“A house divided against itself cannot stand”, said Lincoln or God or maybe it was Maggie Thatcher, not sure. But what about a country? Can a country stand despite those fissures that split her people apart like the segments of some hastily peeled satsuma? And what if those fissures—the teams, the Gods, the parties; the cults and all the tribal genres of the English spirit—what happens when those cracks in the social concrete rack the very foundations of a nation?
For the past four months, I’ve been travelling the highways and pie-ways of a nation divided—literally, spiritually and, in the most extreme cases, sexually—searching for an answer to the question: who or what split Britain?
For Lice Media, this is…
Dispatches From The Edge(s)
Nameless border village, NE - Spring 2025
“Callum, come away from’t gap nar or I’ll slap yur arse fuh yuh”, a young mother shouts. Callum, a boy no more than five years old is playing with rocks near the mouth of what they call around here “the gap”. A once-yellow football jersey covers the obligatory distended belly. The filth caked into his face belies protruding cheek bones.
“Come ‘ere, let’s get yuh a wash in’t bucket. Yuh look a wog wi’ arl that cack on yuh chops”, she says, dragging him by the arm into the serpentine maze of uncharted alleyways.
The Gap, they say. Not the Gully or the Valley like those in SW. Not the Rip or the Tear as you’ll likely hear it called in NW. Not even the Anomaly as some of the more learned SE intellectuals like to, well, intellectualise. Those are all “fancy” names to the simpler folk of NE. They don’t mince their words here; they tear them in half and throw them in the pot. It is a practical life, a pragmatic one. Rations are thin; the children thinner.
“No time fuh mekkin nice wi’ yuh words, son”, an older man, Derek, muses. He continues, “Folk ‘ant a pot to squat ovver rarnd ‘ere, like. There’s enough what wants doing wi’art westin’ all’t day blabbin’”.
I ask him if families talk to each other indoors here.
“Course. We’re not bloody savages or whatavyuh. S’not fookin SW”, he snarls.
The old rivalries survived the split more or less intact. And, as this reporter is discovering, a whole host of new ones crawled out of the gap.
We—ever trusty cameraman and I—are invited for tea and pastries at a local church gathering.
“Well, I’d say it’s been a blessin’ in’t skies, really”, Mavis tells me as we each tuck into a meaty pastry morsel. “D’yuh member what the young ‘uns used be like before’t split? Buggers they was. Used to run all over me flar-beds and nick me garments off’t line and arl sorts. But you cun’t do nart abart it then, cud yuh? Just had to put up wi it”.
I ask her if the generation gap has widened in the years since the split.
“Oh, I’d say sor. Bloody hooligans they is nar. ‘Ere, Julie,” she calls across the hall to a friend, “come and telt this fella abart yur Boris”.
Julie—who can’t be a day younger than ninety—trundles over with the aid of a jerry-rigged Zimmer frame, fashioned from an old ladder and one-too-few trolley wheels. She proceeds to recount, in agonising detail, the events of one fateful Thursday evening some six months prior.
“Maftin’ hot it woh. ‘Eatwave. Me husband, Boris, was wat’rin’t roses—the white ones, naturally; the red ones we just let wither. ’Orrible bleedin’ weeds. Course, there were a nosepipe ban on, but nobody rarnd ere geez two sheks of a shite abart arl that—what was I saying, lovey?”
The old woman—actually forty-nine—regales us with a shocking tale of unprovoked violence and all around nastiness which, for the sake of brevity, is summarised thus:
Boris (surnames don’t appear to be a thing in NE. Where nominal overlap does occur, individuals are differentiated by their physical attributes, e.g. Fat Noris, Deaf Albert, Willy Willy), dearly departed, was set upon by a gang of youths after a verbal altercation regarding the pensioner’s (there is no state pension for senior NE citizens. Instead, once a working man reaches fifty, he just sort of gives up) flower watering technique. Accusations of homosexuality (illegal in both northern quadrants) were hurled, leading to fisticuffs. Fisticuffs with knives.
“We’d no pies to pay’t boxman so we had’t dig t’hole us-sens. The vicar stopped by and said a few nice words thor, yuh knor. Stuff abart angels and shit like that”.
Being careful not to open any fresh wounds, I ask about justice for Boris.
“Oh, they got justice arlreet. Boiled’t bastards alive, we did. The whole town turned out once we catched the buggers. Med for loveleh pies”, she says, licking her lips.
I place my pie on a bench and say my goodbyes.
We scurry into the main alley and hail a taxi.
Some three-and-a-half hours later, a cow-powered carriage screeches to a halt, narrowly avoiding the recently felled lamppost resting precariously against an adjacent wall.
“Where yuhs gannin’ te, lads?” The driver—a middle-aged asian man clearly affecting an accent—emerges from the passenger side window.
“So I says to ar Sharon, I says say what yuh will, ar Shazza, yuh’ll ne’er convince me that wuh better off lettin’ them rich, toffee-nosed cunts doon theyuh make up us laws fuh wuh up eyuh. This is ar cuntry, d’ynarmean like?”
Unprompted, the driver—who has asked and, once he realised we were filming, begged to remain anonymous—launches into a verbal tirade against what he calls “the Hallouminati”—a popular northern conspiracy theory whose primary literature can be found printed on the back pages of all the major gravy periodicals. I suggest he concentrates on the road and tell him he’s the first non-white person we’ve seen in this quadrant.
“Fuck yuhs torkin’ abart?”
In the most recent cross-quadrant census, eighty-seven percent of NE respondents self identified as either “racist” or “extremely racist”.
“In retrospect,” said a government spokesperson, “it was possibly a mistake to include an ‘other’ box on that particular question, yes”.
To say race is a sensitive issue north of the New Channel is to put it lightly. So lightly, in fact, it’s liable to float away at any moment.
“Av nae ideah what yuhs is on abart. Am wuh barn and bred ‘ere in God’s own cuntry. Same as me favver and his favver and his favver an arl. Nae mar English than what yuhs can see reet in front e’yuhs nar, like”, he sweats.
I change the subject to something less controversial by complimenting him on his unique mode of transportation.
“Ta very much, like. Seventeen-hundred miles to’t gallon this thing’ll do”, he boasts. The cows faces are as gaunt as young Callum’s. The wheels only vaguely reminiscent of circles. “Which is dead canny cos yuh’ll ne’er get much diesel doon a bessie ‘fore she starts honkin’ it back up, like”.
We’re heading for the nearest urban conurbation, Dreadfield. The journey takes us far away from the border villages, leaving behind us those desperate souls worst affected by the split.
“Wuh fuckin’ love coming up eyuh, like. Summet abart arl them fields and trees and arl that shite what meks the mercury headaches fuck aff fuh’r a bit”.
The NE vales and dales and valleys put one in mind of times gone by. Of the days before the land sank.
“Ah, it’s a lerda bollocks is arl that, yuh knur”, the driver proclaims. Presently, his entire upper body is dangling out of what would be the windshield on a regular vehicle. “Do us a favour, pet. Grab the steering rope fuh wuh. These moos wiln’t milk themsens”.
He clambers his way back inside, replete with a pitcher of fresh cow urine.
“Arl that fuckin’ nonsense they keep gern an abart. The gap’s always been theyuh, yuh knur. Folks has just forgot, thas arl. I swear doon, when we wuhs bairns the gap wuh even wider. It’s arl this Hallouminati lot spraying wacky backy everywhere. Look, up theyuh”, he says, pointing to a faint wisp of cloud hanging just above the horizon. “Breath that shite in and yuh’ll forget yur urn name, man”.
We’ve been driving for almost a day when our farmer-cum-chauffeur, quite of his own accord, broaches another one of those sensitive topics.
“So ‘ow did yous two get over the gap, like? Don’t get many tourists these dairs”.
I’m surprised it has taken this long for anyone to ask. Intra-quadrant travel is a logistical nightmare in post-split Britain. The voyage across the water from SE is made impossible due to Reductionist anti-migration legislation passed earlier this year. Armoured death-boats police the New Channel now and, even with our press passes, we were likely to be curtly escorted back to Blighty or, at the very least, mistaken for migrant workers and flayed alive.
“Listen, we simply cannot go on the way we are. Under the previous administration, more than three million illegals came down on their dinghies and their surfboards and their cardboard hovercrafts—and for what? To doss about on the social and drain the services paid for by the honest, hard working people of SE”, I’m told by then-leader-of-the-opposition, Neal Outrage, in an interview filmed shortly before the Reductionists’ landslide victory last November.
My suggestion that his language risks dehumanising northerners is met with jovial derision.
“Look, I love a good pie as much as the next bloke, yeah. But the people of this quadrant have had enough. That much is clear”.
“Nar, when I open this duar, yuw’re gonna feeuw a bit of a bweeze. Don’t wuwwy, that’s perfectwy normuw”, our pilot, “Captain” “Roger” warns us (name and all distinguishing features have been concealed for his protection).
These recces are not strictly legal, and we’re liable to be shot down with surface-to-air missiles (SE) or pasties (NE) if we come in too low.
We meet the captain and his rag-tag crew in the early hours, before the clockwork SE rocket sentries are cranked up.
“The defence-bakers wiw be up and abart aweady acwoss the other side, but the cannons don’t work vewy wew in the dawk”, I’m assured.
In the immediate aftermath of the split, the domestic air travel industry enjoyed a period of exponential growth as holidaymakers across England convinced themselves that a long weekend on the SW coast was essentially the same as two weeks in Benidorm. But as quad-on-quad violence escalated, families on all sides of the gap quickly developed a preference for the good old English staycation.
“Fuckin’ hell, lads. Yuhs wun’t catch us gannin’ in wunnadem knacky ald choppahs fuh arl’t pies in Rise, like”, the carriage driver tells me. “Nar, gee’uhs’t wide urpen rurd and a warm bucketa cow spillins any dair. ‘Cept Wensdees, cos that’s whenna drop ar Shazza’s ma off at the bingor”.
We drive into the night as the golden NE evening falls away behind the hills.
I awake to find the driver back on milking duties.
“Sleep well, fellas? Teas up in two sheks of a shite”, he crows.
As the carriage breaches the top of a mild incline, we catch our first glimpse of Dreadfield in the distance. The town’s medieval cathedral spire looms heavy above the sprawling slums.
“Yuh knor who’s kept in theyuh like, eh?”
Next time on Dispatches From The Edge(s):
“Scale of one to ten? This bastard’s a solid six-and-arf. Six on a good day”.
“Well, you Southern types might say it’s weird but pie-shaggin’s a rite uh passage for young fellas rarnt these parts”.
“RUN! RUN! The Fister’s loose!”