Emmeline Pankhurst - Daughter of Manchester

I  spent the train-ride into Manchester booking up a walking tour and finding out where I could leave my rucksack for the day. A post office just along the Oxford road was ideal for £5.00.
Then I went in search of the Central Library  where the tour started and tried to warm up in their café with a cup of coffee, although I did wonder why everyone was sitting indoors with coats and scarves on. This was because the automatic double doors sucked in cold air everytime someone passed. It was very tempting to just move in further out of the draught and browse the library but at 14.00 I was outside flurry of rain meeting up with Gareth, the tour guide, and one other walking tour participant, a lady from Sydney. Her husband was a physician on a conference on palliative care.


Gareth had moved into Manchester as a young gay student from the Yorkshire moors and had fallen in love with the particular blend of liberal socialism displayed by many Mancunians and the history of capitalism and reform from which it sprang. His talk was wide ranging, from football to the rise of the multicultural population, gay Pride to Engels to Abraham Lincoln, to more recent terrorist attacks and the reaction against this –‘ we are one’ - by the populous.


 He wove the buildings on the walk into this talk and I was surprized that there were so many huge and original structures still standing amongst the high rise glass blocks, paid for by King Cotton.
The Exchange for example was where the raw cotton was traded between soaring walls and a glass roof, held up with enormous Greek pillars. It now houses a small theatre in the round on the main floor. A Victorian Arcade with ornate iron work balconies was another stop and the John Ryland Library built by his fabulously rich widow in the midst of the working class area, to encourage the factory hands to improve their lot through education.


And of course there was the story of Emmeline Pankhurst and her fight to get the vote for women. 
 
It was a complicated shifting history of dark and light as the industrial revolution unfolded with unchecked capitalism, mixed with individual philanthropy. Gareth told it with insight and passion and although I still don't like Manchester as a City, I now have a much greater depth of understanding and interest.