Yorkshire lib
Sir: Richard West, in his Notebook (5 August) may well wonder what Andrew Marvell would have thought about the substitution of the name North Humberside for his native East Riding. That we shall never know. But we do know what a lot of Yorkshiremen think just now about this gratuitous carving up of the county's historic divisions.
If the faceless underlings of Heath and Walkei thought that by quietly putting a blue pencil through the 1100-year-old Ridings it would be the end of the matter they have been sadly mistaken. However complacently other parts of the country have accepted the mutilation of their county boundaries, Yorkshiremen are certainly not doing so.
The Yorkshire Ridings Society has been formed, to fight the battle; 1 August has been nOminated Yorkshire Day; and as a result a growing number of people in the country have been made aware of what has been perpetrated. This local government reorganisation was never included in the programme of any political party, and thus no one had a chance to say either yea or nay to the matter.
May I make an appeal to any reader of the Spectator, be he Yorkshireman or not. Should you have any cause to write to any address in this county please address your letter not to Cleveland, North Humberside, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, or South Yorkshire, but just to YORKSHIRE! Geographically the county of Yorkshire still exists in spite of the machinations of Heath, Walker and Co, and by God's grace and the determination of all true Yorkshiremen will continue to do so.
J. Geoffrey Brook 153 Beeston Road, Leeds, Yorkshire
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