We continue Tarquin O’Flaherty’s discussion of George Stephenson, Trains and the industrial revolution and their impact on the politics of the day.  (You can find the previous 18 pieces by searching ‘Trains’ in the ‘Search’ box, right.) 

Probably the most memorable of George Stephenson’s railway lines was that from Birmingham to London, which from its very inception, caused a hell of a stink.  Most of the stench came from the London end, where outrage at the prospect of a railway built by crude Northerners was almost too much to bear.  The London papers apprehensively observed that no good would come of it, that the steam, smoke and thunderous noise would cause cows to abort their calves, women to be struck down ‘by the vapours’ and crops of cabbages would fade away and die.  To add to this there were, of course, the usual collection of crackpots that newspapers keep in reserve for these special occasions:  ‘…no one of the nobility, the gentry, or those who travel in their own carriages….  would go by the railway. A nobleman would not like to be drawn at the tail of a train of waggons…’

The above was quoted anonymously in a London paper.

Then there was the glorious Colonel Sibthorope, MP. who observed that he would ‘…rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar… than meet an engineer…’

London obviously believed that, no matter how original, creative or clever Northerners might be, by definition, any person from ‘up North’ was a social inferior.

This condition is surely a leftover, a stubborn pre-industrial pathway in the brain created by many hundreds of years of genuflection and forelock tugging by those close to the seat of power in London.  Perhaps the word ‘Cockney’ is actually a perjorative term, applied by outsiders to those Southerners who live so close to kings and princes that an almost permanently deferential ‘cocked knee’ is an absolute requirement.  This closeness, this ‘cocked knee’ habit, somehow mysteriously confers on the holder the right to look down on those denied this forelock tugging privilege.

The Industrial Revolution may very well have given us the right to vote, inalienable rights and a much shortened working week, but the very English psychological belief in innate superiority remains and thrives in the faintly ridiculous, class-ridden British society of today.