Salford Sojourns

The Working Class Movement Library, Salford

I’ve been spending a lot of this week at the Working Class Movement Library on Salford Crescent. There are buses and trains, but I generally get the 192 to Piccadilly and walk it the rest of the way. This takes you through the bustling sensory overload of Piccadilly and Market Street, out the other side and over the bridge into Salford, past the rise of development and regeneration on Chapel Street and Salford Crescent. While the sight of yet another block of yuppie flats being built within screaming distance of Manchester city centre does depress me, the idea of them becoming the ‘Vimto flats’ does amuse me and take the edge off the depression somewhat.

Anyway, to the WCML. I can’t think of another library or museum where you would encounter the Manchester post punk fanzine City Fun, trade union history and Oliver Postgate. I am re-reading Oliver Postgate’s memoir at the moment, so was particularly pleased to encounter the Postgate exhibtion in the entrance hall in its display case. Like Postgate and Firmin’s films, it is small but perfectly formed. Bagpuss sits in the middle and, amongst other things, it is revealed that the folk singer Sandra Kerr provided the voice of Madeleine the rag doll and that Professor Yaffle was based on Bertrand Russell.

I originally started trawling through the collection of City Fun about two or three years ago when I’d first decided to develop the punk women series I wrote for The F-Word into a book, and I’ve been meaning to finish the trawl ever since. Like a lot of fanzines that went on for a long time, City Fun clearly started to believe their own hype after a bit, and to develop their own personal shorthand/language. But I think that they were very quick to spot when they were disappearing up their own arses, and to take steps to correct that. I think that showed a good dose of self awareness and maturity on their part.

City Fun, which (amongst others) featured writing, artwork and input from Martin X, Andy Zero, Liz Naylor, Cath Carroll, Bob Dickinson, Linder Sterling and a certain Stephan Patrick Morrissey, has, over time, proved itself to be a really good social document of the 1979-1982 period, particularly from a punk/post punk and mancunian history point of view. It’s also been digitised now, a sure sign of its historical and cultural importance.

Last night was film festival night at the WCML, so I stayed until 7pm in order to watch the Lindsey Anderson/Shelagh Delaney project The White Bus from 1967. It’s described as being “A prelude” to If, and revolves around a series of small adventurous journeys undertaken by an anonymous young woman around Manchester and Salford. At one point she is on a civic bus tour on the aforementioned white bus, which is dominated by the excessively forthright and jolly Mayor, played with gusto by Arthur Lowe. I liked the bits in Central Library: “You have some filthy books in here!” and the sly double meaning inferred by the juxtaposition of the new towerblocks in Salford, and the march of progress they represented, with the rather more picturesque houses of the famous and wealthy in the suburbs. It’s an odd film, but an interesting and enjoyable one.

Anderson, while probably most famous for If, also directed the video to Carmel’s ‘More, more, more’ in 1984. It was also filmed around Manchester.

The film festival continues tonight with Luke Fowler’s The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott. Which mixes archive footage and newly shot material

“in an evocative video essay that reflects on the life and times of critic, historian and activist EP Thompson. It captures a moment of optimism, in which Thompson’s ideas for progressive education came together with political resistance and activism.”

There’s also a benefit in aid of the WCML, which has been hard hit by cuts to Salford Council, on 9th June at Islington Mill, at 3pm.

Photo of the Working Class Movement Library by pandrcutts. Used thanks to a flickr creative commons licence

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Rochdale: Open as usual

Yesterday David and I made a pilgrimage to Rochdale in order to watch our friend Natalie Bradbury contribute a guest lecture to a series of talks at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum.

I had suggested we get the bus, but Transport For Greater Manchester’s journey planner was sulking when I tried to look the buses up, and Trainline revealed fares for under £10 so we got the train from Victoria instead.

Rochdale came as a bit of a shock to us upon our arrival. The powers that be are in the process of installing tramlines for the Metrolink, so a lot of the roads from the train station (and neighbouring metrolink station) through the town centre are barricaded up while the lines are layed, making an already slightly daunting prospect of finding our way over to the museum somewhat more difficult. It was also colder than it had  been in Manchester, and it’s not often we get to say that…

After a somewhat bleak and vaguely surreal trek through the town centre and out the other side to Toad Lane, where the museum is, we grabbed a much needed cup of tea before sitting down to hear Natalie’s talk.

Titled ‘Woman’s Outlook: 1919 – 1967: A surprisingly modern magazine?’, Natalie’s talk was unusual in structure in that she doesn’t get on with Powerpoint and, what with being a trained journalist, she instead made a magazine, provided paper copies of it to the audience, and used a digital version of the magazine instead of Powerpoint to structure her talk.

Woman’s Outlook was a magazine for co-operative women, published by the Co-Operative Press. Natalie describes it as having “mixed the political and the domestic”

As Natalie says in her summary, the magazine took “an often daring political stance on hot topics of the day” and appeared “ahead of its time on issues such as abortion, equal pay and divorce law” but “many of the subjects covered by Outlook would not appear out of place in a women’s magazine today.”

As Natalie explained in her talk, she grew up reading the music press, then newspapers, so she never read the girls and womens press while she was growing up. The only women’s magazine she reads now is Stylist “because it’s free” and it was interesting, and very revealing, so see a comparison of stories in Woman’s Outlook and Stylist: There are more similarities in subject matter than you might think.

Natalie took the audience on a journey from the magazine’s beginnings in the ‘Women’s Corner’ in the Co-operative News in the late nineteenth century to the founding of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, to the founding of Woman’s Outlook at the end of the First World War.

Natalie talked of some of those involved with the paper, including notable editors, columnists and contributers, and discussed the prejudice they faced. Editor Mary Stott had wanted to cover ‘hard news’ in her journalistic career, but instead found herself consigned to ‘women’s issues’, which were taken less seriously. Her 1973 memoir Forgetting’s No Excuse was a touchstone for Natalie in her research, as were interviews she conducted with some of the surviving members of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, Pat Williams and Margaret Tillotson.

Natalie is an enthusiastic speaker, and her interest in the subject and her research really came across as she spoke. It made me want to find out more about the Co-operative Women’s Guild and Woman’s Outlook.

After the talk, David and I headed back to the train station as it was getting a bit late and we needed to find some food.

As we wearily tried to remember our way back through the dark, empty barricaded streets we spotted a sign that stated encouragingly ‘Rochdale: Open as usual’ but even that didn’t console us much in the misery of the cold. David remarked that he hadn’t felt this cold since he visited his ex boyfriend in Berlin a few winters back, whereas I fervently wished I’d put more layers on. We both felt flasks of soup and sandwiches would be a good idea next time. Either that, or we will have to wait until the mythical summer arrives before venturing this way again.

It wasn’t much better once we got back to Manchester, as the storm was drawing in, but it still felt a couple of degrees warmer at least. On our way back to Piccadilly to catch our buses home we walked past the old Co-Operative building, providing a neat ending to the evenings adventure.

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A visit to the John Rylands Library

At the end of January I went to see a colleague of mine at the John Rylands Library on Deansgate. I’d been meaning to for a while, but it’s too far away from where I work to be doable in a lunch hour so I waited until I had a week off instead.

I got the bus into Piccadilly and felt rather depressed as the bus turned off down Whitworth Street and went past Legends, now boarded up and poised for either demolition or partial restructure. Then I walked through Piccadilly Gardens to Mosley Street (honoured by John Cooper Clarke in one of his more lugubrious works) towards Saint Peter’s Square. I feel quite bleak about the redevelopment going on there too – the Library, Library Theatre, Peace Gardens, Metrolink…

Library Walk by cantwont used via a flickr creative commons licence.

When it’s redone the council are glassing over Library Walk, one of the most architecturally beautiful walkways in Manchester. Not only do the architect’s and the council appear to be deliberately blighting a really nice bit of Victorian architecture, but the council also intend to put a new Peterloo memorial plaque on the gate. It will be the 200 year anniversary of Peterloo in August 2019, and to mark this event with a plaque honouring the death of 17 people and the severe injury of 700 more for demanding the right to vote, on a gate obstructing a public right of way adds insult to injury. Not only have Manchester City Council for years had an extremely euphemistic blue plaque marking the massacre, they’re also now revealing a massive irony deficit.

Despite its reputation and Victorian gothic splendour, the only time I’ve previously visited the Rylands was for a staff meeting about three years ago. Though, as I discovered when I was making my way there, I’ve a pretty good idea of how to find it because it’s been on at least one of the protest march routes I went on in 2011.

The Rylands Library has the misfortune to be situated next to Emporio Armani, which is itself next to RBS. Old meets new… They have  a combination of old and new within the Rylands itself, but they’ve preserved as much of it as possible so there’s lots of old glass and a lot of the old gothic building. I really enjoyed my visit, and I take my hat off to Enriqueta Rylands for founding such a long lasting legacy both to her husband, John, and for the people of Manchester.

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A slice of Manchester’s musical history

With thanks to Manchester Histories Festival:

“The historic Whitworth Street building that is home to The Twisted Wheel night club, often dubbed ‘the Birthplace of Northern Soul’, is earmarked for demolition in the New Year. On 9 December, a mods farewell ride past provided the opportunity to pay tribute to the legendary venue, and to say a fitting goodbye.”

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An interview with Natalie Bradbury, the woman behind The Shrieking Violet

The Shrieking Violet

The Shrieking Violet is a perfect example of everything that is good about Manchester. So it was with a great deal of sadness that I heard that editor Natalie Bradbury might not be continuing her zine for much longer.

Natalie recently contributed an article on the history of the little known white poppy, the pacifist alternative to the more well known red poppy, to the Working Class Movement Library’s blog. You can read her article  here.

In the light of these recent developments, I decided that an invitation to interview Natalie was long overdue.

When did you start the Shrieking Violet and why?

 The Shrieking Violet started in summer 2009 – the first issue came out on August 1 of that year. At the time I had been unemployed for several months after finishing an NCTJ course in newspaper journalism, and I was struggling to even get work experience at local newspapers as there were widespread redundancies at that time – it was a very bad time to try and get into newspaper journalism! I was becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned, but decided to put some of the skills I’d learnt during my course, such as page layout, to good use, and to turn being unemployed to my advantage and use that time to do something productive.

 I was also doing a lot of writing on my blog, also called the Shrieking Violet, at the time. When I started it I never thought that anyone might read it, but as more people started reading it I became frustrated by the limitations of the blog format and wanted to make a finished product that came off the screen and involved more people, and could be picked up physically by different people who might not necessarily know about my blog.

Why did you choose to do both an online version and a paper version? How was the paper copy distributed?

I’ve always been too lazy to lay out my zine by hand and cut and paste text and pictures in the traditional way. From the start I designed Shrieking Violet digitally using a design package, then created a PDF which I printed and took to a 2p photocopier shop to reproduce. As I had already made a PDF, it seemed logical to put it online for people to download and print themselves at home if they wished (or just read it on the screen if they preferred). A friend later told me about the PDF hosting site Issuu, which enablea readers to flick though the pages of a PDF online as they would a magazine. 

I made between 50 and 70 free paper copies of each issue, which is a tiny number really – especially when you consider that online views on Issuu stand at around 2,000 for each edition! Nevertheless, I think it’s important that there is a choice of either reading online or on paper. I advertise each issue on my blog, with links to both the download version and a list of places where a paper copy can be picked up; typically cafes, bars and other creative and social spaces around Manchester city centre. On my blog, I also invite people to email me if they want me to send them a copy in the post.

Are fanzines about places more common these days do you think? (as opposed to fanzines about music, or football) 

There are a lot of magazines and fanzines which seem concerned with urbanism, architecture and cities these days, and topics related to these such as regeneration and the creative economy, whether they are based in Sheffield or Liverpool, Manchester or London. Something I have noticed is that there are a lot of zines made by collectives – for example, people on the same course at university, or a group of graduates who have studied together and have that geographical location in common. Naturally, they look to what’s around them for inspiration. There are still a lot of music zines/self-published music magazines around. Football zines I know less about – although I have read FC United of Manchester’s fanzine, which is quite political and is not actually that football (or even Manchester)-orientated!
 

A collage of Shrieking Violet’s

What inspired the Zinefests at Victoria Baths?

The first zine fair I ever want to was at Urbis in Manchester in August 2008. As well as having stalls, I remember that Bob Dickinson did a talk about making a radio documentary about zines, presented by Jarvis Cocker, and there was a ‘psychogeography’ walk around the area led by the Loiterers Resistance Movement.

I volunteered at Victoria Baths for a while on the oral history stall. One day I was sitting in the cafe folding piles of copies of the Shrieking Violet and Alison Kershaw, the arts co-ordinator at Victoria Baths, suggested running a zine fair in the space; so the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention was born. It’s a brilliant space to work in. I was keen that the event should be far more than just a market for buying and selling, and offer activities that anyone could get involved in. I loved being able to draw on the history of the building and the wealth of resources in the Victoria Baths archive, which encompasses pictures and objects relating to the building’s history as well as thousands of donated memories, to encourage people to make their own swimming-inspired zines on the day. On the day of the Fanzine Convention, Future Everything had a Maker faire in the main sports hall below, so Fanzine Convention stallholders spread out around the balcony of that space, looking over the technological contraptions at the fair below. Smaller rooms upstairs, comprising the flat where Victoria Baths’ superintendent used to live, just off the balcony space, were perfect for fanzine talks, film screenings and workshops.
 
Could you write a little about the Manchester Modernist Society and their heroines project?
 
The Manchester’s Modernist Heroines project was a collaboration between the Shrieking Violet, Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement which took place in March 2011. It celebrated ten overlooked women in fields ranging from architecture to aviation via art, psychology, archaeology, family planning and journalism. We placed a call out for modern-day women to produce responses to each of the ten women, which formed the basis of a publication, compiled by myself, and walks around Manchester led by the Loiterers Resistance Movement. The responses were received in the form of articles, poetry, images and concepts for performances.

Manchester has a long history of feminist activism, but many of its key figures are now forgotten, who are your favourites and why?

It’s not specifically a Manchester organisation, as there were and continue to be branches all over the country, but I am really interested in the Co-operative Women’s Guild, a campaigning organisation which was founded in 1883 to provide education to its members, primarily working class women, and give them more of a voice both in co-operative societies and within society. Manchester has a long association with the co-operative movement, and I have been researching a co-operative women’s journal called Woman’s Outlook which was published by the Manchester-based Co-operative Press between 1919 and 1967. Outlook was a curious mixture of the domestic and the political, recognising the importance of both to women’s lives; it urged its readers to get involved in political campaigns, for example for women’s representation in parliament, equal pay and peace and disarmament, but also provided practical advice such as recipes, dress-making patterns and child-rearing tips. I will be doing a talk at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum on Thursday 21 March 2013 entitled ‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’.

As a journalist, one of my favourite women in Manchester’s history is Mary Stott (one of our Modernist Heroines). She edited several co-operative publications over the years, including Woman’s Outlook, before she became editor of the Guardian’s woman page, for which she is best known. As editor of both Woman’s Outlook and the Guardian woman’s page, Stott really involved women in the publications, encouraging them to write in and share their stories. Whilst Stott was initially reluctant to solely focus on women’s issues, preferring to be taken seriously as a journalist who could tackle hard news just as well as men, she succeeded in creating a ‘community of readers’ and ensuring content reflected their lives and what was important to them. Stott’s autobiography, Forgetting’s No Excuse, is well worth a read.

Why do you think Manchester has such a historical culture of feminist activism?

Manchester is often called the ‘first modern city’, reflecting its rapid industralisation and expansion in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. This new way of living and working created rampant inequalities, with a huge gulf between the richest in society – those with power – and the rest, the working classes, who laboured in terrible conditions to make the few rich. A lot of the historic feminist activist figures I have come across were concerned with addressing some of these inequalities on a practical level by improving people’s living conditions, and empowering them by offering access to education. Women were already fired by with the injustice of what they saw around them, and also realised the powerlessness of their own situation in society – being unable to vote, to own property, to work, etc, and wanted to do something about it, to be able to make a difference. If you want to know more, I highly recommend making contact with Manchester historian Michael Herbert, and going on one of his Women’s History walks around Manchester, which covers women active in the suffrage, socialist, trade union and co-operative movements. He has also just written a book called Up Then, Brave Women.

What do you think the legacy of that activism is?

Feminism is, of course, still highly relevant today, and there are still battles to be fought not just over women’s status and their value in society but how women are perceived socially and culturally. I’m inspired by the ongoing work of a new generation of feminists in Manchester, from groups like the Riveters at Manchester University who work to raise awareness of issues affecting women within the university, the city and in society in creative, inclusive and engaging ways, to other collectives such as Manchester Women’s Design Group, who do interesting work around women and the city, for example by exploring women’s emotional relationships with different public spaces in Manchester.

How would you describe the relationship between Manchester and Salford?

Manchester and Salford are two neighbouring cities, separated by the River Irwell. To me they are quite different in that, whilst Manchester is quite compact as a city and has a clearly defined centre with all the facilities and attractions you’d expect, I think of Salford as being more as a collection of smaller towns and villages (each with their own attractions – see the awe-inspiring Manchester Ship Canal and Barton Aqueduct, canal-side folly Monton lighthouse, Eccles Wurlitzer museum, the bright orange Bridgewater Canal at Worsley, Clifton Country Park, etc!) than a city in itself, as it has no real focal point. There are several really great places just over the Salford border, within easy walking distance of Manchester city centre – alternative arts and music complex Islington Mill, Salford Art Gallery/Peel Park, the amazing social/people’s history resources in the Working Class Movement Library, Salford University and the Medieval magnificence of Ordsall Hall – but as a whole I think it’s a bit underexplored by Mancunians. Salford Quays, now home to BBC North as well as the Lowry theatre and arts centre and Imperial War Museum North, is a bit further out, but within reach of Manchester by tram and bus. The Quays is also doing its bit to attract people into Salford, but I very rarely go there as to me it feels like a bit of an island with a strange atmosphere, detached from the rest of the city – it is, let’s face it, perfectly possible to get the tram in and out of Salford Quays without registering that it is surrounded by some of Britain’s most deprived communities.
 
What are you planning to do next?

I’m going back to university in the New Year, so I’ll be a student again, which is both exciting and scary so I’ll have to see what that new challenges and experiences that throws up … !

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Walking down Market Street on a Sunday afternoon…

As anyone who has walked down Market Street on a weekend will tell you, it’s not so much a stroll as a frantic scurry as you try to dodge getting embroiled with the chuggers and the religious evengelists (of all stripes, let’s be fair…) and try to avoid colliding with the more straight forward street performers.

As I was scurrying back towards Piccadilly this afternoon I came across the surreal sight of a young woman belting out some kind of Celine Dion esque ballad and, less than two feet away, a man selling dancing puppets. Two Bart and Lisa Simpson dancing puppets were merrily dancing away to Hot Butter’s ‘Popcorn’, threatening to derail the diva’s performance, but she continued valiantly…

Also spotted: Candyfloss for sale, and lots of it, which felt distinctly odd in February.

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Manchester is a musical city #2

I was on the bus on the way into work on Thursday morning, gently drifting along in my own thoughts to the soothing melodies and beats of a distant ipod or phone playing some bhangra flavoured hip hop soul. Suddenly I became aware of the woman behind me singing along, putting her melodic and soulful vocal stylings ever so slightly behind the chorus of the songs on the distant ipod/phone. Bass in the background then, vocals firmly up front.

Made me smile.

 

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The remains of the days

Yesterday was officially the final day of Christmas. En route to work I came across a couple of interesting reminders of this: The crane on the A6 in Longsight awkwardly removing the Christmas decorations from each and every lamp post, causing necessary havoc with the traffic whilst doing so. And a spirited rendition of ‘Hark the herald angel sings’* courtesy of the bell ringers at the Catholic church on Oxford Road.

Earlier in the week I watched The Road To Coronation Street on DVD. I had actually bought it as a Christmas present for my Grandad, who died just before Christmas, but decided to watch it myself. It’s quite short, but it packs a lot in. It tells the story of Tony Warren’s transformation from actor to writer at the newly formed Granada TV, and the long and difficult development, commissioning, casting and screening processes involved in getting the show on the air.

The Road To Coronation Street

It was a difficult programme to sell because Warren insisted on a Mancunian cast, and because the board at Granada were incapable of seeing the dramatic potential of the everyday and the regional, and thought hearing the Manchester accent (there are, of course, several Manchester accents) would cause viewers to turn off in droves.

Within a year of its first episode airing, Coronation Street was the most watched programme on British TV, and it would help launch the career of another young Manchester writer: Jack Rosenthal.

Thinking about The Road to Coronation Street, and the issues it raises, has caused me to think about two events in Salford this past year: The transfer of a number of BBC departments to Salford from London (and from Oxford Road), which despite the fanfare has neither been the great move north or the great job creation it was touted as: London staff, unsurprisingly, being very reluctant to re-locate, commuting instead, and far less jobs being created locally. The chances of MediaCity creating its own Coronation Street or its own Tony Warren or Jack Rosenthal looks very remote indeed.

Media City by Rupert Brun shared via a flickr creative commons licence

Also, on the Manchester/Salford border, an Indian student was shot dead on Boxing Day. That Anuj Bidve’s parents had found out about his death through Facebook before GMP contacted them, and that they had considered sending him to University in the US or Australia but had opted for the UK because they felt it would be ‘safer’, makes it even more terribly poignant. They had also re-mortgaged their house to pay the crippling fees international students must pay: £9,000 a year if you’re an undergraduate currently, and likely to be much higher when domestic students fees rise to £9,000 this September.

I finished reading Dorian Lynskey’s history of the protest song, 33 Revolutions Per Minute last night. It is excellent. By the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that he has been writing a eulogy though, and by and large, it’s hard not to agree with him: The student protests and the riots had no discernable soundtrack, and it would be nice to see Doyle and the Fourfathers ‘Welcome to austerity’ do its job, but it doesn’t seem to have caught the publics imagination like earlier protest songs would have done.

 

 Image of MediaCity by Rupert Brun, June 2011. Shared via a flickr creative commons licence.

* – We did it at primary school. Primary school was less agnostic than high school, and favoured hymn practices and carol singing, not to mention the works of Lionel Bart and Gilbert and Sullivan come the festive season.

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Wednesday 30th November 2011

Today was strike day.

As those of us picketing were expected to do so between 8:00 and 10:30am I got up at 5:30 and wearily got through the daily palavar of my physio exercises before having a slight crisis over what to wear for the day. Not in the sartorial sense, purely in the ‘should I wear a jumper?’ sense. After breakfast (always start a long day with porridge) I headed out to the bus stop and immediately cursed myself for not going for a jumper in the end and put my long sleeved fingerless gloves on to make up for it…

Oxford Road train station and the Cornerhouse

It was still dark when I arrived in Manchester so I walked fairly quickly down Portland Street and Oxford Road, taking in the mise-en-scene. The first picket I saw was a PCS picket nearish Portland Tower, followed by a UCU Salford one just down the road. On Oxford Road there was an MMU picket for either UCU, Unison, or both outside John Dalton building. A bus driver honked as he went past, and it was presumably a positive honk as one of the pickets raised his placard in salute.

It was gradually getting light as I moved down Oxford Road, and by the time I’d passed the picket outside the Tin Can it was pretty much daylight.

I arrived at my own building not long after eight, where I was greeted by three of my colleagues who had beaten me to the union office (for flyers etc) by mere minutes. There were no union reps about so one of my colleagues had stepped into the breach and was organising things herself, despite having only ever been involved in one other strike action before. We appeared to have been left to get on with it, so we got on with it and were pleased to be joined later by a further four colleagues.

So far as successful picketing went, we weren’t that successful as the only two people we persuaded not to cross the picket line were two people who’d already decided not to. We got a lot of indifference from people, including colleagues, and were blanked by a lot of people as well (again, including colleagues) but we did also get some supportive noises and good luck messages from people, even if they did cross our picket line. We were also given homemade chocolate chip cookies by a young UCU picket, coffee (unofficially) from staff, and tea from an ex colleague who is now a student.

We left for the union meeting/breakfast at Kro safe in the knowledge that we’d done the best we could with what resources we had, and that at least we’d now be fed and be able to get warm. Alas such was the turnout that Kro were completely overwhelmed, and the service was so slow that we had to leave for the march before most of us had had our drinks and food. We were in a minority of people leaving, as I don’t think everyone intended to march, or at least, not until they’d had their breakfast.

We had missed the student feeder march which left from All Saints park, so we hopped a bus and tried to get as far down Oxford Road as possible before hopping off and walking as fast as we possibly could in the direction of Liverpool Road.

As we got closer, we could hear the noise: a sonic sea of whistles and instuments that may or may not have belonged to the vuvuzela family. The sea of people was pretty damn admirable too, and it was headed up by a row of mounted police in high visibility gear. They weren’t allowed to strike themselves, so were on official business, but they looked magnificent. On studying the horses later in Whitworth Park, I noticed that they had the equine body armour equivalent of shin pads on, which suggested – along with the usual helmets – that caution was being employed. Either that or the police were worried that the horses knees might get cold.

Liverpool Road

The march literally set off from Liverpool Road as we arrived, so we carefully inserted ourselves in amongst a group of ambulance staff. I can’t remember the exact route of the march, but we did Deansgate and the area between Deansgate and Albert Square. The reception from people on the streets was pretty good, and there were quite a few points on the march where people had lined the streets and were applauding as we marched past. Albert Square was one point where this happened, but there were points prior to that, and after that too.

One low point was going past the banks/commerce area on Deansgate, where someone had hung a banner from an upper storey office block which read “Why should we pay for public sector greed?” This caused a lot of booing and hissing, plus one Unison bloke was so irate that he shouted “WANKERS!” persistently and loudly until we had passed. RBS’ offices, which had their own police guard on the doors, got even more boos.

RBS under guard

There was a nice part of the march immediately after these incidents when we came to pause for a few minutes by the John Rylands Library. Given that we weren’t going anywhere, we took it in turns to pose for pictures with our placards outside it’s magnificent Victorian facade.

John Rylands Library, Deansgate

Albert Square, what with the Christmas markets and decorations around the town hall, was very picturesque. We were applauded by crowds on the pavements here, which was a very touching and moving experience after the indifference encountered on our picket earlier.

Albert Square

Portland Street also went well, and soon we were on Oxford Road again. We had heard via a friend whilst going through Albert Square that our own building was possibly in lockdown, and we speculated as we marched as to whether it might have something, or nothing, to do with the frankly adorable bunch of students we’d left looking after the site of our picket at half ten.

That aside, the overall student response on Oxford Road was pretty disappointing, but we’d already concluded that those most likely to be engaged with the days events were probably on the march anyway. The response we got at the hospital end of Oxford Road as we headed for Whitworth Park was much better, as you would expect: lots of staff watching and applauding.

It took a long time to get everyone from the march into Whitworth Park for the speeches, which were polemical and rabble rousing in character, as was befitting the situation. I liked the UCU woman and the NHS Salford woman best. The UCU woman had great charisma and rhetoric, and the NHS Salford lady was wonderfully articulate and to the point. And very brave as well given she apparently hadn’t spoken to a crowd that big before.

After that, it was all over. Most of our colleagues had parted company with us pre Whitworth Park, so that just left three of us. We walked wearily back down Oxford Road and took refuge in a café where we had a long overdue cup of tea and compared digital camera pictures whilst discussing what we felt we could have done better so far as our picket was concerned. Since we’d been pretty much left to our own devices with it, and none of us had organised a picket before, we thought we’d done really well. But now we know we will have to organise it all ourselves then we’ll prepare accordingly next time.

The unions reckon 30,000 people marched today in Manchester, and I’ll be interested to see if this figure matches or differs from figures in the media and, if so, by how much and in which respect.

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Manchester is a musical city…

On Sunday I went to Manchester University Student’s Union to see Throwing Muses. The gig was supposed to be upstairs in the Academy 2, but had been shunted downstairs to Club Academy in the basement to make way for the Mela for Eid upstairs.

I can imagine Club Academy, as a venue, not being that much bigger than the kind of venues the Muses played when they first started out in the US in the mid eighties as it was small and sweaty. The crowd looked as though they were made up almost entirely of people who have been following the band since the eighties.

The stage was really low down so I couldn’t see Kristen Hersh at all throughout, which made for rather an un-engaging experience. I did however have a perfect view of the sound desk, a pretty good view of the bar, and spent a large chunk of the bands set watching a woman with a particularly magnificent rose tattoo and red bob, who was stood about a metre in front of me holding onto a barrier, undulating wildly and a various speeds throughout.

The band, and Hersh, seemed to take a little while to get going, meaning ‘Bright Yellow Gun’, which was about the fourth song or so in, sounded a little sluggish. Hersh seemed to be struggling with her vocals too, I think she had a cold as she sounded husky and a bit tired when she was speaking to the crowd. At times her vocals sounded unnervingly like early Courtney Love.

‘Hate My Way’ was about the sixth song in, and the band seemed to take off from there, with Hersh still sounding hoarse but both she and the band seemingly more relaxed. There were moments when it all really seemed to come together and it was possible to discern what made the band such a hypnotically powerful proposition, and Hersh such a compelling frontwoman, bu there was also the odd moment that was bewilderingly unlistenable as well.

The bands first encore commenced with Hersh performing a stripped down subtle and controlled rendition of early favourit ‘Fish’, and the band rejoined her for about four more songs. They were called back for a second encore afterwards, a blissfully slow and langorous song I wish I knew the title to. Hersh seemed weary as she said a final goodnight, and I was personally relieved that she wasn’t pushed into a third encore. She seemed to have had enough by then.

I couldn’t find any of my friends so after hanging around for 15-20 minutes outside waiting for them to emerge, I headed down Oxford Road. The crowds from the Muses gig were merging with revellers from the Mela for Eid upstairs, and the more spontaneous Eid celebrations outside. Lots of cars were blasting desi and the Asian men (and it was all men so far as I could see) were in boisterous mood.

The further I got down Oxford Road the less Eid revellers I saw. By the time I was passing the Thirsty Scholar by Oxford Road train station the desi had been replaced by the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger once again moaning that he was ‘Borrrn in a crossfire hurricaaannne’. I picked up a 192 by Piccadilly train station and the desi and Rolling Stones were replaced by the deafening mouth organ howl and stomping feet of a scratch blues ensemble on the top deck, who sounded particularly carried away. I have to confess, I’ve seen and heard some seriously weird things on the 192 but this is the first time I’ve experienced a live gig on it, drunken karaoke not withstanding.

Longsight was oddly quiet for Eid, possibly because the gig had finished fairly early, what with it being a Sunday. I arrived home in perfect stillness and quiet.

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