Manchester: Queen of the North

Free Trade was and remains one of the crucial arguments of economic and social thinking. Deeply associated with Manchester, it provoked angry responses from the working people it impoverished. From the early 19th century, cotton workers argued for restrictions on working hours, for the right to form trades unions and for better housing conditions. Thus while the Manchester businessmen and economists advocated laissez faire, the opposition they generated finally achieved almost all the social legislation it campaigned for. Eventually the first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester in 1868, and it was Emmeline Pankhurst of Manchester who in 1903 created the Women’s Social and Political Union that spearheaded the suffragist demand for votes for women. Her Georgian home, now the Pankhurst Centre in Nelson Street, has displays that trace the work of Pankhurst and the movement.

The varied ideas and values Manchester generated profoundly affected Britain. Today’s political debates about how much the government should legislate for social and economic welfare go back to the economic realities of the Industrial Revolution, which were most strongly expressed in Manchester. The Labour Party’s Annual Conference was held in Manchester in 2006 explicitly to reinforce the association of the city with reformist thinking. Britain’s most liberal newspaper, The Guardian, was founded in the 1820s to support religious and civil liberty by Mancunian John Edward Taylor and for most of its history was called The Manchester Guardian.

Manchester also retains the ability to think big that was as much an essential fuel of its industrial might as the supplies of cotton and coal. Such statistics as having the biggest library, the richest soccer team and the best orchestra derive from Manchester’s can-do attitude.

One of the best contemporary examples of this is the redevelopment of the Manchester Ship Canal. Completed in 1894 and the biggest engineering project undertaken in Britain in the 19th century, it linked Manchester directly to the sea at Eastham, allowing ships to bring their cargoes of cotton and other goods directly to Salford rather than unloading in Liverpool, 35 miles away. Now that they are unneeded, the Salford Quays have been redeveloped in the most monumental of modern styles. The Lowry, named after Salford’s great artist of the northern industrial scene, L.S. Lowry, cost £94 million. As well as housing the finest collection of Lowry’s paintings, it incorporates a theater, shop and restaurant. Opposite there is an outlet mall, continuing Manchester’s long association with clothing by offering famous brands (including Marks and Spencer) cheap. Across the canal and reached by a white 92-meter lift bridge that allows the pleasure boats that ferry visitors up the canal to pass below, is the handsome but deliberately disconcerting northern branch of the Imperial War Museum. Designed by Daniel Libeskind as three giant shards of the globe torn apart by war, it focuses on the experience of living through such a cataclysm with 360-degree audiovisual presentations that position the visitor in the middle of a conflict.

Getting to Salford Quays from the center of Manchester is easy. When traffic began to snarl up the city in the late 20th century, Manchester reintroduced trams. Called Metrolink, the trams now provide easy transport throughout the city and its inner suburbs. Visitors traveling to Manchester by car can reach it via the M63 spur of the M60. Trains from London reach Manchester in 2 hours and 15 minutes.

This article by Claire Hopley was originally published in the May 2007 issue of British Heritage Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to British Heritage magazine today!

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