Bitter Ashes
15th June 2009, 14:29
I'm intrested to know how much people understand of the Harrowing/Harrying of the North. It's something I most certainly was not taught about in school, despite what seems like it having a very large impact in Great Britain that the scars with scars still visable today.
If you went to school in the UK, then there's probably a date branded into your mind; 1066 - The Norman invasion of England and Wales. You will have heard all the stories of long tailed stars and promises of thrones and maybe even seen the Bayreux tapestry depicting the Anglo-Saxons trying to resist two invasions on two seperate fronts. You might even be told of some of William of Normandy's actions following the Battle of Hastings, such as carving the country up into territories to be governed by his Captains and friends from the imposing safety of motte and bailey structures, or the Doomesday Book's creation to introduce taxation. What we're not told about is how the North tried to resist Norman occupation and set up an independant state of Northumbria and in how, during the winter of 1068, William reacted.
Every village from the Humber to the Tees was raized, it's inhabitants murdered and raped to death. Livestock killed and the corpses rendered inedible and the very earth literaly sown with salt. 150,000 Northerners, 10% of the entire population of all of England, were murdered that winter and the limited survivors returned to face starvation, plague and destroyed homes. It's said that the starvation was so severe that many had to resort to canabilism to survive. It took centuries for the North to recover its infrastructure back to that point and during that time, in the South East, those who had collaberatted with the Normans had moved on and begun to reap the rewards of thier betrayal. The North-South divide had been born. Prior to this point the North and South had been.fairly even, the poverty and distibution of power had been totaly artificialy created.
Today, those North of the Humber have been found to have substantially lower average wages than the South ever since records began, our average life expectancy is over 15 years lower than even the most deprieved areas of London and the majority of our employers and MP's are from the South. Whenever tough calls need to be made, it's ensured that the North suffers more than the South and that we are constantly bombarded with propaganda of Southern superiority everywhere we go.
Is it any suprise then, that we are not taught of the Harrowing of the North? Is it not in the best intrests of the bourgeois, who are mainly of the South and ancestors collaberated with the Normans, or even are Norman decendants themselves, allow Northerners to believe that thier relative poverty is a result of natural causes, or the contrasting attitudes of Northerners? Is it any suprise also, that there are those who deny that there's even such thing as a North-South divide present in England and Wales? Has history been whitewashed to disguise the shame of the bourgeois? At the end of the day, it's a significant masacre and it seems that the attempts to hide it are vast. 10% of a country's population in a single winter would have made Hitler proud, and when this happened on our own shores and the damage so vast it's still visable nearly a thousand years later, why is it not taught?
If you went to school in the UK, then there's probably a date branded into your mind; 1066 - The Norman invasion of England and Wales. You will have heard all the stories of long tailed stars and promises of thrones and maybe even seen the Bayreux tapestry depicting the Anglo-Saxons trying to resist two invasions on two seperate fronts. You might even be told of some of William of Normandy's actions following the Battle of Hastings, such as carving the country up into territories to be governed by his Captains and friends from the imposing safety of motte and bailey structures, or the Doomesday Book's creation to introduce taxation. What we're not told about is how the North tried to resist Norman occupation and set up an independant state of Northumbria and in how, during the winter of 1068, William reacted.
Every village from the Humber to the Tees was raized, it's inhabitants murdered and raped to death. Livestock killed and the corpses rendered inedible and the very earth literaly sown with salt. 150,000 Northerners, 10% of the entire population of all of England, were murdered that winter and the limited survivors returned to face starvation, plague and destroyed homes. It's said that the starvation was so severe that many had to resort to canabilism to survive. It took centuries for the North to recover its infrastructure back to that point and during that time, in the South East, those who had collaberatted with the Normans had moved on and begun to reap the rewards of thier betrayal. The North-South divide had been born. Prior to this point the North and South had been.fairly even, the poverty and distibution of power had been totaly artificialy created.
Today, those North of the Humber have been found to have substantially lower average wages than the South ever since records began, our average life expectancy is over 15 years lower than even the most deprieved areas of London and the majority of our employers and MP's are from the South. Whenever tough calls need to be made, it's ensured that the North suffers more than the South and that we are constantly bombarded with propaganda of Southern superiority everywhere we go.
Is it any suprise then, that we are not taught of the Harrowing of the North? Is it not in the best intrests of the bourgeois, who are mainly of the South and ancestors collaberated with the Normans, or even are Norman decendants themselves, allow Northerners to believe that thier relative poverty is a result of natural causes, or the contrasting attitudes of Northerners? Is it any suprise also, that there are those who deny that there's even such thing as a North-South divide present in England and Wales? Has history been whitewashed to disguise the shame of the bourgeois? At the end of the day, it's a significant masacre and it seems that the attempts to hide it are vast. 10% of a country's population in a single winter would have made Hitler proud, and when this happened on our own shores and the damage so vast it's still visable nearly a thousand years later, why is it not taught?