In 1970, the Heath government (that's in Britain) began reorganising county and other local authority boundaries, and creating the Urban authorities such as Greater London. The official reason was that the growth of some urban centres (London, Birmingham etc) meant that they occupied bits of more than one county, leading to inequalities in administration; and that some of the historical counties were so small as to be inefficient.

As can be imagined, no redistribution can ever please everyone. About this time, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses took place. The people of the small community of Diggle, in the foothills of the Pennines, were told that they had been transferred from the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Greater Manchester. As if local pride had not been insulted enough, they were then informed that as a result of their forcible transhumance, their domestic rates (local tax) had just quadrupled. No true Yorkshireman, with the short arms and long pockets of that breed, could stand such an affront to liberty. Somewhere in the disturbances, a rent collector from the local authority was hit in the back by shotgun pellets.

However, boast as they might, nobody from Yorkshire can match a native Rutlander for insularity, parochialism and xenophobia. No wonder that this postage stamp of a county (much of which is actually a lake) was restored. Who knows what threats were made to Home Office civil servants ?


Incidentally, I live in the extreme north-west of Derbyshire. This is rather a schizophrenic county; the small towns in the west (Buxton, Chapel-en-le-frith, Glossop etc) are isolated by the bleaker bits of the Peak District from the main centres of the county on the eastern side. Logic would suggest that boundaries be shifted to conform to the situation. But, keep Greater Manchester out, at all costs ! Better one tyrant thirty miles away than two million next door !