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Swapping sides: the English town that wants to be Scottish

It is a battle that has raged for centuries: is Berwick-upon-Tweed English or Scottish? Now a poll of the border town's residents has brought the debate back to life. By Paul Vallely

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

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The railway line north from Newcastle passes directly by the cliff-edge along some of the most spectacular seascape in Britain. It is also perhaps the most under-populated part of the country. You pass Alnmouth, Craster, Dustanburgh Castle, Bamburgh, the Farne Islands, Lindisfarne and great tracts of wild countryside. By the time you reach Berwick-upon-Tweed you feel that you ought to be in Scotland.

There are a number of Scots who feel the same. A nationalist politician has just lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for the town to return to "Scottish nationhood" on the back of a poll conducted by a TV station asking if residents of Berwick want to see the border shifted so that they move from living in England to Scotland.

The idea has been backed by the leader of the Scottish Borders Council, the local authority north of the border. Newspapers in Northumberland and Durham have been a good deal less enthusiastic, talking about "an audacious land-grab".

The border lies a mile or so to the north of Berwick, which is the northernmost town in England, a deal further north than Scottish towns such as Dumfries, Stranraer, Ayr and Kilmarnock.

"Welcome to Scotland – Fàilte gu Alba" says the bold sign with the Saltire of St Andrew going north. "Welcome to Northumberland – England's Border County – Borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed" says the more cursive sign as you travel south. The point is about halfway between Edinburgh and Newcastle.

The town sits astride a multi-bridged river, though the bulk of it is on what was once the Scottish bank of the Tweed. Its status is a wonderful anachronism, which is what makes it such a frequent question in pub quizzes. "Which English town sits on what is officially designated as a Scottish river, and whose soccer team plays in the Scottish Football League?"

The red sandstone of Berwick's buildings – the colour of ancient dried blood – have a characteristically Scottish look to them. This is, concedes its own town council, "an area considered too north for England, too south for Scotland". It has an English mayor rather than a provost, as it would in Scotland. But his robes are purple, not scarlet, as they would have been in the days when the town was a Royal Scottish Borough.

"Our restaurants sell haggis alongside roast beef and Yorkshire pudding," proclaims the town's vicar, the Rev Alan Hughes. "Gift shops purvey 'See you Jimmy' hats beside flags of St George. One of our middle schools has its own tartan. Our town hall may host St Andrew's celebrations yet Morris dancers perform by its steps. Half of our population consider themselves English, half Scottish, although most prefer the term 'Berwiker'."

His tone is celebratory rather than ambivalent. And yet there is a gripe too. Over his 12 years as vicar he has lobbied for the A1 to be turned into a dual carriageway – the stretch from Berwick to Morpeth is almost the only section to remain single-carriageway, creating little incentive for firms to relocate to Berwick.

He has begged for a place of extended learning, a "miniversity", to regenerate the town following the loss of some of its core industries. And, as chair of governors for two Berwick schools, he has pleaded for extra funding. All to little avail.

"These past seven centuries, the gulf between ownership of and responsibility for Berwick has been wide," he says.

The sense of dislocation of the people of Berwick is far from new. For a period of 300 years from the mid-11th century the town was a key strategic prize in the unending wars between England and Scotland. Berwick has been besieged more times than Jerusalem, a fact reflected in the architecture of the town, which has remnants of some of the finest defensive ramparts on these islands. The town changed hands between England and Scotland at least 14 times between 1296 and 1482.

In the 13th century, Berwick was one of the wealthiest ports in Europe, earning a quarter of all Scotland's customs revenues. Then the town's mayor appended his signature to the Scottish king's new treaty with England's old enemy France. On 30 March 1296 the English king, Edward I, stormed the town, torched the place and put 8,000 inhabitants to the sword, including those who had fled to the sanctuary of its churches. The greatest merchant city in Scotland, considered "a second Alexandria", was reduced to a small seaport.

Ever since it has remained a tidal touchstone. An arm of William Wallace was displayed there after his execution and quartering in 1305. It was where Scotland's great 16th-century religious reformer John Knox – the man who founded the nation's established church, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland – was first appointed a preacher. Finally, in 1482, it was captured by the future King Richard III and has remained under English administration ever since.

Yet despite that, it has never relinquished its singular status. In many official documents and treaties it was always warranted a discrete character. In 1549 the preface to The Book of Common Prayer pronounced: "This book shall be appointed to be used by all that officiate in all parish Churches and Chapels within the Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales and town of Berwick-upon-Tweed."

In 1551, the town was made a small self-governing county corporate. In 1603, when King James VI of Scotland crossed the river there on his way to being crowned James I of England he reportedly declared that the town belonged "neither to England nor to Scotland but [stood] part of the united Crown's domain".

The town long cherished a story that it was given distinct mention in the declaration of the Crimean War but that, due a change in the law, it was omitted from the peace treaty. Berwick was still – technically – at war with Russia. The story turned out not to be true but that did not prevent a tongue-in-cheek ceremony in 1966 when a Soviet official visited. He and the mayor signed a formal peace treaty – upon which the mayor is said to be have quipped: "Please tell the Russian people that they can now sleep peacefully in their beds."

Yet for all the jocularity a sense of grievance has lingered about the way that the little town's taxes drain southwards to London with little flowing back. Locals quote still the reply of the English parliament, centuries back, to a plea by the governor of Berwick for funds to regenerate the town. "Berwick is in the realm but not of it," came back Westminster's lordly response.

The resentment lingered. It was Berwick which became the focal point for the direct action of one of the first modern Scottish nationalists, Wendy Wood in the 1950s. Controversially, not least because she had been born in Kent and had proclaimed herself a Scot by adoption, she was regularly arrested for moving the border signs over the Tweed. The doughty old campaigner, then in her sixties, would march into town, ripping up any English signs and claiming Berwick back as Scotland's "lost limb".

From time to time, ever since, the hoary historical chestnut of the status of Berwick has been thrown into the political fire to be given a roasting. In 2002 Scottish tourist chiefs attempted to buy back the town as a PR stunt by offering to repay a ransom demanded by the king of England 840 years earlier.

The Scots, they claimed, had been forced to hand Berwick over to the English in 1174 to buy the freedom of King William the Lion, whom the English were holding to ransom for 10,000 merks – which in modern money, they computed, was worth about £8,000. Council chiefs in Berwick suggested that £20 might be nearer the merk.

The town's status was raised again in 2004 when a referendum was undertaken on whether the North-east of England should have its own assembly, as the Scots and Welsh did. But North-easterners turned down New Labour's idea of a regional assembly. And the prospect of Berwick once again becoming the capital of Berwickshire, and one of the largest towns in the Scottish Borders, evaporated.

Now the idea is back, triggered by a poll commissioned by Scottish Television. It is still, most people agree, a symbolic piece of nationalist mischief-making rather than a real political prospect. But the ante has been upped by the steadily diverging policies either side of the border. Under the Scottish Parliament, the people of Scotland are enjoying free universities and care for the elderly, as well as better public transport than do their counterparts across the border.

"We feel we're a bit unloved up here," the leader of Berwick Council, Elizabeth Hunter, has said. "There is a feeling that the Scots are better off." There is also resentment that it is English taxes that pay for extra services north of the border.

The result of the TV poll will be made public at the end of the month. Whatever the outcome – a decade ago a similar poll was just 51 per cent in favour of remaining English – little is likely to change. As the town's Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith has said, moving the border would take massive negotiation and legal change. "It is not a very realistic option and so the urgent thing is to give people in north Northumberland services comparable to those in Scotland."

Still political fantasy is a fine thing. If the Scots do reclaim Berwick then England could ask for the return of Normandy, Aquitaine, Britanny and possibly Navarre. Or maybe we should just rebuild Hadrian's Wall.

Newcastle, of course, would be on the wrong side. But then Kevin Keegan might think that a useful thing.

How Berwick has changed hands through history

* 973 Berwick is formally granted to Scotland's King Kenneth II by Edgar, King of England

* 1174 Paid as part of a ransom to Henry II of England to buy the freedom of William the Lion

* 1189 Sold back to Scotland to raise money for the Crusades

* 1296 Captured by England's Edward I after long siege

* 1318 Recaptured by the Scots, under the command of James Douglas

* 1333 English retake town in battle of Haildon Hill

* 1462 Recaptured by the Scots

* 1482 Richard, Duke Of Gloucester (the future Richard III) retakes Berwick, placing it under English administration

* 1551 Town made into a self-governing county corporate

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