Later this year, people in the North-East will be asked to vote on the idea of a regional assembly. But it seems it's not such a new idea, as John Dean discovers.

REGIONAL government has been trumpeted as one of the big New Labour ideas, but research conducted in the region has suggested that it is not really all that new and that the first true champion of the concept was, in fact, a farmer's son from south Durham.

Charles Bungay Fawcett's ideas were shaped, not in the corridors of power, but by his experiences growing up in Staindrop and Gainford, near Darlington, at the end of the 19th century.

Charles Fawcett, who went on to become a respected academic, was a strong supporter of regional government and, in 1919, published a report which, in many people's eyes, made him the movement's founding father.

His massive contribution to the debate has been unearthed by Professor John Tomaney, of Newcastle University. Professor Tomaney is chairman of Vote for the North-East, the organisation which has recruited business people, entertainers, sports personalities and politicians to campaign for a 'yes' vote when the referendum is held in October.

As part of the campaign, Professor Tomaney started researching the earliest references to regional government and discovered that the great 19th century Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and wartime leader Winston Churchill backed the idea. But he also discovered that it was CB Fawcett who first crystallised what it would mean.

CB Fawcett was born in Staindrop in 1883, of farming stock, and went to school in nearby Gainford village. After school, he studied science at University College, Nottingham and, after a brief period as a schoolteacher, joined the new School of Geography at Oxford University.

He went on to lecture in geography at University College, Southampton, and Leeds University before being appointed Professor of Geography at University College London, remaining there for the 21 years before his retirement in 1949.

But behind the academic image, Professor Tomaney discovered a man with typical Northern traits, a down-to-earth man of few words who was fiercely proud of where he came from.

He says: "He was tall, spare and tough and, by all accounts, was a taciturn and diffident character, regarded as aloof and unapproachable by some, although he inspired loyalty among students and colleagues."

Despite his successful career, Prof Fawcett remained true to his Northern roots. One former student had said of him: "Fawcett used to refer to his origins on a farm near Staindrop and claimed never to wear socks as a reminder of the fact."

In 1919, Prof Fawcett gained national attention for his radical academic paper on regional government. Behind the dry title - Provinces of England - was a proposal to re-draw the map, replacing the age-old system of counties and shires with provinces based on cultural identity.

Each boundary for a province, or region, should be drawn around natural geographical features such as watersheds, have a definable joint identity, have a capital city and be large enough to justify self-government.

Such an area, according to Prof Fawcett, was the North-East of England and, although his document was an academic tome, his ideas found plenty of general support.

He knew his ideas would prove controversial - the shires had existed for many years - but commented that nothing was sacrosanct. Indeed, he was dismissive about the 'historic' nature of counties, arguing that their boundaries had changed so much over time that the term was no longer appropriate.

The nation into which they were published was ready for change. It was a nation still recovering from the horrors of the Great War in which millions of its young men had been cut down in the trenches, a nation witnessing a growing movement for people to have more say over their destiny.

The debate had actually begun before war broke out in 1914 and by the time Provinces of England was published, regionalism seemed a very distinct possibility.

Prof Fawcett was acutely aware that the rebellious Irish had long wanted their own government, as did the people of Scotland and Wales. A man who seemed to have had little affinity for party politics, he dismissed the idea of an English Parliament, one of the favoured options in 1919 but one which he felt would not work. Instead, he pointed to the success of the civil defence regions, which were created in 1918 along regional boundaries. It was only a short step, in his view, to regional government.

Professor Tomany says: "It seems appropriate that the founding text of modern English regionalism should be written by a man from County Durham.

"In an undemonstrative way, Fawcett maintained a deep feeling for his Northern roots, which, despite his reputation for studied detachment, was revealed in glimpses of his writings about what he called his 'homeland'.

"Fawcett's approach to the subject was avowedly influenced by his Northern outlook. In describing his English provinces, the treatment of North England is dealt with first and at greater length than any other provinces, partly because the writer is himself a North countryman.

"His understanding of the provincial character of England appears heavily influenced by his firmly-held view that the North-East was a region with its own identity."

Prof Fawcett pointed to the region's joint history, how its feudal kingdoms were once part of the strong Northumbrian kingdom between the Humber and the Forth, and how it forged a renewed sense of unity as the Industrial Revolution transformed its landscape and economy in the 19th century.

As the region prepares to vote, and the pro and anti lobbies put forward their cases, Prof Tomaney believes the farmer's son from south Durham deserves to be acknowledged for highlighting the debate more than 80 years ago. "Fawcett was ahead of his time," he says. "His contribution to the debate about English regionalism is testament to the longevity of the issue in the North-East and to the consistent character of the themes it has addressed."

Like many visionaries, Prof Fawcett did not live to see his ideas turned into reality. He died in 1952 in his 70th year. In October 2004, that reality might just arrive.