Jesca Hoop, Manchester Academy 3, 30th June

Born in California, resident in Manchester singer/songwriter Jesca Hoop is something of a musical chameleon. Her sound incorporates aspects of folk, indie rock, sixties pop, and American gothic amongst other things.

Onstage Hoop comes across as an engaging, sweet woman who likes to tell stories both through her songs and through direct conversation with the audience. That she comes across as wide eyed in her enthusiasm, somewhat shy and self conscious at times is part of her charm.

Her voice has a tremendous range from low roar to angelic high notes, and she is able to sing in a number of different narrative voices, from that of a young child to a world weary older woman. Both of these skills compliment the complex musical rhythms and lyrics of her songs.

The style and look of new single ‘Born to’, all surging guitars and strong and fierce vocals, made me wonder if Hoop had crossed over into spiky post punk territory as so many artists have lately, but the gig and new album The house that Jack built have revealed a more complex picture. Despite a minor protestation from her that she and her band are a punk band rather than a folk band because they do everything themselves, her songwriting does have a folky feel to it at times.

The song ‘Peacemaker’, based on a story from one of the ancient Greek plays, in which the women go on sex strike to stop the men going to war (and perpetuating the sins of war), was particularly stark and powerful in a live setting. At the other end of the scale were jaunty tunes such as the incredibly catchy ‘Hospital (to win your love)’ which owes more to sixties pop and was inspired by Jesca’s younger brother, Biz, and his childhood broken arm.

And then there was ‘When I’m asleep’, a transcendental almost bhangra tinged song, which occurred around the middle of the set, and during which the self effacing Jesca briefly became a pagan goddess of the dance. The result was mesmerising.

The band were called back for encores and at the very end of the gig when all the stage lights had been switched off, the band had left the stage, and the gig was over Jesca stood with the microphone on its stand at her back and softly but powerfully sang acapella a little song on the themes of winning over an initially restless audience. In some performers this could be taken for arrogance, but in her case the effect was moving, charming and it nicely encapsulated the gig for me.

Early on into her set my shoulder had seized up, my neck was aching and I’d had a high temperature, plus I was feeling irked by the couple in front of me who seemed to think that they were watching the Stone Roses in Heaton Park and were dancing accordingly. But Jesca and the band won me round, I was absorbed and spellbound. And I bought both the albums on the way out.

 

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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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2nd October 2011

Feral underclass against the Tories

Today was the big march/protest in Manchester, called by the TUC but supported by a much wider base of groups. The main march was from Liverpool Road off Deansgate to GMEX where the Conservative Party conference is being held this week, but I’d heard that there was going to be a feeder march from University Place on Oxford Road and, given I’d enjoyed marching with the students last year, I decided to march from there instead.

The crowd by University Place didn’t seem that big when I arrived, but the police were out in large numbers again. Having said that, I think a lot of the mounted police were there to clear Oxford Road before moving on to other parts of the main march. We also had official observers this time, who were clearly labelled as such, and who were giving out ‘bus cards’ containing legal advice and phone numbers in the event of arrest.

The students had a giant black bird-like creature, made largely from bin bags and held aloft by giant poles. It had a pair of scissors for a beak and was called ‘The Culture Vulture’. There was also two or three mobile sound systems, a few people with drums, and quite a few protesters with dreadlocks. I’d say that the crowd was a mixture of students from both universities, academic staff, and unionists from both universities, plus some sixth formers and members of the public. Around half eleven a particularly boisterous young NHS contingent arrived, and my friend laughed upon getting a text from one of his friends to say that said NHS contingent had arrived fresh from chasing Tory delegates around the back of their hotel. Another of our friends arrived as the speeches were going on.

The speeches were a bit of a mixed bag as a lot of the speakers were from student groups, or the student union, and as such weren’t necessarily practised public speakers. The woman from UCU was probably the best, and there was also a speaker from Unison. The last of the speakers was an impassioned sixth former from Xavarian College, who was still speaking as we slowly began to form up and move out onto Oxford Road.

By this point we’d begun to collect an impressive amount of leaflets and flyers for various groups, including one for the current Jarrow March, which is taking place 75 years after ‘Red’ Ellen Wilkinson led the original marchers to London. The march is going on now, and whilst not passing through Manchester, will be passing through Sheffield next weekend. It is due to arrive in London on the 5th November, and the final leg of the march will be from Temple Embankment to Trafalger Square.

I picked up so many leaflets and flyers that, very quickly, I had to start decanting them into my bag. Upon arriving home and emptying my bag out I found three ‘Occupy! 2/10 Manchester Against The Cuts’ flyers, two flyers advertising a single by a band called Marivaux Horns, the profits of which will go to the student hardship fund, one flyer for an SWP meeting on Marx, Crisis and Revolution, one which was a timetable of discussions by the Northern Communist Forums at the Friends Meeting House, one flyer for the NHS Health Bill protest next Sunday (9th) in London (a protest called by UK Uncut, which is supported by Unite, Right To Work, Health Worker Network, and the NHS), one for the co-ordinated strikes on November 30th, another one about the 30th November but from Right To Work, one from Youth Fight For Jobs about the Jarrow March, and a massive Coalition of Resistance Newsletter.  When I emptied my pockets out, I also found DAN – the Disabled Peoples Direct Action Network (email contact only, to join the mailing list, danmail-subscribe@yahoogroups.com , and the Education Activist Network as well. I think I missed being given a few here and there, but had my friends and I emptied our bags out and compared notes, I think between us we would have had everything.

There was a young cub reporter from Key 103 moving around the crowd  by University Place, and that crowd was a lot bigger by the time we set out at about 11:50. Whilst there were a lot of people with cameras by University Place, the media seemed fairly low key and the police seemed friendly.

Progress down Oxford Road was slow and a bit clumsy, mainly due to the size of the group I think. We got approached by a woman from the BBC not long after setting off, who asked us if we were students. Two of us exchanged looks whilst the other confessed, yes, he was a student. They went off towards the very back of the march, but from what he said later his answers were probably too intelligent and literate to get used.

I’m not very sure of the route we took, but I know we turned off Oxford Road by McDonalds and started heading towards Deansgate. There seemed to be a period where it felt as though we were going round and round the town hall from various directions, but it’s probably more likely that we just went down every side street possible between Oxford Road and GMEX. Deansgate was good though: Our feeder march ended up in the middle of the whole march, which stretched all the way down Deansgate.

Culture vulture in flight on Deansgate

The Occupy! set peeled off at Albert Square whilst everyone else continued marching towards the party conference at GMEX. It was around this point that some protesters spotted some Tory delegates leaving their hotel and swarmed towards them, chanting ‘SCUM! SCUM! SCUM!’ and waving placards. We were near the back whilst this was going on, so we didn’t actually see much, just some men in suits trying to get through the crowd and a swarm of people in front of us.

The media were very much in evidence throughout the march, as were the police, and there was a helicopter overhead constantly throughout. Was it a police helicopter? or did it belong to Sky News?  As we passed GMEX both media and police were present and visible in high numbers. I noticed that the nearer we got to the conference the older and more expensively dressed the journalists became. I also, throughout the march generally, noticed two different police forces (GMP and Lancashire) plus Tactical Aid and police CCTV vans, all in significant numbers. I had my picture taken and got filmed a lot, so I made a big effort to look smiley, approachable and peaceful.

By the time we came to GMEX we were very, very strong...

Some of the marchers had brought their kids with them, and I spotted a toddler asleep on her mums shoulders at one point. I also spotted marchers representing Unite, UCU, the NHS (including a contingent from Leeds), and some WOBS (no, we didn’t know either, but it sounded cool) from Sheffield.

When we passed through Saint Peter’s Square there was a confusingly delivered call for all banners to be lowered until we were past the tramlines, which we eventually worked out was so that no one with a particularly high flying one would get themselves electrocuted by catching it on the overhead wires.

When we got past GMEX, the field was full of stalls and a stage had been set up at the far end for the speeches. We were starving and in desperate need of the loo by then though, so we headed over to Piccadilly for food, tea and relief.

Afterwards we headed back over to Albert Square to see how the occupation was getting on, and passed a group of people just off Saint Peter’s Square, who were petting and feeding the police horses. It probably did nothing for the animals digestions, but probably helped their nerves.  In Albert Square there were quite a lot of people sitting around whilst a smaller group played football as a soundsystem played Junior Murvin’s ‘Police And Thieves’.

After a bit of this we headed back towards GMEX, but people were heading back over to Albert Square by then as everything by the conference had finished. We  saw a very exuberant and slightly scary group of figures in David Cameron masks at this point, and not long after whilst we were heading back to Albert Square we got snarled at by a bloke in a grey suit, ‘If you push that in my face I’ll ‘ave yer!’ being the broad translation. This was ironic in that the incident occurred as we were strolling along with our placards unconsiously held at half mast, not really protesting demonstratively at that point.

Albert Square again

Things had livened up a bit by the time we got back to Albert Square again, but the rain was coming down quite hard by then. People danced to the sound system, now playing old school rave, under canvas held aloft on poles whilst protesters in harnesses scaled wet lamposts to hang banners. One of the banners already hung on the opposite side of the square read ‘If they won’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep’, a reference to an idea put across on their flyers: that if enough protesters were in the square by nightfall, they would try to maintain a presence in the square throughout the night and see that the delegates in their nearby hotels didn’t get any sleep.

If you won't let us dream, we won't let you sleep

The police presence was robust but friendly at the point when we left, but I don’t fancy the occupations chances of an all night knees up: too many police, not enough protesters.

I overheard a nice conversation on the bus on the way home between a group of sixth formers who’d been on the march and one of their friends, who hadn’t. The one who hadn’t told them his mum had voted for David Cameron, and he freely admitted that he probably would have done too because he ”didn’t know anything about politics”. But since the election, and the protests, he’s done a lot of reading, he’s educated himself, and now knows a lot more about politics. He’d had a deadline though, so he hadn’t marched.

One of the group of boys who had been on the march got off at the same stop as me. He turned off down a side road just before I reached home, still carrying his placard.

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I heart MCR, Manchester Pride, and the WCML

For reasons I think it best not to go into, I had a pretty shitty bank holiday weekend. Sunday was best, mainly because it meant I got to undo at least part of the damage of Saturday (don’t ask…) but also I think it was probably the only day when it didn’t bucket down.

This is just a series of thoughts and bits and pieces, starting on Friday, going through to today…

Friday was I heart MCR day, and the idea was that employers in Manchester would let their staff out at 4pm to watch the events in Exchange Square and staff would go shopping. My own workplace did a partial sign up on this, the outcome of which was that I went home at 5pm with 1 hours time in liu. The staff who stayed later got more time in liu, and t-shirts.

On Saturday I headed towards town and made my way over from Ardwick to Oxford Road, and dinner at 8th Day to cheer myself up. Then I started to head towards town, with the idea of buying birthday presents in the Arndale (something I never do, but since I had to buy them anyway I thought I’d show willing…) and tea at Whittard as I had some back pay in August.

En route, I met one of my colleagues who was having a longer journey than usual between his places of work that day. Why? because Manchester Pride was on. I think it’s indicative of the shit few days I’d been having that I had completely forgotten this.

Apparently the religious right were out in force, picketing, but they were massively outnumbered by the Pride marchers and spectators. ‘Sodomites burn in hell!’ was the general refrain apparently, and just to keep in topical and varied they were also shouting about the evils of Coronation Street and Lady Gaga. One of the cast of Coronation Street was so peeved apparently that they got down off their float and started remonstrating with the bigots.

Another float was hurling free Fairtrade chocolate at people in the crowds, and one of the enthusiastic participants in the religious right lobby got hit right between the eyes by a bar of chocolate travelling at high velocity. Apparently it was probably an accident, but my colleague still wishes he’d caught it on camera.

Before continuing on his odyssey, he advised taking a right down Charles Street and going past the University buildings around there as the best route to Piccadilly.

I have some experience of dodging/navigating my way around processions, so I wasn’t too worried. I’ve been caught up at various times in Hazel Grove, Marple and Stockport carnivals on more occasions than I can count, and once you know that you can’t cross a parade line, no matter how much you want to, these things are easy to navigate… time consuming, but always fun.

Even skirting the back streets of Piccadilly and the village I could see and hear the parade, which looked magnificant. I wasn’t tempted to join in though as my joie de vivre was somewhat lacking, and also I always equate Pride with extortionate prices and lots of music I don’t much like.

In the end I decided it would be impossible to get to Market Street, so instead I walked it to the Appollo and got the bus home again. Or as far as Longsight anyway, as the scallies on the bus and the speed of the bus were driving me mad by then, so I walked it from Longsight instead. It was that kind of day really…

There appears to have been very little mention of I heart SLFD this past week or two, but I know of at least one thing that SLFD should be proud of: The Working Class Movement Library on Salford Crescent.

Thanks to the government cuts, and more directly, to Salford Council, the Library has lost a massive chunk of it’s funding this year and, as such, will have to make up the shortfall itself somehow. This will be very difficult, as £80,000 isn’t something you tend to find down the back of a sofa, and even if it was, they’d have to be finding it every year from now on.

I’ve visited the library a few times now, and I’ve always found the experience fascinating. The scope of the collection, and the size of it, is mindbogglingly huge and complex, and the staff and volunteers are a lovely bunch of people who always make you feel welcome and will always be willing to help dig things up for your research. I like this library a lot.

David has also used it, for his PHD in his case, and spent his time there engrossed in copies of Temporary Hoarding, the Rock Against Racism magazine. “WCML was great!” read the email I got off him. “Four page Gang Of Four interview with Lucy Toothpaste and Irate Kate!!!”

I knew exactly what he meant.

If you want to donate to the library’s fundraising appeal, please click here:

 If you wish to find out more about the library, and it’s amazing resources, please click here:

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Postscript to last weeks shenanigans

I was speaking to a colleague at work today, who I didn’t see much of last week, and she said that she saw lots of people running down her street in Hulme last Tuesday night, pausing for breath, then running off again, hotly pursued by the police. Apparently the police were chasing rioters and looters from Deansgate and Piccadilly into Hulme… ‘Ooh,’ I said, ‘That’ll be why they were evacuating Oxford Road then…’

The name and shame pictures that have come out in the local press so far would seem to support the general theory that it was a fairly mixed bunch of age ranges and ethnicities who were rioting and looting in Manchester and Salford. Not many people look 10 in their pictures… despite the press reports.

As to the whys and wherefores… will we ever really know? I think we all have our own personal theories, but perhaps we shouldn’t necessarily share them all.

That said, Afflecks appears to be open again (I haven’t actually been into town yet to check, but their site suggests so) despite sustaining damage, which is good news. They are planning a spot of civic pride for the 26th August if anyone fancies getting involved…

http://www.afflecks.com/2011/08/12/afflecks-loves-mcr-show-that-you-do-too/

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Last night… and today

Last night David and I went to the Cornerhouse to watch ‘Break My Fall’. The film started at 6:20pm, and it would have been about halfway through the film when the lights were suddenly switched on and a member of Cornerhouse staff informed us that we were going to have to leave: There was rioting in Piccadilly and it had spread to Deansgate. Given Oxford Road’s proximity to Deansgate Greater Manchester Police and Manchester City Council were strongly advising the Cornerhouse to close for the night.

There had been storm warnings all day, with rumours circulating by word of mouth and on twitter and facebook. Trouble kicked off first in Salford Precinct in the afternoon. There was a scuffle, but it was contained and dispersed. In hindesight it seems very probable that a lot of the people who were dispersed either moved on to Piccadilly, or else onto the the estate in Pendleton. Another thing we realised later on, and especially today, was how unreliable the info on the GMP twitter feed had been.

The atmosphere on Oxford Road as we left the Cornerhouse was odd rather than frightening. We had been advised by the Cornerhouse staff to head for the Aquatics Centre if we were trying to get to South Manchester, so we started to walk in that direction. It would have been about 7:45pm by this time. As we walked we saw lots of buses, many parked at stops on both sides of the road, and a small but visible number of TFGM (Transport For Greater Manchester, the new name for GMPTE) staff near the stops, directing people. Whilst I know it was the standard large incident procedure, it did bring back memories of being in London on July 7th 2005, so I think my adreniline levels kicked themselves up a gear then.

As we walked, I observed a small but noticeable number of people heading down Oxford Road towards Piccadilly. Contrary to press reports, these people were not children and teenagers: They were adults. There were probably more people, like us, heading away from the area, but it was interesting to watch those going the other way. Those of us heading away from Piccadilly appeared either outwardly calm or slightly apprehensive, whereas those heading towards Piccadilly were visibly excited: Some of them looked as though Christmas had arrived early, wrapped up in New Years Eve.

Eventually we both got buses, and parted on the agreement that we would text each other once we were home. David got home first, and I got his text whilst I was on Plymouth Grove. The bus took a very long time to get down Oxford Road, mainly I suspect because they had been told to do long stops to pick up people who were basically being evacuated from Oxford Road.

We picked up the speed a bit on Plymouth Grove, where we passed two slightly self conscious seeming police people, and as we moved along Plymouth Grove talk moved from the riots, and from the scatter bullet phrase ‘Set on fire’, which I had been hearing repeated again and again up until that point, to more mundane matters.

I was on the 197 as this had been my plan all along: As soon as the rumours of a riot started to circulate at work and online, I knew that I would need a new way home: If I’m going out, I have to walk to Piccadilly and get the 192 home as the 191 stops running at 23 minutes past six. All the rumours pointed to riots happening in Piccadilly, so as the day wore on the 192 became an increasingly unviable option. This meant that I could get the 197 or the 42 from Oxford Road, and walk part of the way home, or I could walk all the way home. We’d paid for our cinema tickets in advance, and there was only one showing of ‘Break My Fall’, so cancelling would have been a wrench.

The 197 follows the 191 route until you get to Levenshulme, then it turns off down Albert Road and goes through Burnage and Heaton Moor to Stockport. This meant I had the option of hopping off in Longsight and walking it, or hopping off in Heaton Moor and walking it. Because Longsight has a history of rioting and Heaton Moor doesn’t, and because it’s less of a walk from Heaton Moor, I hopped off at the top of Heaton Moor Road.

It was a bit of a trek home, but all was calm in the twilight. There were plenty of Ladies Who Lunch, or their northern variant: Ladies Wot Lunch, plus their male equivalents outside the usual cafés and wine bars, roaring at each other, eating and drinking… not a care in the world. Fiddling while Rome burned…

Today, things seem to be back to normal. The clean up operation, which was organised on twitter, started this morning. There was still a latent tension in the air and a sense of wariness on peoples faces though.

At work, we all had our ‘How did you get home last night?’ conversations, and judging from the problems other people had I feel I got off very lightly indeed. One colleague had a very near miss with the mob on Market Street whilst trying to get to the Manchester/Salford border, another colleague had a long walk across the other side of town, dodging would be rioters en route to Piccadily, to a bus stop where she merely hoped there would be a bus.

The rumours were, of course, flying today as to who was responsible for the rioting, and why it had happened. I heard my first rumour on the bus on the way into work this morning when I overheard a pissed off business man loudly telling someone on his phone that he’d been in Piccadilly the night before, and that it had been the EDL (English Defence League) orchestrating things. This came to sound increasingly unlikely as the day progressed however, and the following rumours began instead:

• The riots were orchestrated by gangsters (Graham Stringer M.P)
• The riot in Salford was orchestrated by gangsters as payback for previous police actions (local media, and possibly local gangsters)

It has rained heavily and consistently today, and this undoubtably helped tonight in that there appeared to be no trouble and no buses appear to have been re-routed. Yesterday we relied on the GMP twitter feed for updates, and we were badly let down by it, so today we switched to the Stagecoach website, BBC Manchester, and the Manchester Evening News. The MEN had the most thorough coverage, both online and in the paper, though I’ve been told Manchester Confidential is also good.

I basically gave up on national papers and radio stations yesterday for coverage as they were all focusing on London, so it was almost impossible to build up any kind of idea of what was going on in Manchester from them, and that’s remained the case today really.

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Oxford Road post Slutwalk

Manchester Oxford Road post Slutwalk...

I spotted this as I was on my way home from work on Wednesday night. It made me feel really pleased, and not just because I had my camera with me for once…

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Peterloo

In the hot and humid early evening of yesterday, I trundled down Oxford Road in pursuit of food after work. 8th Day doesn’t seem to be doing evenings now that a substantional chunk of the students have gone home for the summer, so it was the Cornerhouse for me.

From the Cornerhouse I meandered towards Saint Peter’s Square, which is currently under seige because of the metrolink extensions (not started yet, so far as I could tell) and the radical overhaul of the entire area by Manchester City Council. The library and the library theatre have already fled the carnage, the war memorial and Peace Gardens are to be moved. In a few years time the place will be as unrecognisable to the average manc as it would be to a survivor of Peterloo today.

Matt Smith (no, not that one) local historian, political upstart, and – apparently – deputy manager at a branch of Asda, chose this day to mark the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre, a tragedy which occurred on the 16th August 1819, a hot day much like the 5th July apparently.

As with many of the various re-tellings and analysis of Peterloo (a dark satirical reference to the much celebrated victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, which occurred close enough to Peterloo to be in the minds of many at the time), Matt’s piece was an overview coupled with an exploration of the parallels between life for the average person in 1819 and now. There are parallels: a struggling economy, high food prices, and a overwhelming sense that things are going in the wrong direction and the wrong people are being made to suffer… But I always think it risks devaluing the importance of what happened in Saint Peter’s Fields (as they were then) on that day in August 1819 if we overconcentrate on the parallels with today, interesting though they are.

Having said that, Smith did an admirable job when it came to explaining the flaws of capitalism as a model (he likened it to a bus being driven over a cliff, with the surviving passengers having to pay the driver to buy a new bus, which  then gets driven over the cliff again, and the process is repeated ad neauseum) and the Rotton Boroughs style political arrangements of 1819 (Manchester had a population of approximately 1 million, only 145 people could vote, and only 1 person could stand as an MP).

You certainly couldn’t fault Smith on enthusiasm and energy, particularly during his agit prop moment as a smug Tory M.P complete with Lib Dem sock puppet, and I did enjoy his description of being filled with hope for the future of political protest upon coming across two men, who had previously been scrapping on the pavement, united by a common hatred, pissing up against a giant billboard of David Cameron just prior to the 2010 elections.

Matt Smith is not The Doctor, but you don’t need a sonic screwdriver to talk about history and politics. If it was 1981 I can’t help but think he would have joined The Gang Of Four instead…

The event is part of the Not Part Of Festival, a fringe festival in Manchester which runs parallel to Manchester International Festival. The name is an abbreviated way of saying ‘Not part of Manchester International Festival’, sort of ‘Off, off Broadway’ or perhaps ‘Off, off Saint Anne’s Square’ in this case.

I picked up a leaflet about the campaign for a proper memorial to the massacre, in which 18 people were killed and over 600 people were injured by sabre cuts and trampling. The previous memorial has always been deemed euphemistic and inadequate, and many, many people, including Mark Thomas, have  joined the campaign many years ago to have it removed and a proper memorial put up instead. With the re-development of the square, the council have promised a new memorial, but doubt is being expressed as to whether it will be any better than the previous one.  If you would like to read more about the history of Peterloo, and about the campaign for a decent memorial to the events, please click here.

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