1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

Meeting of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, 3 October 1832, Friends Meeting House, Manchester

Long before the time appointed for the lecture, carriages were seen rolling up to the gates discharging their gay inmates…it is doubtful whether ever such an assemblage, purely feminine in its character, burst at once upon the eye of a lecturer, on any occasion and certainly never such as one was collected together in Manchester; an assemblage properly of ladies – comprised of persons of all persuasions, – met on a common cause – the cause of humanity – a cause in which everything human is interested – and none but the inhumane can oppose; nearly two thousand females, not one in mean attire- members of the first families of the town and neighborhood…mingling with the commonest drab, which have concealed the carnation tints of quakeress beauty…with eyes beaming with intelligence.

Manchester Times and Gazette October 6 1832 issue 208

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Friends Meeting House, Manchester

The slave trade was abolished in 1807 but, in the British Empire and America, Africans were still the property of their masters. Calls for slave emancipation thrived on fertile ground in Manchester, not least amongst its female residents. The meeting at Friends Meeting House was a fashionable, social occasion involving women of many religious persuasions. Agitation for universal suffrage had influenced some women, who were barred from taking a role in many of the suffrage societies, to create their own in the summer months of 1819. In the 1820s they continued to organise separately and joined their own female anti-slavery societies.

With the slave trade abolished, a new organisation was required to campaign for the end of slavery in the colonies. Wigan-born Quaker, James Cropper, established the Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of Slavery in Liverpool in 1822. Through his lobbying the London Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1823. He attacked the ‘impolicy of the slavery in the West Indies appealing to reason and to free trade principles to show that a system of plantation cultivation by slave labour was inefficient, costly to the consumer and in the long run not in the interest to the planter.’ In 1831 the London Committee set up a system of agents to argue that colonial slavery was a Christian crime and should be abolished immediately. Liverpool-born George Thompson, whom the ladies of Manchester had come to see at Friends Meeting House, was their most celebrated lecturer.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

James Cropper

Insurrection
The traditional arguments for and against slavery were now being enacted against a backdrop of slave insurrection and increasing disregard by the Jamaican planters for the amelioration legislation which had been enacted in London. A slave revolt had occurred after Christmas 1831, and resulted in the massive destruction of property of ‘whites and brown’. It was ruthlessly quashed, resulting in the reported deaths of thousands of slaves and three whites. Baptist and Methodist ministers were accused of incitement and attacked, their churches and property destroyed and tried for sedition. The Bishops who had voted against parliamentary reform at home were now seen to be aligned with the planters against the sectarian missionaries in Jamaica. The acrimony between dissenters and the established church which was now being played out in the colonies, and Jamaica in particular, was widely and graphically reported in the British press. The dissenters in the north-west would have read, with outrage, the report from the Jamaican Courier, ‘We hope he will award [the three Baptist ministers taken into custody] fair and impartial justice. Shooting is however too honourable a death for these men whose conduct has occasioned so much bloodshed, and the loss of so much property. There are fine hanging woods in St James and Trelawney and we do sincerely hope that the bodies of all the Methodist preachers who may be convicted of sedition may diversify the scene.’

In July William Knibbs, one of the Baptist ministers charged with sedition, came back to Britain from Jamaica and gave a first-hand account of his experiences to audiences in Liverpool and Manchester. He argued that the planters wished to ‘absolve themselves from the crown’, and would not allow the gospel to be spread in the West Indies. In Manchester he spoke to a horrified audience about a Methodist missionary being tarred and feathered.

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William Knibbs, centre


East India Connections
The missionaries’ agitation for immediate emancipation and their oppression by the planters fired the populist movement. George Thompson and the agent for the West Indian planters, Borthwick, participated in a series of rowdy lectures in Liverpool. Borthwick caused outrage when he charged the Baptists missionaries with having instigated the slaves to rebellion. He also accused Thompson and the other anti-slavery leaders of self-interest, rather than humanitarian motives, in opposing the colonial system due to their connections with the East India trade. He argued that the plantation owners had the wishes of the slaves, ‘their children’, at heart and wished to develop the slaves gradually so that they could be placed ‘in the condition of English peasants’.
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George Thompson


An alignment of causes
The 1832 Reform Bill extended the franchise to male ‘forty-shilling freeholders’, although most people, including all women, still had no vote. Elections took place at the end of the year. As candidates for parliament, including dissenters for the first time, took to the hustings anti-slavery was seen as a vote winner. At Knibbs’ Manchester meeting prospective parliamentary candidate, Mark Philips, stood up and pledged himself against the union of church and state, tithes and the corn laws and announced himself a convert to immediate abolition. He was to become one of the first MPs for Manchester.

Anti-slavery was a fashionable cause amongst the middle classes. Some charge it was to ease their consciences for the treatment of workers at home, who were treated no better than slaves. However, the movement was a populist one with its roots in the democratic agitation championed by Walker and Cooper over 30 years earlier. Seymour Drescher’s work analyzing the 1832 Methodist anti-slavery petition signed by 1.3 million men and women shows that ‘abolitionism burst into the public arena just as its artisanal social basis was rapidly expanding in the various mining and manufacturing regions especially Lancashire.’ As the address from the Free Trade Hall on New Years Eve 1862 was to show it was the working, industrious classes who were equal leaders in the humanitarian movement.

As reports of the rebellious proceedings of the West Indian planters and condemnation of their treatment of British Christians continued, it was generally perceived inevitable that more insurrections would continue as long as slavery persisted. The new Parliament voted through the Emancipation Act in 1833.

Since 1828 dissenters were no longer barred from political office, and those with wealth were enfranchised. There was now a new focus for the political campaigners of the north-west and a new generation of liberals leading the way. Most still had no vote, and many were living in conditions they felt were no better than those endured by the slaves. In America slaves continued to produce the cotton that was spun and weaved in Lancashire. Parliamentary reform and slavery continued to be emotive political issues.

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A glimpse of the hidden histories of the black servants in Liverpool

I have just seen Django Unchained. The dining scene in the plantation house reminded me of Prestonian Samuel Leach’s (1829-1923) memoirs.

In his reminiscences of Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century Samuel recounted that the three Moon brothers had black servants from the Brazils whom they would take with them whenever they were dining out. Once all three had been together at a family’s birthday celebration. At the dinner table each brother had a black servant standing behind his chair ‘of course lightening the work for the servants of this family’.

He also recalled dining at the Cross Hotel in Bowness, in the Lake District, some years later ‘with Jefferson Davis, the President of the Southern Republic, who after his overthrow was touring with his family in Europe, when he had a splendid black man standing behind his own, his wife’s and his children’s chairs exactly in the same way- I don’t know why, but Darkies at that time used to be more common in the streets of Liverpool than they are today, [1915] one used to brush past them quite as an every day thing.

Samuel Leach, Old Age Reminiscences 1915.
Lancashire Records Office.

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The rights of man, woman, African and unitarian

This gallery contains 9 photos.

October 28 1787, Manchester Collegiate Church ‘When I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given, though I knew nothing of it, that such a discourse … Continue reading

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It’s not all about Abe: the uncelebrated activists of the anti-slavery movement

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To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. ‘As citizens of Manchester, assembled at the Free-Trade Hall, we beg to express our fraternal sentiments towards you and your country. We rejoice in your greatness, as an outgrowth of England, whose … Continue reading

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Letters from Joseph Shawcross, mill worker and political prisoner, Chester Castle 1849

Uprising in Hyde.


Chartist, Joseph Shawcross, was 50 when he was sentenced to one year in Chester Castle gaol for his part in the riots in Hyde, Cheshire, during August 1848. From there he wrote to his nineteen year-old daughter, Alice, who was living in Turner Brow, Godley. Two of his letters survive. There is also a letter written by Alice to her father contemplating his release.

Two years later Joseph is back living on Turner Brow in Godley with Alice and working as a twister in a mill, as is Alice. She later marries Irish-born William Nolan and settles in nearby Duckinfield.

The community Joseph lived in, Godley, in the parish of Mottram in Longendale near Hyde, was typical of the hillside towns east of Manchester. It had been a farming community which had rapidly been industrialised. In 1794 the Peak Forest canal was dug nearby and in 1841 the Manchester to Sheffield railway opened. As cotton spinning and weaving became increasingly mechanised, work was transferred from the home to the factories. The new factories attracted new migrants to the area, economic migrants desperate for work, including some born in Ireland.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshawcross-march-792x1024 Letters from Joseph Shawcross, mill worker and  political prisoner, Chester Castle 1849

Letter from Joseph Shawcross to his daughter, Alice, March 1849
Reproduced by kind permission of Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service

Transcriptions of the letters

Chester Castle, March 23

Dear Daughter

I Take the erilest operatunuty of writing there few lines to you hoping that the will find you in good health as it leaves me at present. I should very much like to know how my Small Famley is getting on, as I am very Deserous to know. and I should wish you to take my Birds to John [shume?] for him to take Care of. until my liberation.

Dear Daughter you will oblige me if you go to Mr James Wild Esquire and ask him if he will be so kind as to go accompany John Dawson to Manchester and to see Mr Robert[s] and Make Enquiries into My case. wether I. as a Political prisoner haught to have eny privileges alowed me. Diffrent to the Other Misdemeaners. or wether I am to be locked up in Cell 10 feet by 7. as I am at preasant. wich Makes me very Dissatisfied I will asure you. and you know that Master Wild. as been a kind friend to me in Standing as my Bondsman. and a meny other good acts. I have no Doubt But he will adhere to my request at the preasent. and by Doing this as Soon as posable you will do me a great kindness for which I will be very thankful.

and be so kind as to send me 2 belts and a pair Drawers and make the belts of strong red flan[nell?]ing.

Give my kind love to my Brother James and is Famley and My Brother John and is Famley and my Sister Mary and her husband and my Uncels to James Broadbent and Thomas Collier and all the over lookers and John Heyes and all enquirering friends

and please to tell Frances Kavey and Thomas Davies to Send me all the latest news He Can. So with these few lines I Remain your Father Dady Shawcross.

please to send me word wether you are carrying on the same as you was Before.

Chester Castle June 12 1849

Dear Daughter I take the eireliest operatunaty of writing these few lines to you. hoping that the will find you in good health as it leaves me at preasant. I should wish you to send me every perticular. as to the state of the Country. ”and how your are geting on with your Buisness at Home. and how my litle Famley is getting on at home and abroad.” Dear Daughter I Should wish you to see Francis Cavey and tell him to see all my Chartist Friends and tell them to send me what money that posabley can: against the Assizeses and to write to Mr Roberts. “To inform him that I and some of the other Chartist Prisoners. wishes to see him when he comes over to the Assizeses.” as we are informed he will do For we consider we are not treated as we haught for to be. Not even as comon misdemaenors ought to be. and we wish to See Mr. Roberts at the Erliest opperatunaty,” give my love to all those that I sent to before and don’t forget Mosses Loughton and James Gee Ester Grunday. and please to send me word wether Thomas Wright is alive or not and likewise Thomas Thornley and don’t forget john Wild and make every, thing. there if you can against I come home and give my respects to James Wild

So with few lines. I remain your affectionate Father

Joseph Shawcross

October 1 1849

Dear Father I write these few lines to you hopeing they will find you in good health I am very sorry to hear you have had such bad health since you left home I am in very good health at present thank god for it and I sincirely hope you will be in as good health as I am when you receive this I hope you will keep up your spirits and remember in ten weeks more you will be sat in your old corner at home oh how happy we shall be then I will soon nurse you well again then Dear Father you must be sure to come home before you go anywhere else for I asure you I shall be very uneasy untill I see you once more that couple left at whitsuntide but sarah harrison is living with me: you know that young girl that lived at Jospeh harrisons it is her we only wish for you to come home and then we shall be comfortable Dear Father you wanted to know how I conducted myself at hyde wakes. I asure you I was a very good girl and sarah too thomas collier is not in the house now you might be well aware that a man of his habits would not like to be confined in the house all the day over but my customers come in at night so I do as well without him but I will tell you all about it when you come home your brother John says he will be one of your bondsmen and he will ask James Wild and if he will not he will find one [?] between and you write again you must send me word in your next letter how I must send articles you want I sent you a neck handkerchief and they will give it to you when you come out. I will have your herb beer ready when you come home your uncle anthony wife died on 21 September your brother in law solomons wife is dead since you went from home you wanted to know how your small family is getting on now I will tell you your little dog is as cross as ever and you scarcly will know him when you see him again and your poultry is all very well. Your canaries are at your brother Johns and I asure you they are very pretty birds now so you see all your family are well at present I hear you have never had your hair cut since you went to prison but never mind that for william healey says hedcut his old friend.s hair in the first fashion when he comes home.

nancy Grundy has never come near me while you have been away therefore I never thought it worth while to mention her in my letter but I shall soon have my dear father at home with me again and then I shall never think of her your brother john and your brother james and their familys sends their kind love to you and your uncles and their familys and all the overlookers and john heys and indeed all the neighbers send their love to you.

so no more at present from your ever affectionate daughter Alice Shawcross

The Prison Regulations
Joseph was not allowed to write any letters until he had completed the first three months of his sentence, and then not again for another three months. The letter written to Alice in March would have been his first and the June letter the second. Alice’s letter seems to be her first since May at least, but there appears to have been some other form of communication between them, as she refers to her father’s concerns about Wakes week.

Friends and family of the prisoner were reminded of the regulations on the header of the official prison notepaper which read:`

The Friends of Prisoners are particularly requested to notice the following Regulations:–

Persons attempting to conceal Letters, Tobacco, or any other article not allowed by the Rules of the Gaol, in any Parcel, will subject themselves to a Penalty of £5, or One Month’s Imprisonment.
Prisoners committed for non-payment of a Fine, or want of Sureties, may write or receive a Letter at any time, but the contents must be confined to the subject of their Imprisonment only.
No convicted Prisoner is allowed either to write or receive a Letter, or to be Visited, until he or she has been imprisoned three months after such conviction, and only once each succeeding three months.
The Visiting Day is the second Friday in the month.
At the request of any Prisoner, a letter will be forwarded to his or her Friends, stating that he or she is in custody, and upon what day discharged.
No Prisoner can, upon any account, be visited on a Sunday.
Parties intending to become bail for any Prisoner in custody, should either enter into recognizances before the Committing Magistrate, or prepare themselves with a certificate from a Magistrate, of their responsibility, or sufficiency for the bail proposed.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshawcross-march-792x1024 Letters from Joseph Shawcross, mill worker and  political prisoner, Chester Castle 1849

Letter fromJoseph to Alice Shawcross, March 1849
Reproduced by kind permission of Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service

Uprising in Hyde, August 1848

There had been turmoil throughout the manufacturing districts as rumours of rebellion took hold on August 12. A policeman was murdered in nearby Ashton-under-Lyne and men were arrested in Dukinfield where there had been an attempt to steal a canon. The unrest was part of an orchestrated attempt by the physical force Chartists to initiate a national uprising. However, the ‘uprising’ was sporadic and failed to take-off. During subsequent days there were many arrests, including those of many Chartist leaders.

The trial

Baron Alderson and Mr Justice Erle tried around 40 prisoners charged with political offences at Chester Winter Assizes. Proceedings began on Wednesday 6 December. First to be tried was George Mantle, who was alleged to have delivered a speech on August 8 1848 in Hyde, during which he was alleged to have advised people to arm themselves to obtain the charter and put down the tyrannical government. P.C Thomas Burn, giving evidence, stated that twenty-two year-old Mantle had said that,’He was tired of moral force, and nothing but physical force will do now. He wanted no queen nor Archbishop of Canterbury, with his £75,000 a year; and that Prince Albert and all the little princes must be sent to Germany to make sausages of.’ Mantel conducted his own defence, for two hours, and was found guilty by the jury.

The next day eighteen men, including Joseph, who had been indicted for illegal conspiracy and riot at Hyde on 14 August 1848, were tried. On 12 August, four days after Mantel’s address, it was alleged that Charles Sellers, 35, had drilled a large party to prepare for a general rising on 14 August. 130 came onto the town in military order expecting the factory hands to join them and sieze the Hyde barracks. Daniel Lee testified that on 12 August several hundred men had drilled on Godley Hill with pikes, guns and pistols They were ranged in four companies each of 20-30 armed men. After letting boilers off at Woodley mill, where a dog was allegedly shot, the party went on to let off the boilers and let out plugs at Houghton Dale factory, Hapethorn mill, Gibraltar mill, Mr Wharby’s, Mr Hibbert’s and Mr Howard’s factories. It was said they intended to take possession of the Hyde lock-ups and set fire to the mills the next night. P.C. Thomas Brown corroborated Lee’s testimony. The constable protested that he had given Daniel Lee one shilling on account of his extreme poverty and it was several weeks before he received any information about the Chartists. On 14 August 50-60 men, were standing in the market place armed with guns and pikes. Their leader said, ‘They are out over England, Ireland and Scotland; before this time tomorrow will either make it better or worse, for we may as well turn out and be killed, as stop at home and starve to death.’

Source: Manchester Examiner and Times Saturday 9 December 1848.

A tradition of resistance

1848 was a tumultuous year throughout Europe, invoking fear in the propertied classes that the civilized world was in peril. In Britain, as yet another Chartist petition signed by millions of disenfranchised workers was arrogantly dismissed by the government, factory hands, working in appalling conditions and facing still more wage cuts, turned out in protest. The Pennines to the east of Manchester had witnessed decades of organised opposition to industrialisation and the attacks of the propertied classes on their traditional ways of life. The region had been practicing for a rising for years, to reverse the unrelenting tide of industrialisation which, whilst enriching the few, dehumanised and impoverished those who worked in the new mills. For decades men armed with pikes, swords and guns had drilled at night in the hills above the cotton towns as bayoneted soldiers were barracked nearby. In June 1812 five hundred men, on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, caused alarm as they drilled openly during the daytime whilst church services were taking place. These were the Luddites.

The Luddites had resisted the mechanisation of the factories and the repeal of centuries-old regulations which had protected the trades. They were primarily artisans who attacked machines which were ‘hurtful to commonality’ i.e. undercut wages, reduced output quality and deskilled the trades. As power-looms replaced hand-looms the discipline of the factory owners replaced that of the family. The huge mills presided over the disintegration of family life as children and their parents were economically forced to submit to the long hours and oppressive rules of the factory system. The Luddites operated with great secrecy. Punishment was severe, not only for machine breaking but for taking secret oaths. Many lost their lives, many were transported.

As the power-looms superseded the hand-looms discontent continued. The 1832 Reform Act gave no voice to the working classes. Increasingly they associated their lack of economic power – indeed any personal power, for they and their children were no more than slaves to the factories – with a lack of political power. In 1839 and 1842 there was unrest throughout the manufacturing districts. Manchester was the centre of the national Chartist movement. It was also here where Frederick Engels had made his home. His observations of class relations in Manchester informed his and Marx’s writings including the Communist Manifesto. He was close to several Chartists. (Mr William Roberts, whom Joseph refers to, is the Chartist lawyer who was attorney general for the Miners Union and acted for Karl Marx in his legal affairs. Roberts had himself been imprisoned for seditious libel in 1839). I

The Chartist movement was a cultural not merely political one. They ran Sunday schools and cultural events. It’s travelling orators were skilled and emotive, linking their cause to centuries of resistance to the Norman yoke and the natural rights of true born Englishmen. They carried caps and bonnets which had much symbolism: the rouge bonnet, the soft conical Phrygian cap of revolutionary France; the white cap of liberty symbolising the martyrdom of Peterloo on August 16 1819, and the green cap which had a lineage back to the Levellers. The Chartist movement was diverse but became torn apart over tactical disputes between the moral force Chartists and physical force Chartists.
With many of their members and leaders in prison, they argued that their supporters were political prisoners and should be treated as such, having conditions preferable to those classified as felons or misdemeanors. However, where this privilege was upheld, the Chartists were obliged to fund the subsistence of the prisoner for the duration of their sentence. The movement was financially crippled by the need to fund its prisoners’ living expenses and keep their families from destitution, as well as ensuring that sureties and bonds could be raised. Already riven with factionalism over tactics, the arguments escalated overdisputes about the use of fighting funds wand which prisoners were truly deserving. 1848 was the last year when the mass movement posed a real threat to the establishment.

While parliament deliberated on the definition of a political prisoner, and the conditions in which they were held, the Chartists argued over who should be afforded that status. Certainly Joseph had no doubts about his identity.

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The trouble with bridges: people walk all over them

David Miliband 7 March, 2012, at the University of Manchester

It was standing-room only, in a buzzing lecture theatre at the University of Manchester, when David Miliband spoke to PolSoc students as part of a tour of universities to support the Labour Party’s living wage campaign*. As the instigator of the party’s “movement for change” programme, which aims to make the party be more outward-looking, he also hopes the tour will go some way to narrow the gap between Westminster politics and the political conversations in lecture theatres and homes throughout the country.  The questions asked by the audience must have been unpredictable, compared to a typical Labour Party audience, but he deftly handled issues which covered the Labour Party leadership, domestic issues, Syria, Iran, US, Russia and Europe. Hillary Clinton would have been impressed.

On the elections

Labour suffered its biggest loss in 80 years. We need to understand why people voted against Labour and respect, though that does not mean agree, with their reasons. Labour was perceived as the establishment, the big state and economically untrustworthy. New Labour was too hands on with the state and hands-off with the markets. We also need clear ideas for the future which is why it took the Tories so long to get back in power, and even then with only 37% of the vote, people weren’t ready to trust them.

Labour holds only 12 of 210 seats in the South. We must win these. Some of the answers for the party’s future come from the sort of model Manchester Labour Party and its Council have implemented. It is outward-looking, ruthlessly focussed on the future, unlike some parts of its Party.

On the big issues

At the same time as the Party self-analysis we must also analyse the country in its global context. 24 out of 27 European states are now run by centre-right governments. They are all competing with each other for austerity, yet they are in the same trading area. There will be recession.

There are four big forces shaping politics throughout the world:

1. The shift in economic power from West to East, which is the biggest, fastest shift ever seen.

2. Non-oil commodity prices are rising fast. There is a danger of war as a result of resource squeeze. The Yemen could be the first country to run out of water.

3. There is a democratic surge in Muslim counters, the growth of political Islam.

4. There is a shift in power relations between the people and government, the civilian surge. This is facilitated by increase in education, mobility of people and the internet and social media ,which enables people to share ideas more than ever before. Governments need to be more concerned about what people are thinking.

On Europe

Greece’s problem is not debt but growth. Whilst Italy and Spain have liquidity problems, Greece has a fundamental solvency problem and it is difficult to see how it can compete in the Eurozone.

In the modern world we need to secure our own neighbourhoods, act as part of regional blocks. Britain is part of a global hub, connected to ideas, institutions and people who matter. We are members of the UN Security Council, the EU, Nato and the Commonwealth.

If we want to be influential internationally we need to act with the EU. Reducing student visa’s reduces our presence as the international hub. The Manchester University scientists who discovered graphene would not have obtained visas to undertake research in Britain under the current policy.

We are a potential coalition-builder but there is a danger that being linked to Britain could be seen as toxic. That’s the trouble with bridges: people walk all over them.

On China and Russia

There are debates in China and Russia that authoritarian capitalism is more successful than democratic capitalism; the European Union states are focused on the short-term rather than strategic. Russia has no respect for weakness but Putin is an autocrat not a dictator.

On the Middle East

Sanctions and isolation are not a solution to the problems in the Middle East. There is a danger we could sleep-walk into war. The Israelis are egged on by some Sunni Arab states who are trying to quash the Shias, whilst Iranian strategy is to destabilise near-by Arab states. Iran has more bloggers per head of population than any other country anywhere else on the world. GDP is falling; they need trade. They need to be persuaded to use their nuclear programme for peaceful purposes, but they should not to be humiliated, to appear as if they have been defeated.

Military intervention is not be a solution to end the appalling sectarian violence which has now taken hold in Syria. Other countries’ wars could be fought there, as happened in the Lebanon with Iran and Saudi Arabia piling in. The answer is for the international community to unite to engage with Russia to put pressure on Assad.

On the riots

There has been no discussion in the media recently about the riots, it’s as if they have just gone away and it’s assumed they will not happen again – very risky. The reasons in Tottenham and Manchester and some other places were down to policing issues. Overall it was not economic poverty which drove the rioters but the culture of consumption.

One thing that never changes over the years, is the blond guy with glasses holding copies of Socialist Worker newspaper. Inevitably his question attacks Labour for the cuts, totally ignoring any influence of Tory policy. Miliband, who has already met him outside responds resolutely, defends the city council. Strikes will not make any difference. He’s not against direct action but not in this case. The Manchester Labour Council has sweated blood to protect workers from central government cuts.

As ever, David Miliband, fields questions about the leadership elections and the calibre of the current leader with diplomacy, humour, even flirtatiousness. However, he categorically states that the party has chosen its leader for 2015 and he does not want to be it. As the meeting closes, we learn he is about to be interviewed by the BBC, and he tells us he is attending a dinner with Bury’s Labour Party. Although there is not a hint from his facial expression, nor barely a change in the tone of his voice, I do not believe the dinner is something he is looking forward to. Of course he may be attending as a favour to a friend, but I just wonder why a backbench MP would be hanging around when he could get home to his children in London. I certainly believe he is absolutely committed to social justice and an egalitarian agenda, but less convinced that Miliband the elder has no ambition to be a leader in 2015.

* Manchester University have now agreed to implement a living wage (£7.20 an hour). Manchester Metropolitan has still to follow suit.

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David Miliband in conversation with David Haslam, Mechanics Institute, Manchester, January 25 2012

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonIMG_0668-300x224 David Miliband in conversation with David Haslam, Mechanics Institute, Manchester, January 25 2012

David Miliband in conversation with Dave Haslam

Vibrant, vital, attractive and smart. Well, I have to confess to plagiarising Hillary Clinton, but I could only agree with her assessment of David Miliband as he deftly answered some tricky questions from author and DJ Dave Haslam, including the ones we all wanted ask. Just how did he feel when he lost the leadership to his brother and will he stand for Labour Party leader in the future? But first what were his views on the political landscape?

On the current government

It is dementingly frustrating to see what the government is doing to the country and it is a tragedy that it takes a Tory government to remind people why they should want a Labour Government. Darling’s plan was working in 2010 but we lost because people think we weren’t prudent enough. The recession was made in Wall Street not Downing Street. Let’s be clear Osborne’s austerity package is not working. This government has had three growth downgrades in one year. It’s shockingly dreadful. Although they are brilliant at spin.

Cameron is a paradox, he seemed to have everything going for him; quick witted, a money machine behind him, a lovely family, plenty of things to aim at but people did not vote in huge numbers for him. There has never been a bigger car crash than NHS reform. Gove is playing a much cannier game than Lansley. The danger Britain is facing is a rolling back.

On Trade Unionism

We have to recognise that trade unionism has changed fundamentally since the first Trade Union Congress here in 1868. Now two thirds of their members are in the public sector with a roughly even gender split. In the private sector trade unionism no longer represents the small crafts, it is dominated by large industries and big unions. We can’t save jobs and increase pay at the same time.

On Manchester

The Tories are eradicated here because you played politics well here- something we didn’t do nationally. There is complacency and skeptiscm about politics in the UK. Westminster politics are a long way from the people. We need to draw MPs from wider backgrounds. Cities in the nineteenth century were engines of the economy and politics. We need to ensure people see our local politics make a difference, but it’s really tough to convince those who are culturally alienated and have rejected politics that they should be engaged. Civic leaders should be as well known as Boris Johnson and become part of the national conversation, yet leaders like Richard Leese and the leader of Birmingham City Council are rarely represented in the national media.

On the Labour Government

We were not tethered to US foreign policy but the latter took some bad turns. Winning wars is not difficult but winning the peace is.

The greatest mistake in government was Iraq. There is a list of negatives and a list of positives but history has not yet been finished. You should never condone torture or mess around with definitions and objective facts, like the US have done.

We mistook good times for a good system and did not insulate ourselves against a crash.

On the Arab Spring

Political Islam is a great advantage over the global jihad of a decade ago.

On the future

The real enemies are the Tories, the Lib Dems are their human shield. We need to understand why we lost and present our vision for an alternative future. The gravity of issues facing the economy is fundamental. Climate change is the great generational challenge. The way we make our living in the future is going to be different. We need to elevate the issues at a strategic, not tactical level, and be honest. We need to talk about the issues that matter. Gordon Brown would not talk about immigration. We need to. But the Labour Party will not be able to undo what is being done now. We cannot bring an end to boom and bust because that is impossible in a market economy.

People wanted Labour out and we need to respect the reasons people turned against us. We need, (borrowing from the Swedish Socialists) an approach based on empathy, analysis, vision, policy and implementation. We will win the argument by getting the first three right yet we often the focus us on just the last two, which is the icing on the cake. For example, we have empathy that youth unemployment is a crime, we understand its structural causes, and our vision is that all youth should have a job within six months but at the same time they also have to accept their responsibilities as well as their rights. We need insight and then a team to deliver.

But we can do things for the people only if politics is done by the people at the same time. We need to turn Labour party outwards into communities and empower communities. That is why the movement for change is so important. The next election is completely open.

And the answers to the questions we all wanted to know.

Leaving high office is like the end of a love affair, it leaves a great void he reveals. There is a space for the children, a depth of time, a time to reflect, to think, although it was not something he sought. He does not touch directly on his feelings when he failed in the leadership bid but this analogy to a love affair must surely be our clue to his state of mind. But he is not one to give up and hide away. David Miliband is a winner. Why does he think Labour are not resonating with the electorate despite the abysmal government performance? There is a long searching for an answer, as he makes it clear he must be diplomatic in his answer. The closest he can say is that the long Labour leadership campaign enabled the Tories to seed the argument that Labour had made the UK the potential next Greece. Yes, and we know that the winner of that campaign is not effectively contesting that argument. He doesn’t have to say it but we all know.

He had an hour after being told the leadership result to the public announcement. A time when he decided to look forward not back. He decided he could help best by getting out of the way of the media soap opera. Now he finds himself in an unusual situation. If he was in the shadow cabinet as soon as he took a slightly different stance to his brother the soap opera would start again. He says he doesn’t know if he will stand for the leadership. One thing that everyone in the hall seemed to share, however, was the unspoken assumption that, before the next general election, there would be another Labour leadership contest. And this was the man we wanted to win it.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonIMG_0668-300x224 David Miliband in conversation with David Haslam, Mechanics Institute, Manchester, January 25 2012Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012-2013 Lynn Steinson
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Synchronicity in the City

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-were-not-really-here-300x129 Synchronicity in the City

If Manchester was the shock city of the 1840s, the symbol if its age, then Manchester City is the shock club of its time.

The pitch at a night match always seems more green, more vibrant than that of an afternoon game, as if the flood-lit grass has been preened specially for the television cameras. In contrast the tiers of the mammoth dark stadium soar into the night skies. The high-tech adverts pulse around the perimeter of the park, as if in competition with the main event, reminding the spectators just who is bankrolling the performance, beckoning us to jet off to a land of Arabian nights away from the grey British winter days. Though probably only those tucked up in the glowing executive boxes that line the second tier are likely to do so. We are, as ever, grateful to Sheik Mansour for the privilege of being here, competitors in the Champions League.

The home crowd’s songs ebb and flow with the tide of play. ‘We’re not really here’ sing the faithful, a song rooted in recent myths and far more surreal than anything the quiet neighbours down the road with their never-ending ‘Knick, knack, paddy-whack’ could ever compose. ‘Mancini, woah, Mancini woah,’ sing the crowd every time the trim, immaculately dressed Italian manager gestures from the side of the pitch. His personality, passion and humour resonate with the culture of the crowd. Who else would have such faith in Mario (now Super Mario) Balotelli? Who else could have faith in Manchester City when they were relegated to what, in real terms, was the Third Division? Mancini and Man City fans are in perfect synchronicity.

Bayern Munich have a worthy following of fans, swathed in red, they jump up and down literally shaking the stadium. Their banners, proclaiming their allegiance and locality, rather like adverts for brands of lager, adorn the top deck of the East stand. Their supporters, soaked after a day in bitter December rain, must have been bemused to find themselves in a German market in the centre of Manchester as they prepared for the night’s match. The Teutonic rendition of “Yellow Submarine”, accompanied by an African drumbeat, is interrupted by a City goal and the British fans turn around to dance a Polish jig appropriated from recent visitors, Lodz. Each spectator takes their cue to do The Poznan from the Mexican wave which sweeps round the ground from the South Stand.

The final score is a victory for City but the result at Napoli means that City exit the Champions League and slip back into the Europa Cup. The match was lost before it began. We knew that but we were still here, and for tonight we are victors over the great Bayern Munich. Miracles do happen. We will be back for we know that because on the sixth day God created Manchester City.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-were-not-really-here-300x129 Synchronicity in the CityCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2011-2017 Lynn Steinson
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Laura Wilson at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonInternational_Anthony_Burgess_Foundation-200x300 Laura Wilson at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Author and Guardian Crime Fiction reviewer, Laura Wilson, bared her soul as she read from her recent book ‘A Capital Crime’ at Manchester’s International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Old university friend and now Academic Director of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School, Michael Symmons Roberts, compared her poet’s eye for detail to that of Philip Larkin and reminded us that she has a rare talent for keeping the reader on the hook until the last page.

Although a writer, she was about 30, when she suddenly saw what she wanted to write. Until that point she had always felt too inexperienced to have anything interesting to write about although she had always loved reading about crime. Her Eureka moment happened when, as she was travelling on the 38 bus, she was suddenly able to make the connection between something she knew about; her family relationship with an isolated servant, and something she had read about; the unexplained shotgun deaths of three elderly people. The book became ‘A Little Death’ and, though she did not know it at the time, was of the ‘locked- room’ genre of crime-fiction.

Now writing her tenth novel, Laura explained that her decision to set her stories during the Second World War and post-war decades was based on her feeling that the history of the world changed more between 1940 and 1970 than at any other point in history. This was a statement I found thought-provoking but not really sure I agreed with, after all wasn’t the manufacturing revolution more significant or the recent information revolution?

“A Capital Crime” is based on the real life tale of failed justice, the hanging of Timothy Evans for the crimes of Christie in the 1950s. Laura was drawn to the story by the idea ‘what if someone got something so wrong, that if they had not cocked it, up seven people would still be alive?’ How would they feel? In order for the plot to fit into the style of the Inspector Stratton books she has fictionalised the victim of the miscarriage of justice and the villain as John Davies and Norman Backhouse and moved the scene of the crime from Notting Hill to Euston. She frequently uses real life tales to inspire her plots, the Black-out Ripper, for example, inspired ‘The Lover.’

Her writing style was initially organic but, she discovered, ‘it flowed like custard’. Now she feels a good synopsis is vital in order to plan a crime plot, about thirty pages like a verbal story board, the plot dealt with you can just immerse yourself in the prose. Confidence grows with writing, but sometimes slowly. She had written six books before she had confidence to write in the third person. Capture your voice by talking to people she advises.

Despite what publishers might say –  that they want something new  – what they actually want is more of the same until the wheels fall off the bandwagon, and then it’s on to the next one.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonInternational_Anthony_Burgess_Foundation-200x300 Laura Wilson at The International Anthony Burgess FoundationCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lynn Steinson
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Anthony Horovitz in conversation with Jenni Murray at Manchester Town Hall

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonIMG_0443-224x300 Anthony Horovitz in conversation with Jenni Murray at Manchester Town Hall

Neo-gothic spires of Manchester Town Hall. Location of Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes.

In the gothic surroundings of Manchester Town Hall Old Etonian Anthony Horovitz reflected on the dreadful school system of his childhood, an experience which he presumed his male contemporaries in the audience shared. ‘Most of the school teachers would be locked up these days,’ he speculated. It is likely though, I suspect, that  most in the audience were educated in the state sector and therefore lucky to have escaped similar horrors to his North London prep school. 

He has always loved nineteenth century literature: Dickens, Trollop and even George Gissing (‘so depressing’ he adds cheerfully). So writing a Sherlock Holmes novel has not been a chore, in fact it is his favourite book. He wonders why Alan Davies has cornered the market in television adaptations of historical novels- he would love to adapt Dickens to a modern day setting.

A skull on his desk reminds him that life is short and you just have to get on and do things. He always knew he could tell stories and for him stories and books are more exciting than life itself. It is evident that that he loves what he does and his enthusiasm for writing and engaging children in literature is infectious. He has ideas which will keep him busy for the next five years and you sense many beyond that too.

The dark panelled  banqueting hall of Waterhouse’s Town Hall will, he tells us, doubtless appear in a book some day, but his next project will take him to Antarctica where he will sit on the ice and write the last few chapters of “The Power of Five”. We wait in eager anticipation.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonIMG_0443-224x300 Anthony Horovitz in conversation with Jenni Murray at Manchester Town HallCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lynn Steinson
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Colin Bateman at the Anthony Burgess Centre

A girlfriend who believed in Bateman’s first book convinced him to send it directly to a major publisher. “Divorcing Jack” was retrieved from the Harper Collins slush-pile sixteen years ago and the rest as they say…

Journalist, Dan Starkey, has since featured in eight books and Bateman has also established himself as both screen writer, with Murphy’s Law to his credit, and as a children’s storywriter.

Bateman’s acerbic humour, influenced by Robert B. Parker, which pervades the dialogue and Starkey’s inner thoughts move the pace along and engage the reader. ‘Comedy is not fashionable in crime writing these days,’ he says, ‘if Chandler had been alive today he might be classified in a sub-genre of comic crime’ he suggests.

Where do the characters come from? He writes about what he knows; journalism and life in the Troubles. However, it is an exagerrated representation of his own personal history, Starkey would fight or wisecrack his way out of trouble whereas when the chips are down Bateman would ‘scream like a girl.’

And the question we all want to ask. How does he write? He writes a chapter a day, probably finished by lunchtime, his journalistic training grounding him in writing quickly. When he is writing he tends to read little fiction as he feels it is all too easy to be influenced by others.

He had two dreams when he was younger, to be a writer and to play for Liverpool. He is still waiting for the call from Dalgliesh…

Host Nicholas Royle speculates that Bateman’s experience in Northern Ireland gave him the character and courage to stand before an audience in Manchester, the home of the greatest football team in the world, who play in blue…


Guilt by Lynn Steinsondp_seal_trans_16x16 Colin Bateman at the Anthony Burgess CentreCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lynn Steinson
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