pre-eminence of London in the political, economic and cultural life of the United Kingdom, the status of regional studies has never really progressed past a precarious and transitory existence. The creation of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the 1960s and Regional Economic Planning Councils in the 1970s, and the post-1997 moves towards regional forms of governance, might suggest that the English regions are a fashion that rise and fall like hem lines. But the Ministry and the Planning Councils were never successful under their promoting governments, and the ease with which the 1979 Conservative administration destroyed regional frameworks for a decade tells quite another story. Until recently, to study regions in England was to be deliberately positioning oneself on the ‘alternative’ wing of a range of disciplines (with the possible exception of planning). After decades of this samizdat existence, the first Blair government, coming to power with a commitment to devolution, seemed to herald a new dawn for regional thinking in the UK. But now, only eight years after that bright May morning, the pendulum seems to have swung back once again, and devolution is being spoken of as being dead for a generation. It therefore hardly seems to be the time to be celebrating the ‘rise of the English regions’ in anything other than ironic tones.
