Texts for Translation 2007:
  Mark Ovenden

Labour goes home

by Mark Ovenden

For the first time in living memory Labours Annual Conference is happening outside a seaside resort. The location chosen couldn’t be more fitting; it’s where the party was born.

Think Britain and its economic revival probably ends at the M25? Go to Manchester! It’s a city in unprecedented renaissance. The most radical since the Roman town expanded into the world's first industrial city. The metamorphosis is more obvious than anywhere else in the UK. From shimmering skyscrapers to science campuses and technoparks, it epitomises every of facet New Labours improbable mix of social conscience and cuddly capitalism.

The conference takes place in a former disused railway station, victim of Beeching and decaying emblem of a once Great Britain. Built over the site of an infamous parliamentary reform rally where 11 were killed by the army in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, it’s now one of the UK’s most imposing conference centres: the“G-Mex & MICC”. Under the shadow of the tallest building outside London, the 47storey Beetham Tower, Labours delegates will arrive on modern trams from a city centre whose population has risen by almost 20,000 (a 1000% increase) in a decade. Boasting everything the Department of Culture, Media and Sport could dream of, Manchester couldn’t be a more appropriate microcosm of a Labour Britain if it tried.

Pledges to transform 60% of brown-field are well beaten herre; there’s barely a warehouse or mill that hasn’t been renovated into apartments. 15,000 have already been built or converted - an 11.6% property market growth in five years. Rebuilding is so comprehensive, past residents have become lost in formerly familiar quarters; “Spinning Fields” (2.7m sq ft offices and apartments) has a new street layout beneath soaring glass and steel towers. Leading the march to Britain’s New Jerusalem, Greater Manchester will have 6million square meters of offices by end 2007. Much of it filled with internationals; some 65 of the FTSE100 have a base in the county. The 171m Beetham Tower, behind GMex was sold out before building even started.

Highlighting Labours public-private partnerships, the city staged the largest Commonwealth Games in history (in 2002) and become the undisputed shopping centre of the North with 737,414 square metres of retail floorspace built or approved. Colin Sinclair of development agency MIDAS;“Retail is unparalleled by anywhere except London; Manchester is a European centre of shopping excellence”, and warming the hearts of many an edgy delegate there’s still not a conservative local councillor in sight on Manchester City Council.

The Conservative may rightly claim that Britain’s prosperity owes more than a little the framework they started, but it’s clear who the public give the credit to for re-heeling Manchester. Though dazzled by the penthouses and classy restaurants, Mancunians are proud of their radicalism. Music to the ears of war-weary Labour. This often knocked city gave birth or nurture not only to co-operative societies, parliamentary reform and trades unions (first TUC took place at Salfords ‘Three Crowns’, 1868), but is the deepest root of the Labour Party itself; in 1892 the Independent Labour Party, was formed in Manchester.

Some of Britain’s earliest campaigns against sexism, racism and homophobia lie at G-Mex’s doorstep. 20,000 signed a 1792 petition calling for abolition of Britain’s slave trade less than a kilometre from where Tony Blair will give his last Conference speech as PM. Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s Salford home became the Womens Social and Political Union – a falafel throw across the Irwell from where Labour will celebrate more women MPs than ever. Jews built the Cheetham Hill rag trade, Irish flocked to North Manchester, Pakistani’s came to Rusholme, Italians to Ancoats, Afro-Caribbean’s to Moss Side. Immigration makes Greater Manchester a multi-cultural-lovers paradise. 35 cuisines flavour the palate; many delegates will head for “Curry Mile” at Rusholme, or munch through eastern delicacies beside the first Imperial Chinese arch erected in Europe, or get tipsy on Canal Street, Europe’s largest “Gay village”. While nibbling organic flapjack, Labours veggies may be surprised to learn that vegetarianism was touted in 1815 Manchester by ironically named Reverent William Cowherd!

In every field Labour champions, Manchester is text book, yet dig deeper and there’s a persistent pile of “could do better” reports. Take Transport. As France celebrates 25 years of HighSpeed TGVs, Britain’s first inter-city railway (Liverpool-Manchester, 1830 – the main Conference stage is erected across a platform that once went down those very tracks!) is a journey not much faster in 2006. Although the £11bn upgrade of WCML will supposedly bring London-Manchester journeys down to 1’59”, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander will be pressed on why Londoners have 70% better rail access than Greater Manchester people and why it took the citing of the Conference in the city to un-freeze funds for Metrolink light rail expansion.

Frederick Engels said of the city in the 19th Century; “The streets were full of rubbish and offal, and 4,000 people lived in 200 back to back cottages with 20 people per house and one toilet for every 120 people”. In 1842 average mortality in Rutland was 38; in Manchester, it was just 17. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt will be asked why Greater Manchester still has the lowest mortality rates in England.

Gordon Brown recognises North West GDP is second only to the South East but Labours test is how the cash spreads down. With the shooting of 15 year old Jesse James a kilometre from where Labour meets, questions about poverty will be raised. While Britain is a richer place, why are violent crimes and firearms increasing? As Greater Manchester Police this week open Britain’s first US style Gang Unit to tackle gun crime, the words of philanthropist Alexis de Tocqueville echo down the ages; “It is [in Manchester] that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage”

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