 The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire His ex-wife once said it’s almost impossible to separate the man from his town (literally and figuratively) and many people still ask why Jay Baker constantly refers to his city of Sheffield as “the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.” This is a name first attached to the city in the 1980s by one of its few Conservative members of parliament, Irvine Patnick – a particularly right-wing politician who supported the death penalty as well as South African apartheid, and provided The Sun newspaper with much of its later discredited information on the tragic Hillsborough disaster. Patnick used the term in reference to Sheffield’s left-wing massively outnumbering him. At the time, the city council – the first ever in the country’s history to go “red” – flew the Red Flag on May Day, declared itself nuclear-free, introduced peace studies into schools, subsidized public transport, and even twinned itself with Donetsk, then a part of the Soviet Union! Shortly after, Sheffield’s famous steel industry took a devastating blow by the national Conservative government. Ian McGregor targeted its unionized workforce as a precursor to the assault on the coal mining industry, also prevalent in the area – home to the infamous Battle of Orgreave, where mounted police attacked peacefully picketing coalminers who retaliated by throwing rocks, footage of which was cleverly edited by the BBC at the time to portray the miners as the instigators. Sheffield, now the greenest city in Europe with its parks and trees, has since become known for its music (producing Joe Cocker, Human League, Def Leppard, Moloko, Pulp, and the Arctic Monkeys to name but a few) and its cultural and digital industries, boosted by the 50,000+ students at its two universities and major college – an unusually high percentage of which remain in the city after graduation. It was perhaps this influx of students that ushered Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg into Patnick’s old constituency of Hallam – and which has subsequently turned against Clegg for his change of stance on tuition fees, threatening to turn the city “red” yet again. Jay is extremely proud of the way Sheffield was able to “steel” itself in the face of adversity, and become a thriving yet still down-to-earth city of culture and liberal attitudes reflective of Britain’s fundamental support for the underdog. As a result, he never hesitates to promote “the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire!” |
         | ||