Joan Bakewell: Tamper with local government at your peril

Hands off Manchester! Hands off Macclesfield! It may not seem a call to arms to rally the complacent on the cosy sofas of southern England. Nor is it immediately clear why such a cry has ramifications for the wretched citizens of Najaf or Samarra. But so it is, because this is about identity.

In the windy rhetoric of public life, it's a word that rates highly. Our identity is to be respected, even recorded on pieces of plastic. In therapeutic terms, there is talk of people having an identity crisis, estranged from their true selves. Politically, people bereft of their roots are seen as victims in need or support; or, more viciously, deportation back to their source of those roots - their homeland, however pernicious the treatment they might get there. So identity is high on the agenda.

Anyone who has anything to do with Manchester knows it has a vivid and powerful identity. It trails a uniquely impressive history of radical thought and behaviour of which it is justly proud. It is the city that gave birth to the industrial revolution, where Frederick Engels owned a factory, and Karl Marx formulated his ideas in Chetham's School's magnificent library. It was here the early roots of political action - peaceful in the face of the sabres of charging yeoman cavalry - found ready soil among the thousands then flocking to man the factories and mills. The legendary Peterloo massacre of 1819 claimed a mere 11 lives, but its effect rippled through the burgeoning political classes all the way to the Reform Act of 1832. Chartism took root here, and the Anti-Corn Law League. The Manchester Guardian championed what was then a new world order. The Pankhursts championed another. Manchester emerged as cottonopolis, as strong in its rivalry with Liverpool as ever Sparta was with Athens.

Today its cotton mills and banks are changed into grand hotels and car parks. There are palm trees in the glass railway station and a gay enclave on Canal street. But its identity remains, strong, assertive, proud. and Lancastrian.

This week, the Institute for Public Policy Research - a think-tank with strong government links - proposed that Manchester become one of two giant units of local government - vast regions with elected mayors. (The other is Birmingham). The proposal suggests Manchester's reach spreads far into Cheshire and swallows up Macclesfield.

Now Cheshire has its identity, too. And it is nothing like that of Lancashire. The lush pastures of the Cheshire plain rolling towards Wales, the sea and the ancient Roman stronghold of Chester give it a milder, more benign feel. Macclesfield nurtured the silk-weaving Huguenots who fled France in the late 16th century. Move the line on the map that divides the two counties - 1974 already saw a damaging invasion of Lancashire into Cheshire - and those with a strong sense of their own identity will feel outrage. I speak as a child of the line between, my whole upbringing tuned to the colourful and important differences between industrial and pastoral, noise and smoke next to green grass and browsing cattle. All identity is local and mine rests there.

All identity is local, and boundary tensions in a secure and confident country like Britain seem mild enough. How much more dangerous identity is when it is played out in religious and political terms. We have seen the decades of damage it did in Northern Ireland. Now Iraq is splitting along sectarian lines. The original damage, of course, was done in the 1920s when lines drawn by Britain and others had little to do with the people and much to do with oil. Unhappily, identity has now become a matter of sectarian rather than national loyalties. Whether you are Shia or Sunni will confine you, whether you wish it or not, within the obligations of your religious allegiance. These are inherited and tribal loyalties, born of place and nurtured within the close embrace of the local mosque. To leave the Muslim faith into which you are born is apostasy worthy of death. The same judgement is being passed each against the other on Islam's sects. The damage to the Golden Mosque hits at local identity in a way which protracted negotiations about a government of national unity cannot. The lessons of history suggest Iraq's tragedy is now spreading itself forward through the years.

Meanwhile, Britain tampers with its local government in ways that its people don't seem to want. The concept of an independent entity for the North-east was soundly voted down by the locals. The idea of local elected mayors may sound fine in Barcelona and even work well in London, but it doesn't sit easily with forms of local government evolved over the years which define and confirm people's sense of identity. Central government is gunning for local government. Well, keep your hands off Macclesfield, I say.

joan.bakewell@virgin.net