History
Let’s set the scene. Manchester is a city with a past.
The (Manchester) Guardian once argued, ‘What Manchester does today, London does tomorrow’ while, more recently, Stuart Maconie wrote, ‘Manchester has fancied itself rotten for as long as anyone can remember’. The thing is, Manchester fancies itself for a reason. Well, three to be precise: industry, attitude and political reform.
It was Manchester that gave rise to socialism, the Co-Operative Movement and Free Trade; it was here that the Suffragettes began their campaigns; where Marx and Engels cooked up the Communist Manifesto. Manchester was also the original industrial city, outstripping London during the Industrial Revolution to become the largest centre of manufacturing in the world. Breathtakingly ambitious, this was a place where people came to make their names – and did, with no small measure of success.
This is not the kind of past that a city forgets. Go into any one of its public institutions – the Whitworth, Manchester Museum, Manchester Art Gallery – and you’ll find the evidence. The city’s painting, sculpture, photography and textiles collections are among the best in Britain. The Hallé Orchestra was the country’s first permanent, full-time orchestra and is still going strong. The site of the world’s first passenger railway now forms part of MOSI, the Museum of Science and Industry. In late 2009, the People’s History Museum re-opens. A national museum dedicated to the history of working life in Britain, its archives reveal a city whose fight for socialism spread across the globe.
But before you write all this off as ‘just’ history, think on.
The Whitworth, whose textile and wallpaper archives are only rivalled by the V&A, is also one of the region’s leading centres of contemporary art. The Lowry, which holds the largest (and most varied) collection of work by L.S. Lowry in the world, also commissions new art and performance, as does its neighbour, Imperial War Museum North. And Manchester International Festival, inspired by the city’s industrial and musical past, is the world’s only festival made up entirely of new, commissioned art, performance, music and theatre.
‘Manchester has become a model of the post-industrial city, just as it was the model of the industrial city,’ says writer, broadcaster and historian, Jonathan Schofield. So while Manchester is a city that has a past, it’s also one that has its eyes on the future. The joy of visiting Manchester today is that, without too much effort, you get to experience a slice of both.
So now that we’ve got your attention, the historian Jonathan Schofield tells the story of this city of ours – and what sets Manchester apart from any other city in the world. Read on…
