U.K. Drift To South Alarms

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30043, 30 January 1963, Page 11

U.K. Drift To South Alarms

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P-A.) LONDON, Jan. 29. A question which has been much publicised and aired recently is the division of Britain into two nations, a prosperous South and a declining North, While this debate is still proceeding, the drift of population continues to the south in what a “Daily Mail" reporter describes as a “sad.

extraordinary migration.” “It is becoming fashionable, particularly in Government circles, to say that the cleft b- tween North and South has bee * overplayed and overpublicised, but after talking to people and looking at the stark, reproachful facts I am sure that is false comfort,” says the reporter. • "What is causing the drift south? Two things I think which are related but distinct First, unemployment and the decline of the great Victorian industries of coal, shipping and textiles. Skilled workers are moving south not because they want to (few do) but because they must

“Second, the lure of a capital city which magnetises the better educated people and the young. These leave from choice and it will be much more difficult to tempt them back.

“It was not until unemployment reached the shock figure of 500,000 in October, with the worst of it in the North, that the nation as a whole took fright Britain’s prosperity is now so patchy that while unemployment is 22 per cent of the working population in the south-east of England, it is twice as heavy jn the north-west and three times as heavy in Scotland and the north-east There are now 117.000 queuing for the dole in the north-west. Forty-three Lancashire textile mills have closed in the last 13 months. There are 2500 boys and girls on the Merseyside who cannot get started in their first

“Naturally the most highlyskilled workers are streaming south and some are even emigrating. The north-east is losing 10.000 workers a year. There are dozens of towns in Lancashire—like Burnley. Nelson and Colne—which are losing population and some are literally falling down. “Derelict factories with broken windows and crumb-

ling chimneys are common eyesores. In Burnley, there are probably 14,000 houses so slummy that they ought to bt knocked down. In Liverpool, 25.000 people are living in condemned houses on gaslit, cobbled back streets.

Schools, communications, even mortality rates are worse in the North. Can industry be pushed up from the bursting South even at this eleventh hour? I think it can and will be, but the Government will have to produce much more than the obviou. measures of loans, subsidies, Government contracts. houses and roads,” the reporter says.