The live reading of The Yorkshire Declaration duly took place at 12.00 noon on 1st April at the Eye of York. It was attended by about a dozen people. The event was preceded by a short publicity campaign which included articles in the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Bylines and on several other websites. A video of the event should be available on YouTube in due course. So, overall, it was a successful launch but what comes next?
Whilst there is no formal campaign to support The Declaration at present, The Yorkshire Society will be hosting an event on 31st July at the Tempest Anderson Hall which is part of the Yorkshire Museum in York. This is billed as a forum on the future governance of Yorkshire. A group of distinguished Yorkshire men and women will give their views on the range of devolution options available.
For further details, please follow the link below.
“We hope that the options, ideas, hopes and aspirations that will be voiced at the Forum, like the Yorkshire Declaration itself, will be widely shared and find their way on to the agenda of politicians of all parties in the coming General Election.”
We should not make any assumptions about what will happen at the forum, but the sort of devolution that we have been seeking for some time now is already on the agendas of The Greens, LibDems and the Yorkshire Party; not forgetting some like minded independents that might also stand as candidates in the forthcoming General Election.
If we are talking about the two major parties, there is little chance of any progress there. The people that neglected Yorkshire for the last 50 years are unlikely to take up the case for real devolution at this stage. The Conservative government has never been interested and the new right wing Labour Party has already ditched the idea of One Yorkshire. There are many true Yorkshire men and women in both parties but how many elected officials will have the courage to go against their inept party leaders.
Ever get the feeling of deja vu? This reminds me of the conditions that led to the foundation of the Yorkshire Party in 2014.
The Yorkshire Declaration petition now appears to have ceased but Citizen Network are hosting a Devolution Yorkshire mailing list, a news article and various links to recent published articles.
https://citizen-network.org/news/yorkshire-citizens-demand-real-devolution
I would like to record our thanks to Colin Speakman and Simon Duffy for bringing The Yorkshire Declaration into existence and making its launch such a success.
The full text of The Yorkshire Declaration can be found here.
In terms of where we go from here, maybe we should look to the likes of YesCymru who run a non-political campaign for independence for Wales. They have been quite successful in engaging the public. Perhaps we could have similar success in engaging the Yorkshire public in a campaign for real devolution/autonomy for Yorkshire.
Some details on the Forum for the future governance of Yorkshire have now been released by The Yorkshire Society.
https://theyorkshiresociety.org/event/forum-on-the-future-governance-of-yorkshire/