Tyne-Wear rivalry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Tyne-Wear rivalry is an historic animosity between the people of Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland in North-East England. It is sometimes referred to as the Newcastle-Sunderland rivalry or Geordie-Mackem rivalry.
In recent years, the enmity between the two cities is now largely confined to football, and football hooliganism, however for centuries the differences were deeply political and had serious consequences.
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[edit] Origins of the rivalry
In the early 1600s, Charles I awarded Newcastle the East of England coal trading rights, although the rights can be traced back to 1213 during the reign of King John. This monopoly effectively stunted the growth of Sunderland on the River Wear and caused hardship to the local citizens. Through this decision, anti-Royal feeling grew in Sunderland while Newcastle grew as a Royal stronghold.
The Royal / anti-Royal split was evident during the English Civil War when the City of Newcastle declared support to the King. Newcastle became a barracks for the Royalist army while Sunderland took the side of the Parliamentarians, and became a landing-point and barracks for anti-Royal mercenaries from Scotland. In 1644, the armies from Sunderland and Newcastle clashed at the Battle of Boldon Hill in Boldon, South Tyneside; roughly halfway between the Tyne and the Wear. The battle was eventually won by the forces from Sunderland, and Newcastle was besieged and eventually captured.
After the Restoration a number of Royal Charters restricted Sunderland's growth as a trade centre.
The towns were on the opposite sides of the political divide again during the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745, when Newcastle once again supported the King, and Sunderland supported the rebels.
Following the industrial revolution, heavy manufacturing, particularly shipbuilding on both rivers began to boom. In a reverse of the coal trading rights issue which had blighted Sunderland centuries earlier, during the Commonwealth, Sunderland was given preferred status over the ports on the Tyne. Sunderland grew rapidly, taking in many workers from Scotland and Ireland.
[edit] Recent history
In 1974 the county boundaries were redrawn, and Sunderland plus Gateshead and South Tyneside (all formerly County Durham) were incorporated into Tyne and Wear along with Newcastle and North Tyneside that were previously in Northumberland. The new county was one of the smallest yet most densely populated in the country.
Sunderland residents began paying taxes to a County Council based in Newcastle, and a series of council decisions, such as the development of Newcastle International Airport to the north of Newcastle, left them feeling that they were being forced to contribute toward developments that benefited Newcastle but not Sunderland. In actual fact, the airport has benefited the region as a whole, but at the time of building, its name and location were seen by some in Sunderland as further indication that Newcastle's international profile was growing rapidly, and overshadowing that of its neighbour.
In the late 1980s the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation (TWDC) was established to regenerate the mostly redundant river fronts of Newcastle, North Shields, South Shields and Sunderland. TWDC was given unitary development control including licensing over the four local authority areas and managed central government regeneration funds. The board of TWDC was appointed by Central Government and was based in Newcastle. While the achievements of the Development Corporation in improving the environment for investment on both the Tyne and the Wear are significant there is a debate about how sustainable the project in Sunderland were. TWDC investment provided Newcastle with extensive leisure and tourism facilities including two hotels and a conference centre. Sunderland was given a new business park, a University campus and a heritage attraction the National Glass Centre but with no improved local amenities of infrastructure investment inevitably drifted away to Newcastle. TWDC was dissolved in 1997 but many of its structures and programmes remain in place through legacy bodies.
One of the biggest arguments regarding council money was over the Tyne and Wear Metro, a mass transit system that covered much of Newcastle and North Tyneside, as well as parts of Gateshead and South Tyneside. The lines only went as far south as Pelaw in Gateshead; this owed much to the fact that the Metro was commissioned by the original Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority that predated Tyne and Wear County and did not cover Sunderland. When funding for the Metro was transferred to Tyne & Wear County (and therefore included Sunderland), it greatly angered Sunderland residents, whose taxes were partly used to fund the project. It was only in 1998 that a Metro extension into Sunderland was agreed. In 2002, Sunderland was linked to the system; however the line only runs close to the River Wear, leaving large parts of Sunderland unconnected.
In the twenty-first century Newcastle has continued to develop as the administrative capital of the North-East. It continues to be the focus of national media attention as well as government and private investment. It has become a centre of entertainment, science, culture and art with an international reputation. To a great extent this attention has been enhanced by Newcastle's proximity to the new attractions in Gateshead such as the Sage and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which have been quietly claimed as Newcastle's own, leading to the promotion of "NewcastleGateshead" as a marketing concept. This golden age for Newcastle has not been matched in Sunderland, which has also undergone a transformation but at a slower-rate and with less national attention.
The sense of injustice is compounded by the fact that Sunderland has a larger population than Newcastle. As of the 2001 census, the populations are very similar, with Sunderland containing around 20,000 more people. Despite the similarities in population size when comparing Newcastle and Sunderland and subjectively forgetting about the Tyne population built around Newcastle, Sunderland has a much smaller Central Business District and fewer amenities. However, there are many major development sites in Sunderland City Centre which may start to redress the balance and the relative lack of amenities in Sunderland.
[edit] Football
As the towns began to grow rapidly, the old political allegiances became diluted and the differences switched to those of civic pride. An obvious outlet for this was football, which rapidly gained popularity at the end of the nineteenth century. Sunderland AFC and Newcastle United FC became two of the most fiercely supported clubs in the country; a ferocity that is intensified on the days of the local derby between the two clubs. Victory in this game grants the supporters of the winning team bragging rights over friends, relatives and work-colleagues whose allegiances lie with the other club. The football rivalry is for the most part benign, however, following the rise of football hooliganism in the 1970s there have been many incidents of violence between the two sets of supporters. In 2000, an organised fight on the north-side dock of the Tyne Ferry, between at least 70 men from hooligan elements of the two clubs resulted in several serious injuries to the members of the Seaburn Casuals gang from Sunderland. It later was was described as some of the worst football-related violence ever seen in Britain [1]. In truth, football had little to do with the violence; the clubs were not playing each other, and the fight occurred miles away from the nearest stadium. The extent of the violence is shown in the Sunderland v Newcastle match in 2006 where it was deemed a success that only 27 people had been arrested BBC. Police presence at the derby games is very high, and travel of away fans is heavily controlled. The most extreme measure occurred during the 1996/7 Premiership season when both fixtures, including the last derby game to be played at Sunderland's Roker Park, banned away supporters from the ground for safety reasons.
As of 2006, Newcastle and Sunderland have played each other 137 times, with Newcastle winning 50, Sunderland winning 43, and 44 draws. Newcastle have scored 204 goals, to Sunderland's 206 goals.
