I was born and bred in Tameside.
It's a 15 minute train ride to Manchester. 30-40 min drive/bus trip to Manchester, 1 hour train ride to Leeds and slightly longer drive.
Generally Tameside is well serviced, you got all the amenities you would expect and location wise you have very good access for commuting. Manchester, Salford, Leeds university all easily accessible. Tamesides location makes it popular as a commuter location looking for lower costs of living.
It's always been a working class place. Despite the wealth of the industrial revolution, the grand factories mostly now demolished and buildings, the majority of people where/are working class low paid workers and didn't see that money although the money built grand markets and highstreets for workers to spend the wages.
Tameside is a low socioeconomic area which is generational.
I went to an at best, average school. The importance of school wasn't really seen, or taught at home or in school. Myself, I had a mixed schooling history. Troublesome/difficult, likely influenced through parents attitudes, being bullied at times, not academically smart but not dumb, dyslexic and can remember one specific teacher publicly shaming me for not being able to spell my surname instead of trying to teach me. My social worker partner is adamant i'm on the spectrum. I feel there was a nurturing missing generally at these average, low social economic schools and my time could of been better with the right support in school. Eck I got a C GCSE in maths but learnt a bit of category theory, Haskell and functional programming myself.
Those who had a reasonable fortunate home life seem to of done just ok in their adult life from the area.
Those who were disruptive, high level of truancy, poor parenting, some are dead, some are in prison, some look like they should be dead with addiction. Their kids will likely follow down the same path they did and they've had more kids than the people who turned out alright.
Growing up in low social economic environments is hard to break out of. It starts at home with the importance of education and it's hard to start at home when your parents and parents parents never seen the importance and then the schooling isn't prepared to deal with it.
I broke out of it leaving as fast as I could, hard work when younger and some luck.
The north can be raw, probably not so much these days but "southern pansy" or "posh", "gay" is used disparagingly for people trying to better themself. I grew up not in poverty and not well off, in a area that wasn't the worst but not great. My mum see's anyone who has done well for themselfs as "posh" looking down on her and that can be a common theme with the less fortunate people I know in the area. This is a generational attitude.
The story seems common over the world. People growing up less well off struggle to get out of being less well off and it often starts at home and education and it's hard to start at home in the environment you are in and education doesn't happen due to home environment apart from the few outliers who do overcome the odds stacked against them.
It's funny reading these articles from people who haven't grew up poor, in the north, never seen a council estate, or the way of life, talking about Universities in 1066 and Northern Conquests as a reason.