Runcorn is reeling from its former MP’s appalling behaviour. Constituents deserve a representative who shows courage, character, and leadership rather than treating them with contempt and disrespect. The next MP should look to an unlikely but locally significant Anglo-Saxon princess as an example of leadership.
I’m not joking. In February, I wrote for The Critic saying we should learn “lessons from King Alfred”. He has since been described by journalist Tessa Dunlop as “ripe for a comeback”. Indeed. Now I want to make the case for Alfred’s daughter, the founder of Runcorn.
If you take the train up to Liverpool from the south, you’ll pass over the Mersey on an unusual bridge: it’s castellated, with towers and battlements adorning its massive Victorian structure of sandstone and wrought iron. Runcorn Railway Bridge is sometimes referred to as Ethelfleda Bridge, and one theory is that the London and North Western Railway designed it in this way to pay tribute to the site it occupied.
The Victorians were great admirers of Anglo-Saxon gallantry and so the theory is certainly plausible. Its southern abutment occupies the site of the fortification built in the year 915 to defend Mercia from Viking invaders. This was overseen by Aethelflaed (alternatively spelt Ethelfleda) who ruled the kingdom as “Lady of the Mercians’’.
Almost unheard of today, she ought to be cherished as one of our great leaders. Historian Tom Holland chose her as a heroine for an episode of Radio Four’s Great Lives, and describes her as “England’s Forgotten Founder” in his Ladybird book on the subject. Prof. Michael Wood’s BBC documentary describes her as “One of the great forgotten figures in British history” who “led armies, built fortresses, campaigned against the Vikings and was a brilliant diplomat.”
This sense of lost dignity is palpable precisely because people feel a strong sense of pride in place
Female leadership was certainly very unusual, but, as Wood recounts in his modern classic In Search of the Dark Ages, it was not out of the question in Mercia as it would have been across the channel to the Carolingians. She appears to have addressed and led her court directly — something Carolingian women certainly couldn’t do. In this sense, we might see her in a proud and distinctively English tradition more accommodating of female rulership than continental counterparts: two Marys, two Elizabeths, an Anne, a Victoria and, though more dubiously, a Matilda and a Jane.
The eldest of Alfred’s children, she married Aethelred, Lord of the Mercians, in the 880s, which consolidated the alliance of Wessex and Mercia. After her husband’s death in 911, she ruled alone until her death in 918 as Lady of the Mercians. It was during this time that she founded the fort, or “burh”, at Runcorn. What might Runcorn’s new MP admire in her character?
Firstly, she was tough as nails. Just as her father Alfred had done at Edington in 878, she dramatically defeated Viking armies at Tettenhall (just outside Wolverhampton) and Derby. This election reveals that something is stirring in deep England as people are fed up with the status quo. The new honourable member for Runcorn will need to channel Aethelflaed’s vim and vigour to tackle the nonsense of two-tier justice, lax immigration rules, and the giving away of our strategic security assets, as with the Chagos Islands.
At the same time, she was strategic. Chroniclers highlighted her “prudentia”, and this is evident at Runcorn. She ensured the fortification of numerous critical settlements, including Worcester and Chester. Runcorn was an intelligent place to plant a castle, occupying a critical narrowing point of the river. These burhs provided safety, but they also enabled commerce. Just as constituents are angry about the state of their dilapidated town centre, Runcorn’s new MP must follow in Aethelflaed’s footsteps and support the re-building of a thriving local economy.
In addition, she had a profound respect for heritage and history. In the year 909 she put life and limb on the line, ordering a raid to rescue the relics of Saint Oswald from far within Viking territory. She founded the magnificent priory at Gloucester to house them. A pious Christian, it’s likely she was a patron of culture — as her father had been — who commissioned literature designed to inspire personal devotion and prayer. At a time when English Heritage is limiting access to historic sites, the National Trust is refusing to restore dilapidated buildings, and the Church of England is in crisis, the Lady of the Mercians would surely be turning in her grave. We need to recover an interest in, and affection for, our heroes and history, and Runcorn’s new MP should start by putting her back on the map.
Finally, great leaders aren’t mere self-promoters. They encourage and raise future generations. This she did brilliantly. She adopted her nephew Athelstan who went on to become one of our greatest kings, being the first to rule the whole of England. The statue of Aethelflaed in Tamworth depicts her with the young future king by her side. Wood suggests that she may have been the impetus for several contemporary Mercian manuscripts highlighting the lives of heroic female saints — her own leadership programme, perhaps? At the Prosperity Institute, our Edington Fellowship (named after Alfred’s great battle) seeks to encourage future leaders by looking to heroes of the past for inspiration. We would encourage the next MP for Runcorn to do the same, just as the Victorian railway engineers may well have done.
I hope I can rest my case for celebrating this remarkable medieval lady. However, people tend to giggle when hearing names like Aethelflaed and Aethelred. They do, to our modern ears, sound a bit like characters from fairytales or a fantasy novel. After all, Tolkien’s character Eowyn is likely modelled after Aethelflaed in The Lord of the Rings.
These feelings should give pause for thought. Today, Runcorn is undoubtedly struggling, with a hollowed-out town centre. The old Saxon burh is within one of the country’s top 10 per cent most deprived areas according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation. I’m familiar with the area as I grew up close by, and I know it would aptly be described as a “broken heartland”. People feel as though their town has lost its dignity.
But it’s a “heartland” for a reason. This sense of lost dignity is palpable precisely because people feel a strong sense of pride in place. It would be a grave error for the next MP to show anything other than an enthusiastic love of town, King and country. The locals are somewheres, not anywheres, and it is in the face of adversity that unearthing the gold from our forgotten past as an inspiration for the future matters most — just as the Victorians, and indeed Tolkien, understood. I shall hope to hear the name of this magnificent Anglo-Saxon princess at the heart of the next MP’s maiden speech.
